Four More Women Come Forward With Accusations Against Roy Moore

The charges against Roy Moore continue to mount as national Republicans continue to push back against him.

Roy Moore Gun

Four more women have come forward to make claims of unwanted advances or actions by Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore during the time he was an Assistant District Attorney in the late 1970s and early 1980s, making for a total of nine such women including two who have claimed that Moore committed what would likely amount to sexual assault under current law:

Nine women have now come forward with accusations, and state Republican leaders were pondering increasingly baroque mechanisms that have the potential to deny their own candidate a Senate seat. Party leaders met Wednesday evening, but no decision was announced.

Also quiet was President Trump, who ignored questions about Mr. Moore’s increasingly imperiled candidacy, which has been repudiated by much of his party’s leadership.

And so a head-spinning afternoon and evening unfolded. A series of new allegations surfaced, Republican leaders met behind closed doors before slipping away from reporters, and a lawyer for Mr. Moore raised an idea probably never before raised in a Senate race — that handwriting experts analyze a scrawled inscription in a woman’s high school yearbook to see if she had fabricated the signature of a man now running for the Senate.

But as Mr. Moore’s supporters struck an aggressive posture, the candidate’s troubles mounted when the Alabama Media Group and The Washington Post each published accounts from women who said they had interacted with Mr. Moore years ago. One of the women, Tina Johnson, said that Mr. Moore had groped her buttocks in 1991, when she was 28.

“He didn’t pinch it; he grabbed it,” Ms. Johnson said, according to the Alabama Media Group report. Ms. Johnson said she had been meeting with Mr. Moore, then a lawyer in private practice, in relation to a child custody matter.

Another woman, Gena Richardson, told The Post that Mr. Moore had left her frightened after he gave her a “forceful” kiss when she was about 18 and Mr. Moore was in his 30s.

Separately, Kelly Harrison Thorp said that Mr. Moore had sought a date with her when she was 17 and he was in his 30s, and Ms. Gray told The Post about Mr. Moore’s advances.

Karen Lancaster, 63, a retired schoolteacher, confirmed Wednesday that Ms. Gray had told her, in the late 1980s, that Mr. Moore repeatedly tried to ask her out during those years at the mall.

“I’ve known for over 20 years that he was a predator, that he preyed upon girls in the mall,” she said. “It’s common knowledge.”

Ms. Thorp, in a subsequent interview with The New York Times, recalled asking Mr. Moore if he knew how old she was.

“‘Oh yeah, I go out with girls your age all the time,'” she remembered him replying.

Al.com has the details of Johnson’s claims:

In interviews with AL.com, Tina Johnson recalls that in the fall of 1991 she sat in the law office of then-attorney Roy Moore on Third Street in Gadsden. Her mother, Mary Katherine Cofield, sat in the chair next to her. Moore sat behind his desk, across from them. Johnson remembers she was wearing a black and white dress.

Almost from the moment she walked in to Moore’s office, Johnson said, Moore began flirting with her.

“He kept commenting on my looks, telling me how pretty I was, how nice I looked,” recalled Johnson. “He was saying that my eyes were beautiful.”

It made her uncomfortable. “I was thinking, can we hurry up and get out of here?”

Johnson was 28 years old, in a difficult marriage headed toward divorce, and unemployed. She was at the office to sign over custody of her 12-year-old son to her mother, with whom he’d been living. Her mother had hired Moore to handle the custody petition.

Johnson had two young daughters at the time with her then-husband, and her son said he wanted to live with his grandmother.

At one point during the meeting, she said, Moore came around the desk and sat on the front of it, just inches from her. He was so close, she said, she could smell his breath.

According to Johnson, he asked questions about her young daughters, including what color eyes they had and if they were as pretty as she was. She said that made her feel uncomfortable, too.

Once the papers were signed, she and her mother got up to leave. After her mother walked through the door first, she said, Moore came up behind her.

It was at that point, she recalled, he grabbed her buttocks.

“He didn’t pinch it; he grabbed it,” said Johnson. She was so surprised she didn’t say anything. She didn’t tell her mother.

She said she told her sister years later how Moore had made her feel uncomfortable during that meeting. Her sister told AL.com she remembers the conversation.

And of a woman who says Moore pursued her when she was 17 years old:

In 1982, Kelly Harrison Thorp was working as a hostess at the Red Lobster restaurant in Gadsden. She was 17 years old and a high school senior.

One day Roy Moore came into the restaurant, and she recognized him.

“He was a public figure in this small town,” she said of Moore, who at the time was in his early 30s and the deputy district attorney for Etowah County. Later that year he would mount an unsuccessful campaign for circuit court judge.

Thorp said Moore asked her if she’d go out with him sometime.

“I just kind of said, ‘Do you know how old I am?'” she recalled.

“And he said, ‘Yeah. I go out with girls your age all the time.'”

Thorp said she turned him down and told him she had a boyfriend. She said he then walked away.

Thorp said she later told a family member but did not tell the story publicly. She moved away from Gadsden the following year, and has just recently moved back.

Thorp knows one of Moore’s accusers, Leigh Corfman, who told The Washington Post that Moore had a sexual encounter with her when she was 14. Thorp believes Corfman’s story and said she is proud of her for telling it publicly.

And The Washington Post reports on two women who say Moore pursued them when they were in their late teens:

Gena Richardson says she was a high school senior working in the men’s department of Sears at the Gadsden Mall when a man approached her and introduced himself as Roy Moore.

“He said, ‘You can just call me Roy,’ ” says Richardson, who says this first encounter happened in the fall of 1977, just before or after her 18th birthday, as Moore, then a 30-year-old local attorney, was gaining a reputation for pursuing young women at the mall in Gadsden, Ala. His overtures caused one store manager to tell new hires to “watch out for this guy,” another young woman to complain to her supervisor and Richardson to eventually hide from him when he came in Sears, the women say.

Richardson says Moore — now a candidate for U.S. Senate — asked her where she went to school, and then for her phone number, which she says she declined to give, telling him that her father, a Southern Baptist preacher, would never approve.

A few days later, she says, she was in trigonometry class at Gadsden High when she was summoned to the principal’s office over the intercom in her classroom. She had a phone call.

“I said ‘Hello?'” Richardson recalls. “And the male on the other line said, ‘Gena, this is Roy Moore.’ I was like, ‘What?!’ He said, ‘What are you doing?’ I said, ‘I’m in trig class.’ “

Richardson says Moore asked her out again on the call. A few days later, after he asked her out at Sears, she relented and agreed, feeling both nervous and flattered. They met that night at a movie theater in the mall after she got off work, a date that ended with Moore driving her to her car in a dark parking lot behind Sears and giving her what she called an unwanted, “forceful” kiss that left her scared.

“I never wanted to see him again,” says Richardson, who is now 58 and a community college teacher living in Birmingham. She describes herself as a moderate Republican and says she didn’t vote in the 2016 general election or in this year’s Republican Senate primary in Alabama.

(…)

Richardson, whose account was corroborated by classmate and Sears co-worker Kayla McLaughlin, is among four women who say Moore pursued them when they were teenagers or young women working at the mall — from Sears at one end to the Pizitz department store at the other. Richardson and Becky Gray, the woman who complained to her manager, have not previously spoken publicly. The accounts of the other two women — Wendy Miller and Gloria Thacker Deason — have previously been reported by The Washington Post.

(…)

Richardson says she was startled, thinking maybe her dad was calling, and that when she realized it was Moore, “I felt like every person in that office was staring at me.”

“At that point, he said, ‘Would you like to go out some time?’ ” recalls Richardson, who says she described the call right afterward to McLaughlin, who confirmed the account. “I said, ‘Well, I can’t talk right now.’ And being so naive, and so not worldly, I said, ‘I’ll be at work Friday or Saturday.'”

The next Friday or Saturday night, she says, he came in to Sears and asked her out again and she again told him, “Look, my dad is so strict.”

She recalls Moore suggesting that they meet for a late movie after she got off work. She says she called her parents and told them she was going out with friends.

Instead, she says she met Moore at the movie theater. She says she can’t remember what they saw, but she remembers clearly what happened after. She says it was cold and Moore offered to drive her to her car, which was more than a football field’s distance away in a parking area behind Sears. She says he parked by her car and began chatting with her, and she says she told him again about her dad.

“I just explained to him that my dad’s a minister, and you know, I just can’t sneak around because that’s wrong,” she recalls. “So I thanked him and started to get out and he grabbed me and pulled me in and that’s when he kissed me.

“It was a man kiss — like really deep tongue. Like very forceful tongue. It was a surprise. I’d never been kissed like that,” she says. “And the minute that happened, I got scared then. I really did. Something came over me that scared me. And so I said, ‘I’ve got to go, because my curfew is now.’ ”

She says she got out of the car and into her own.

(…)

Phyllis Smith, who was 18 when she began working at Brooks, a clothing store geared toward young women, said teenage girls counseled each other to “just make yourself scarce when Roy’s in here, he’s just here to bother you, don’t pay attention to him and he’ll go away.’ ”

The encounters described by the women occurred between 1977 and 1982, when Moore was single, in his early 30s and an attorney in Etowah County in northeastern Alabama. In October 1977, he was appointed deputy district attorney.

In all, The Post spoke to a dozen people who worked at the mall or hung out there as teenagers during the late ’70s and early ’80s and recall Moore as a frequent presence — a well-dressed man walking around alone, leaning on counters, spending enough time in the stores, especially on weekend nights, that some of the young women who worked there said they became uncomfortable.

Several of the women said they decided to share their accounts after reading a Post story last week in which four women said Moore pursued them as teenagers, including one who said she was 14 and Moore was 32 when he touched her sexually.

This makes for a total of nine women who have come forward to accuse Moore of some form of inappropriate behavior toward younger women in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and its likely to add yet more fuel to what is fast becoming the biggest political story in the country right now. It started, of course, with last Thursday’s report from The Washington Post in which four women came forward to accuse Moore of inappropriate behavior, including Leigh Corfman who alleged that Moore committed what would most likely amount to sexual assault against her when she was just 14 years old. On Monday, Beverly Young Nelson became Moore’s fifth accuser when she said in a public statement that Moore had assaulted her in his car in the rear parking lot of the diner where she worked when she was 16 years old. In the intervening time, we’ve seen Moore himself and the Alabama Senate race generally become a political hot button, with many Republicans continuing to stand behind Moore to the point of saying that they would continue to support him even if the accusations against him were proven to be completely true. As I noted in a post earlier this week, for many of these people supporting Moore is as much a cultural litmus test as it is a political one, and it’s unlikely that these diehards will change their minds anytime soon.

All of this comes as national Republicans are becoming ever more desperate in their efforts to distance themselves from Moore and to find a way to save a seat that, in any other election, would be reliably Republican but which now may actually be up in the air. To date, every Republican Senator who had endorsed Moore has withdrawn that endorsement with the exception of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who has been silent on the matter since returning to Washington on Monday after recuperating from the assault he suffered last month. Alabama’s senior Senator, Richard Shelby, has said that if Moore remains a candidate he intends to cast a write-in vote for an appropriate candidate and is encouraging Alabama Republicans to do the same. Both the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Republican National Committee have withdrawn their material and financial support for Moore’s campaign. Many other Republicans in the Senate are giving at least subtle endorsement to the proposal by Colorado Senator Cory Gardner, who heads the NRSC, that Moore should be immediately expelled from the Senate if he stays in the race and ends up winning the Special Election scheduled for December 12th, a move that would require a two-thirds vote of the Senate’s 100 members. In that regard, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson said this morning that Moore would likely find his Senate tenure to be very short should he win the election next month.

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has said early on that Moore should end his campaign and was rumored over the weekend to being willing to let the seat go to a Democrat if Moore does not drop out, has apparently been working behind the scenes on an effort to save what would otherwise be a reliably Republican Senate seat. One plan would reportedly have Attorney General Jeff Sessions run as a write-in candidate in the Special Election. Another plan would have Luther Strange, who was appointed to fill the seat that Sessions vacated but lost the GOP primary to Moore in September, resign so that Alabama Governor Kay Ivey could appoint a new Senator and schedule a new Special Election. There are problems with both of these plans, however. With regard to the write-in campaign plan idea, there’s no guarantee that Sessions could win a write-in campaign at this late date and such an effort could easily result in simply drawing away enough Republicans from Moore to give the Democratic nominee a win. Additionally, it has been reported that Jeff Sessions, who said recently that he has no reason to doubt the women accusing Moore, is not interested in returning to the Senate. With regard to the second idea, it is not at all clear under Alabama law that Strange’s resignation at this late date would trigger a reset on the replacement process or have any impact on the race or whether it would work legally. The Special Election has been scheduled for months. Absentee and military ballots were mailed weeks ago. Even if Strange resigned today, it might not have any impact at all. In the end, if Moore chooses not to step aside then Republicans have only a limited number of options. They can support his opponent or at least hope that Moore loses in December, which probably won’t mean much to Alabama Republicans and would likely only cause his supporters to double down, or they can be prepared to expel Moore from the Senate if he manages to win the race. There is no magic bullet to stop Moore at this point.

 

FILED UNDER: 2017 Election, Congress, US Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. CSK says:

    It’s interesting that Moore should have selected for his legal representation a semi-literate crackpot with a dubious past of his own.

    Was this Trent Garmon the best Moore could do? Or was he the only lawyer in Alabama willing to take on Moore as a client?

  2. CSK says:

    My comment above was repeated here. Don’t know how that happened. I deleted it.

  3. James Pearce says:

    Prediction: When Moore wins, there will be no serious effort from Republicans to replace him.

  4. @James Pearce:

    I’m not sure I agree.

    If Moore wins and stays in office, he’ll become as much of a 2018 issue as Trump will be. It would only take 19 Republicans to join with the 48 votes that Democrats control to get to the 2/3 vote that would be needed to expel Moore from the Senate. I have a feeling it won’t be hard to find those 19 votes.

  5. michael reynolds says:

    @Doug Mataconis:
    I don’t think we should assume Democratic votes for expulsion. If it were me I’d leave Moore in place in the Senate. The GOP made this bed, they can damn well lie in it. At very least I’d insist on 2/3 of Republicans vote for expulsion before supplying a Democrat vote.

  6. Daryl's other brother Darryl says:

    I keep thinking about the Creep-in-Chief being a “peeping tom” when he was running the Miss Teen USA pageant.
    If Moore has to go…why not President Pervert?
    The hypocrisy is awe-inspiring.

  7. Modulo Myself says:

    What kind of school pulls a student out of class because a random man is asking for her? Alabama must be hell on earth.

    The Democrats need to force Franken to resign asap.

  8. charon says:

    @michael reynolds:

    I don’t think we should assume Democratic votes for expulsion. If it were me I’d leave Moore in place in the Senate.

    That is “too clever by half” – it would look opportunistic and unprincipled to voters.

    If even Republicans need to distance themselves from Moore he is so toxic, there is no way Democrats can afford to appear to tolerate him.

  9. CSK says:

    @Modulo Myself:

    The only possible reason I can think of for the school taking her out of class to answer the call is that Moore identified himself to the school administrator or office staff member as Ms. Richardson’s attorney. They may have thought it was some important legal matter.

  10. CSK says:

    @Daryl’s other brother Darryl:

    Because the people who love Moore also love Trump. And they have decided that any accusations made against Moore or Trump are 100% false.

  11. michael reynolds says:

    @charon:
    What the GOP will do is lay an expulsion on Democrats and try to supply the minimum number of votes to pass. Then they can claim it wasn’t them, it was the Democrats, setting up a new round of grudges. We need to reverse that narrative – make the GOP vote clearly and convincingly – at least 2/3 of their own members. The blood has to be on their hands, not ours.

  12. Stormy Dragon says:

    Schadenfreude ist die schönste Freude:

    Playmate says Al Franken groped her

  13. SenyorDave says:

    @Stormy Dragon: And they have a picture. And seeing the picture, I think Franken will end up resigning over it. Looks pretty bad, and I won’t be shocked if there are others.

  14. Daryl's other brother Darryl says:

    @Stormy Dragon:
    @SenyorDave:
    Considering that President Pervy has admitted to doing far worse than Franken is accused of, can I assume you expect Cheeto-Dick to resign first???

  15. Modulo Myself says:

    @Daryl’s other brother Darryl:

    Lol who cares? The Republicans are scum. if Trump was killing derelicts and burying them in the Rose Garden they would be cool with it.

  16. SenyorDave says:

    @Daryl’s other brother Darryl: The story is that he kissed her forcibly without her consent. That sounds like he molested her. The Democrats better be pretty consistent on this. As far as Trump goes, I will never stop wondering why some news organization has not interviewed the 14 women who have made accusations against Trump, as well as the women in the Miss USA and MISS TEEN USA who claim that Trump was backstage while they were getting changed. I have no doubt that Trump molested the women since he bragged about doing it; for some reason the public seems to have given him a pass on it. I like Franken’s politics, he’s a smart guy, but I think his continued presence will be a huge problem for Democrats.

  17. MarkedMan says:

    The Franken story is not exactly cut and dried. According to the woman herself, she had agreed to do a kissing scene in a comedy skit, but didn’t want to rehearse it. He insisted that they rehearse and made her extremely uncomfortable. The picture is a bigger issue. It’s hard to tell if his hands are actually touching her, or just in the air above. In both cases there were other people present and it will be interesting to hear their side of the story

    It will be interesting to see what happens next. If Franken is a serial groper, there will be more stories and more women coming forward. That will make it apparent.

  18. Modulo Myself says:

    @SenyorDave:

    The story is so pathetic–he was trying to insist that they rehearse a kiss for a USO event; like they had to get into character or something for a skit in front of soldiers. I’m pretty sure we will be hearing other allegations within hours. You don’t just try this once in your life.

  19. James Pearce says:

    @Doug Mataconis:

    I have a feeling it won’t be hard to find those 19 votes.

    I think it’s going to be easier to find 19 people who say they’ll vote to expel Moore, but much harder to find the first one to do so.

    No one’s been expelled from the Senate in over a century, so they’ll be doing something very novel, and we might not want to set the precedent that accusations alone -as credible as they are in this case- are enough to override democratic will.

    It just seems we’re playing a dangerous game here that could easily blow up in our faces.

  20. Daryl's other brother Darryl says:

    @SenyorDave:

    for some reason the public seems to have given him a pass on it

    Well…46% of the public, maybe. I would guess that many of that 46% were just holding their nose because of all the propaganda about Clinton. You know…better to have an incompetent serial assaulter in office than a competent woman falsely accused of a lot of things she never did.
    I don’t see how the Franken accusations rise anywhere near the rest of this except thru partisan stained glasses, but maybe, we shall see. Not to excuse it, but i bet if you went back thru almost every single males history you would find some example(s) of him being a complete oaf. Curious…let’s see a show of hands…who hasn’t done something stupid?
    GIven what we know right now, if Franken is expected to resign, a whole lot of other people have got to resign first….starting with the Creep-in-Chief.

  21. grumpy realist says:

    What Moore did used to be considered normal in Alabama

    and I’m sure the alt-right want to return to those days, when you could grope a young girl and you knew that she’d be too scared to tell anyone about it.

  22. Guarneri says:

    “Four More Women Come Forward With Accusations Against Roy Moore”

    Hi! I’m Al Franken, a sitting US Senator. And I stick my tongue down women’s throats and grope their breasts while they are asleep, against their will. See, here’s the picture!

    Pretty good joke, eh!?!

  23. Stormy Dragon says:

    @Daryl’s other brother Darryl:

    I think Trump should have been in jail even before the election, so he certainly SHOULD resign, but no, I don’t assume he will.

  24. Guarneri says:

    @grumpy realist:

    Nah. They want to go to Minnesota………….

  25. Gustopher says:

    @SenyorDave: Franken’s comedy has always threaded the line on the edge of acceptability, and the forcible kiss was in a rehearsal — it may well have been failed comedy. The photo was taken and slipped into the set of photos the actress got at the end of the USO tour (a collection of highlights that she would be going through and then stumble upon this one) — that was definitely failed comedy, and involved a photographer who *also* should have known better.

    It was behavior unbecoming of a Senator, but less unbecoming of an exhausted actor on a USO tour aiming for funny and missing.

    Abusers don’t abuse just once, and there is a plausible explanation, so I’ll give Al Franken the same level of support I give George Takei (who was either fooling around with a date after they were drinking too much, or was molesting someone who was unconscious) — I’m waiting for another shoe to drop. Or, if this is like the Moore case, a dozen shoes to drop.

    That said, the Minnesota Governor is a Democrat, so we wouldn’t end up with another Republican in the Senate over Franken’s stupid actions.

  26. Franklin says:

    @MarkedMan:

    He insisted that they rehearse and made her extremely uncomfortable.

    The accuser’s description of it doesn’t sound kind to Franken at all.

    The picture is a bigger issue. It’s hard to tell if his hands are actually touching her, or just in the air above.

    It’s true that would make a legal difference, but to me the moral difference is only slight.

    That said, I’m guessing well over half the U.S. population has messed with somebody who is asleep. Not sexual assault, to be sure, but some sort of prank.

    EDIT: By the way, I do agree that the amount of follow-up accusations by other people should indicate if this is a pattern or a one-off bad judgment. Roy Moore, Bill Cosby, Louie CK, etc. definitely showed patterns.

  27. Gustopher says:

    If Franken were in a state with a Republican Governor, I would want him to hang in until the next election, even if a dozen more accusers turned up with photographic evidence.

    The Senate is closely divided and Republicans are trying to push through Obamacare repeal, again, and that would result in 13 million people not having health insurance, according to the CBO. And that would result in some significant number of premature deaths, medical bankruptcies, families destroyed, etc. A creepy molester in the Senate is a less worse scenario.

    If we had a requirement that a caretaker Senator was picked from retired politicians of the departing Senator’s party, we would never be put in that (in this case, hypothetical) position.

  28. michael reynolds says:

    Is it equally morally contemptible to support slavery in 1860 BC as it was in 1860 AD?

    When this current frenzy is over we need to see if we can’t have a rational conversation about changing morality and the passage of time and how to parse where we are now and where we were.

    Feeding frenzies have a predictable rhythm. First of course, the ritual bloodletting. Then will come the overplayed hand, the accusation that turns out to be false, and the inevitable editorials and think pieces about jumping to conclusions. Someone may even point out that taking down a scumbag like Kevin Spacey takes a lot of innocent people down, as well. A bunch of people at House of Cards are unemployed, a bunch of other people who worked on his movie will never see their efforts on screen. In the final act the media and public become bored with the repetition.

    If we’re going to purge every sexual pervert, should we also purge everyone who ever used the ‘n-word,’ or called anyone a ‘fag?'” Serious question to which I doubt anyone has a ready answer. The other side can counter by outing and attacking any woman who ever had an abortion and call for them to resign or be disappeared from public life as baby-killers. Gosh, won’t all that be fun?

    This is a big, serious philosophical/moral/ethical issue. I have yet to hear anyone explain why we should despise Robert E. Lee for his support of slavery while continuing to revere Winston Churchill who defended colonialism – colonialism that incidentally resulted in a lot of Indians starving to death during WW2. For that matter why are Jews still happy to identify with David who killed a man just to get at the woman he was perving on? Why are Protestants still identifying with Luther, a raging anti-semite? And let’s not even get into the many less-than-exemplary Roman Catholic popes.

    Roy Moore is in trouble – and rightly – because he is credibly accused of attempted rape on a 14 year-old. To me the minor status of the victim, as well as the use of force make it clear that he was knowingly violating the norms of his time, norms he should have known to heed. That’s not on a par with some Mad Men era sleaze saying, “Hey, baby.” But right now the standard is extremely unclear.

  29. MarkedMan says:

    Just to be clear, I don’t think what Franken did is a Nothingburger. Trying to be funny or not, he made this woman feel degraded and uncomfortable. What I am saying is that if this is more than just jokes or rehearsals gone wrong, i.e. he rises to the level of a Moore or a Trump, or a Spacey or a Weinstein, we will hear additional credible stories.

  30. Slugger says:

    For me, all of this stuff is about our society not the individual men. Trump, Moore, and Franken are humans with limited spans on this earth. The USA can live for a very long time. We need to be concerned more about the nation than the career of any person. A resignation by Franken can set a good example, and I’m sure that he and his wife will not go without a warm dwelling this winter. Bob Packwood resigned. Franken should give weight to this example.

  31. pylon says:
  32. charon says:

    No More Mister makes an interesting point:

    http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2017/11/a-cynical-but-obvious-point-if-al.html#disqus_thread

    Beyond that, if Franken stays, every Alabama Republican voter who’s on the fence about Roy Moore receives a Get Out of Moral Quandary Free card. Hey, the lib harasser gets to stay, so hell yeah, I’m voting for Roy Moore.

    I still think a Doug Jones victory in Alabama is a long shot, though people who are smarter than I am think it’s possible. But it won’t be possible if Franken hangs on. That’s not the main reason he should go. But he should go.

  33. grumpy realist says:

    @Guarneri: At least Franken has admitted what he did and has apologized. Roy Moore doesn’t even have the guts to clear that first hurdle.

  34. Daryl's other brother Darryl says:

    @charon:

    Beyond that, if Franken stays, every Alabama Republican voter who’s on the fence about Roy Moore receives a Get Out of Moral Quandary Free card.

    Agreed.
    But here’s the reality…if Franken resigned this afternoon, Republicans would still support Moore.

  35. James Pearce says:

    @charon:

    Hey, the lib harasser gets to stay, so hell yeah, I’m voting for Roy Moore.

    The problem with this logic is that they were “Hell yeah, I’m voting for Roy Moore” before the Franken news broke.

    I see it going this way: Franken resigns or is expelled. Moore wins next month, then takes his seat shamelessly and without remorse and is welcomed into the fold.

    Point being, we are in danger of being hoisted by our own petard.

  36. charon says:

    @James Pearce:

    I am not saying Franken should resign, I am just drawing attention to one of the arguments.

    But I am not talking about these people. that you are describing:

    they were “Hell yeah, I’m voting for Roy Moore” before the Franken news broke.

    Steve M. was talking about these, as per my quote:

    every Alabama Republican voter who’s on the fence about Roy Moore

    Perhaps your reading skills need a bit of work.

  37. KM says:

    @michael reynolds:

    When this current frenzy is over we need to see if we can’t have a rational conversation about changing morality and the passage of time and how to parse where we are now and where we were.

    It wasn’t in the dark ages – it was within the lifetime of a majority of Americans. I’d say it’s fair to apply that kind of standard once all living souls of that time period have passed but if you’re alive, you can learn, adopt and recognize Young You had issues even if you didn’t know it at the time.

    Our grandkids are always going to judge us for being “unenlightened” and you know what, that’s how it should be. It means mankind is moving towards a better understanding of ourselves and our moral nature. I’ll gladly take the younger generation castigating me in my old age if it leads to a more just world in the end.

  38. KM says:

    @James Pearce:

    I see it going this way: Franken resigns or is expelled. Moore wins next month, then takes his seat shamelessly and without remorse and is welcomed into the fold.

    Unfortunately, I have to agree with you here. Franken doing the right thing will not help in regards to Moore. His voters will forgive him while screaming for Franken to be hung from a tree. Rationality left the building a long time ago.

    If the GOP was smart, they’d cut a deal: we don’t seat Moore if we’re allowed to expel you. This gives them the fig leaf of looking like they’re getting rid of all pervs while maintaining the balance. If any Trumpkin complains, well did you want us to get rid of Franken or not? The Dems made us do it!

  39. the Q says:

    This just in: Al’s roommate in college is charging him with humiliation when Al put shave cream on his sleeping roommate’s hand, then tickled his nose with a feather.

    Said the roommate, “as I rubbed my nose, I came into contact with what I assumed was someone’s jism…just because it was shaving cream and not jism doesn’t detract from the humiliation and bullying that occurred. He should resign from the Senate immediately.”

    Just as this story broke, another ex college roommate of Al’s chimed in with another embarrassing episode:

    “Al, while I was sleeping, put my hand in warm water and ran the kitchen water faucet. While sleeping, I kept thinking my hand was in a warm bucket of someone else’s cooz. As this caused me to almost wet myself, I think the Senator should resign from the Senate immediately as I am haunted often by nightmares of bed-wetting.”

    I think Al should play up the “stress of being in a war-zone while supporting the troops” and this was a little fuselage humor to buck up the spirits of his traveling companions.

  40. Grewgills says:

    @Daryl’s other brother Darryl:
    The picture looks like his hands were above not on her, but the picture did demean and degrade her and was given to others, so that is bad. If her version of events for the ‘rehearsal’ is close to accurate and her story does seem credible, then that is worse. A real and contrite full apology might be enough IF no other women come forward. That said, if her story is accurate, then there will almost certainly be other instances and other women coming forward. If that happens Franken is done and he should resign. We have to hold ourselves to our standards. That the other side completely fails to do so is not an excuse.

  41. James Pearce says:

    @charon:

    Perhaps your reading skills need a bit of work.

    Perhaps. Or perhaps my reading skills are not the issue.

    @KM:

    If the GOP was smart, they’d cut a deal

    The “smart” (but also cynical) play for the GOP is to do nothing, to watch Moore win his race and take his seat and become a dependable vote for their agenda.

    The “smart” play for the Dems would be to abandon this idea that, by god, they’re going to end the careers of all these toxic men.

    As we saw last year, and will see again come Dec 12, that works when you’re talking about entertainment figures. When it comes to politics, you still need to focus on policy.

  42. CSK says:

    A group of “Christian women” will hold a rally/press conference on the steps of the Alabama state capitol tomorrow (Friday, Nov. 17) to support Moore.

  43. Hal_10000 says:

    @michael reynolds:

    I don’t think we should assume Democratic votes for expulsion. If it were me I’d leave Moore in place in the Senate. The GOP made this bed, they can damn well lie in it. At very least I’d insist on 2/3 of Republicans vote for expulsion before supplying a Democrat vote.

    This is similar to the logic that gave us President Trump. There may come a time when a critical issue will come down to one vote and I do not want that vote to be wielded by Roy Moore.

  44. Just 'nutha ig'nint cracker says:

    @James Pearce: Doug’s reservations not withstanding, I think your guess is right; they’ll pick having the vote over having principles just as they have done so many times before.

  45. Just 'nutha ig'nint cracker says:

    @Modulo Myself: Not a “random man,” District Attorney Roy Moore. Quite a difference. (And yes, I think he probably WAS–and still is–arrogant enough to identify himself.)

  46. Just 'nutha ig'nint cracker says:

    @michael reynolds: Exactly! (And pardon the downvote, I was trying for up, but I’m having nervous tic problems in my hands today.)

  47. Just 'nutha ig'nint cracker says:

    @charon: “every Alabama Republican voter who’s on the fence about Roy Moore”

    So we’re talking about a couple of dozen or so?