Mitch McConnell Caves On Roy Moore
As I've said before, the Republican Party in the Trump Era has become the party of Trumpaloons, sycophants, sellouts, and cowards.
When the accusations of sexual misconduct against children by Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore were first published by The Washington Post, many Republicans stepped forward to distance themselves from a nominee who was already controversial even before it was reported that he had pursued relationships with teenagers and allegedly sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl. Chief Among those were members of the Congressional leadership team including Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Specifically, McConnell said that in light of the allegations in The Washington Post’s initial report, Moore should end his campaign and allow the Alabama GOP to select a new candidate. Now that we’re less than ten days away from the Special Election and polling is showing Moore with a narrow lead, McConnell is changing his tune:
WASHINGTON — Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, who has argued for weeks that Roy S. Moore, the Alabama Senate candidate, should leave the race, said on Sunday that he was “going to let the people of Alabama make the call.”
Asked during an appearance on ABC News’s “This Week” whether he thought Mr. Moore, who has been accused of preying on teenage girls, should be in the Senate, Mr. Connell said the decision should be left to the Dec. 12 special election.
“This election has been going on a long time,” Mr. McConnell said. “There has been a lot of discussion about it. They are going to make the decision a week from Tuesday.”
In the past, Mr. McConnell had said that he was looking at drafting a write-in candidate for the election, and that if Mr. Moore, a Republican, won the race, he would support a Senate Ethics Committee investigation into the allegations against him.
But on Sunday, Mr. McConnell seemed to accept that Mr. Moore, who has denied the allegations, would not be stepping down with only days remaining before the vote.
Antonia Ferrier, a spokeswoman for Mr. McConnell, said the senator was not backing down from any earlier comments about Mr. Moore. “The leader did not change or retract any of his previous statements,” she said in an email on Sunday.
Mr. McConnell told ABC News that he still believed that the Ethics Committee should investigate the allegations against Mr. Moore.
Several women have accused Mr. Moore of sexually inappropriate behavior. They said they had been subjected to groping, forcible kissing or other unwanted advances when they were teenagers and he was a prosecutor in his 30s.
Mr. McConnell noted on Sunday that two decades ago, when he was the chairman of the Ethics Committee, he had recommended the expulsion of Senator Bob Packwood, the powerful Oregon Republican, who resigned in 1995 after he was accused of sexual harassment.
This statement comes in the wake of recent polling that shows a tight race between Moore and Democratic nominee Doug Jones, but Roy Moore nonetheless has a narrow lead in the polling average. That lead has increased in the wake of a CBS News poll showing Moore leading Jones by six points 49% to 43%. The same poll also shows that 71% of Alabama Republicans believe that the allegations that have been made against Moore by five separate women are false and that 92% of the Republicans who don’t believe the allegations are true also believe that they have been made up by Democrats and/or Republican insiders in Washington who are out to get Moore and cost him the Senate race. With this new poll, the RealClearPolitics average of the race now shows Moore (49.0%) leading Jones (45.8%) by 3.2 points.
While this lead is far smaller than what we generally see in statewide races in Alabama, it is significant enough to suggest that Moore has recovered from the initial damage that the allegations did when the reports first came out in early November. In reality, of course, the fact that the reports came out nearly a month ago now is strong evidence that these allegations are not some kind of grand conspiracy against Moore. If they were, then the conspirators obviously would have waited until shortly before the election, perhaps during the past week or so, for the stories to drop so that Moore would not have sufficient time to respond to them. Instead, the initial reports all came out nearly a month ago and since then we’ve had a Thanksgiving break as well as nearly four weeks of news about the tax bill and other nonsense going on in Washington to distract voters and give Moore time to construct a response that played into what The New York Times calls the state’s “disdain for Democrats.” In a normal election, this is what’s referred to as the “October Surprise,” and we’ve seen it numerous times in the past, including in 2000 when the report about George W. Bush’s drunk driving arrest became public just days before the election and in 2016 with the release of both the Access Hollywood tape and the James Comey letter to Congress informing Committee members that the F.B.I. had reopened the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information due to the discovery of additional emails. The closer that damaging information about a candidate is released to an election, the more likely it is that it would hurt them at the ballot box, and the further in the past those revelations are the more time the candidate has to recover from the bad news.
As it stands, it’s looking more and more like Roy Moore will end up pulling off a narrow victory in this case. The only reason that it will be worthwhile to watch this race on the night of December 12th is that Special Elections have proven to be exceedingly hard to poll because it’s hard to predict who will show up to vote for an election scheduled at something other than the regular time, especially one that takes place just two weeks before Christmas. As I said, in an ordinary race this would be an easy Republican win. It’s only because of the allegations against Moore and the fact that Jones is making this race far more competitive than it otherwise would be that the race can still be called a toss-up. As things stand, who wins this race is likely to depend on which candidate does a better job turning out supporters. If this is an ordinary Alabama election, then Moore will win albeit likely by a narrow margin. If Doug Jones is able to persuade Democratic voters, especially African-Americans and women, to get out and vote or cast an absentee ballot, then he might actually have a chance here. Another unknown is what impact these allegations might have on women who would generally vote Republican. If enough of them either stay home or vote for Jones over Moore, then that will help Jones. Whether it will be enough is something we will have to wait to find out nine days from now.
As for McConnell, it’s clear that he will do nothing to move against Moore even if he doesn’t formally endorse him. Additionally, it seems clear from McConnell statements that, contrary to previous comments, Senate Republicans will not take any significant steps to try to prevent Moore from being seated, which is admittedly difficult given the Supreme Court precedent in Powell v. McCormack in any case, nor will they seek to have him ejected from the Senate after he his seated. Instead, they’ll accept Moore as one of their own and move forward. All because they value having one more Republican vote in the Sunate than they do about integrity or ethics.
It’s obvious in retrospect that the main reason that most Republicans in Washington distanced themselves from Moore in the first place was due to the fact that they believed that these allegations were so serious that they were going to doom Moore’s campaign and they didn’t want to be seen as backing someone with such odious allegations against him. Now that it seems like Moore has a chance to win, they’ve obviously reevaluated their position and decided its more important not to alienate that part of the Republican base that is inclined to back Moore, whether they live in Alabama or elsewhere in the United States. This, of course, is the same base that enthusiastically backs President Trump, which also explains why you seldom see Republicans speak out against the President no matter how outrageous he gets. As I said several weeks ago, there is no “civil war” in the Republican Party or the conservative movement. The party has surrendered to Trump and his mindless supporters and become the party of Trumpaloons, sycophants, sellouts, and cowards. Like most of his fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill, Mitch McConnell is both a sellout and a coward.
“People will just believe you. You just tell them and they believe you,”
-Donald trump, describing the suckers who support him
Since you linked to your earlier post, I’ll link to my comment at the time.
The only thing that’s changed is the “Trumpaloons” part. Republicans and conservative media stoked the detachment from reality and racism before Trump entered the scene.
@Teve tory:
It’s fascinating that Trump is now trying to deny that he ever made those pussy-grabbing remarks to Billy Bush, after having admitted to making them and apologizing (however insincerely) for having made them.
As for Moore, Trump was purportedly enraged when Strange lost the primary, because Donald Trump doesn’t back losers.
Power and money. That’s all it’s about. Any kind of perv, criminal or generic scumbag is welcome so long as they vote for that sweet, sweet tax break for the 1%.
A few random tidbits from some of the elites of the Grand Old Party:
Charles Grassley:
“I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing,” Grassley told the Register. “As opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”
Orrin Hatch:
GOP Senator says it’s hard to fund $14 billion children’s health care program — then advocates for $1 trillion tax cut
“The reason CHIP’s having trouble is because we don’t have money anymore.”
Sometimes I think the GOP is playing with us, seeing just how far they can go before they lose all but the 27%. But ten I remember that any Republican starts with about 42% in the race for president no matter who runs. And Roy Moore, a known pedophile, will most likely win for senate.
I’m about the last person to make excuses for McConnell but polling shows he is very unpopular in Alabama. I saw one poll which actually found that McConnell’s opposition to Moore made people MORE likely to vote for him. So this may be the best thing he can do in the situation, if he’s concerned about something more than moral preening.
I believe McConnell poured millions into the GOP primary attacking what he saw as the more viable conservative alternative to McConnell’s boy. He wanted Moore to be one of the last two standing. Slam him for that irresponsible monkey business.
Mike
A President who is an admitted serial sexual offender endorses an accused child molester, and yet everything is normal; nothing to see here, move along.
Kids are thrown off CHIP insurance, 13 million others are going to be tossed off Obamacare, Medicare will have it’s funding slashed by $Billions, all to give tax cuts to those who need them least, and yet everything is normal; nothing to see here, move along.
Now we hear from the President’s lawyer that he cannot break the law, because he is the President.
Yet everything is normal; nothing to see here, move along.
Two things:
1). It’s beyond pathetic that no one in the Republican party has the balls to say this is wrong and has to be stopped.
2). It’s beyond pathetic that no voice has risen from the Democratic party as significant opposition to all this.
We are now officially a Banana Republic. Reversing that will be nigh impossible.
@MBunge:
I’m curious, as our resident Trumpaloon, if you could clarify something for me.
Did Trump say, “Grab ’em by the pussy,” as Trump says he said.
Or did Trump not say “Grab ’em by the pussy” as Trump says he did not say?
And bonus question: can you, as a good little cult member, manage to believe both simultaneously? Because if you can you win the Orwell Doublthink badge.
@MBunge:
Again…Bunge supports an accused child molester.
What a quality guy…do you have daughters, Bunge?
I’m betting, no.
The Republican Party is quickly going the way of the Catholic Church. In “accommodating” and covering up sexual predators (Trump and Moore are just two examples of many) in order to maintain power and avoid scandal, they are gaining the reputation as a welcoming sanctuary for these predators. Comparing it to the Catholic leadership, I suspect that the early church leaders just viewed these compromises as an unpleasant necessity performed to keep relatively low level people from exploding the reputation of the church and the righteous work it was doing. they thought they had a few bad apples and they could hide them in the barrel. But if that era ever existed, it is long, long past. By embracing morally broken, predatory men and women (let’s not forget people like the Irish nuns who were throwing “sin babies” down a well until just a few decades ago) they sent the signal to predators that this was a place where they would be protected from retribution. Predators are, surprise, good at manipulation and predation, and so eventually they themselves assumed the robes of power from those that were merely compromisers. The few bad apples multiplied, and perhaps more important, they rose to the top.
The Republican Party as a whole, and Alabama in particular, are sending a loud and clear message that molesters and other predators will be protected. All they need to do is become a sterling “example” of a conservative or a Christian. The price they pay will be harsh and painful.
@MarkedMan:
That’s the thing…I don’t think it will be. There are enough people who are willing to compromise any minimal principles they may have had…like Bunge and JKB and Guarneri, etc…that there won’t be a price to pay. This is the new normal. This is who we are now. As I said, we are a Banana Republic and there is no going back. Best to adapt and learn to thrive in the mud with the rest of the scum.
Trump gave his full support to Moore on Twitter this morning.
@Daryl’s other brother Darryl: The price they pay refers more to the institution than the individual. As the Catholic Church has discovered, given today’s media rich environment, the easy search-ability of electronic documents and press reports, and the incessant clamor for gotcha stories, these charges keep coming. Who today thinks the Church has any moral authority? I went to Catholic schools for twelve years and I can vouch for the fact that when, say, the order of brothers that ran my high school gets a single new initiate it is big news in the newsletters. There are any number of reasons for this, but a not insignificant one is that when a priest or brother walks into a room the immediate reaction in all those present is “I wonder if…” Who wants to join the religious life? The pederasts still do.
And so it will be with the Republicans. By so publicly defending their predators they are creating a future where decent people won’t want to be associated with the party, and only the corrupt will champion it. This goes even more strongly for the state of Alabama. Thinking about putting in a major new facility there? Their Senator is a child molester and the people of the state voted for him. Their governor has stated that she believes he is a molester but will still vote for him. Will you really be able to get someone with children to move to Alabama? Knowing that their citizens will look the other way and blame the victim as long as the predator says Jeebus ten times a day?
Alabamians may as well elect Moore now. Just by making this a close election, just by so many civil leaders rallying around the molester, the citizens of that state have revealed themselves as someone willing to sacrifice your children and theirs. As I’ve said before, I don’t judge people on what they abhor, but on what they will not tolerate.
Other accuser, Leigh Corfman, has long history of making false sexual allegations according to her neighbors on Facebook. #RoyMoore pic.twitter.com/LvScS2z2So
11:29 PM – Nov 9, 2017
In 2007, LEIGH CORFMAN’S HAS HISTORY OF MAKING FALSE SEXUAL ALLEGATIONS AGAINST PASTORS, but judge would not hear it.
On March 10th, 2017, Garner Polston, the son of Roy Moore accuser Leigh Corfman, took to Facebook to write “Jeff Sessions can suck a big one.” A friend wrote back “He probably already has,” to which Polston replied “Lol probably so.”:
Son of Roy Moore’s Accuser is Anarchistic Occultist
11/12/2017
To me, the most intriguing aspect of the accusations brought against Roy Moore has been the extent to which Leigh Corfman’s history has been scrubbed from the web. I’m usually pretty good at finding things online, so the near absence of information on Ms. Corfman was somewhat surprising. However, in the process of searching for information about Ms. Corfman, I noticed that AL.com was using her son, Garner Polston, as a character witness to prop up Ms. Corfman’s claims. So I pulled up Garner’s facebook profile and twitter page to see how reliable he was as a character witness, and this is what I found:
1. Politically, Garner is an anarchist sharing posts by both Anonymous and Anarchy
Check out the drug arrest for her son.
As a parent, I realize that my son’s character is a direct reflection on my own testimony, and as a historian, I know that the expression “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” is true far more often than not. So when I discovered that Ms. Corfman’s son is an anarchistic atheist who dabbles in the occult and hates Christianity, that pretty much convinced me that Ms. Corfman’s claims are false. Now, I realize that Garner is his own man who must answer for his own faults and that Ms. Corfman may still be a woman of good character in spite of how her son turned out, but in the absence of any other evidence of Ms. Corfman’s character, her son’s history weighs very heavily against her.
@kjones:
To quote you: “In 2007, LEIGH CORFMAN’S HAS HISTORY OF MAKING FALSE SEXUAL ALLEGATIONS AGAINST PASTORS, but judge would not hear it.”
You do realize, I hope, that the sentence above makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
@MarkedMan:
I get what you are saying. I just think you are giving the American people too much credit. Guys like Bunge are here everyday supporting these scumbags, blindly. That’s just not gonna change.
@kjones:
Meanwhile Trump admits to serial sexual assault and openly supports white-supremacists…but you think all of his accusers are liars.
Interesting logical system you use.
@Daryl’s other brother Darryl: In TV-land people are revealed for what they really are and the entire community turns away from them. In real life, a not insignificant percentage just doubles down. The problem for the a Repub congress-critter is that they need roughly 50% support just to keep their job. The Trump-state Republicans should be fine, but the party as a whole may end up like the California Repubs – no longer electorally viable and so attractive only to an ever more extreme fringe.
@kjones: You are scum. Go find a hole and die in it.
@MarkedMan:
the party as a whole may end up like the California Repubs – no longer electorally viable and so attractive only to an ever more extreme fringe.
And yet you still have Dana Rohrbacher and Darrel Issa…two of the scummiest of the scum.
The Tea-Baggers roared onto the scene complaining about the debt. Now they just voted to explode the debt. When you are that willing to compromise your “principled” stand…then nothing will bother you.
No…the damage to the Republic is done, and there is no going back. We now all live in Trumpistan. It’s only a matter of waiting for the downward spiral to come to an abrupt, and teminal, halt.
It’s only a matter of time before they don’t just accept Moore despite his dalliances, but that they accept Moore *because* of his dalliances and mock libtards as being so out of touch with real life and so perverted that they wouldn’t touch an underaged girl.
The longer this sad and sorry campaign goes on, the more the Moore supporters double down and convince themselves that it’s what any heterosexual, red-blooded American would have done.
And it’s all the liberals’ fault. They ruined women with those equal rights, and that sexual revolution and birth control. Why, if you want a woman who can’t enter into legally binding contracts without her father’s consent, you have to go for the 14 year olds now!
@Gustopher:
I think they’ve convinced themselves that perving after 14-year-olds is what any normal red-blooded fundamentalist would do, and does do, as a matter of course. How else ya gonna get a pure woman who will bow unquestioningly to your will and produce litters of children?
@kjones: You’re wacky, and not in a good way…
But this… this reminds me of something:
I’ve long believed that a good startup idea would be a service that just generates boring, innocuous content about a person, so they don’t appear to be one of those suspicious crazy people that still believes in privacy. A twitter feed and a Facebook account with a few photos of food, checking at random restaurants near them, and maybe a few random posts like “so excited, can hardly wait until next Thursday!” with no mention of what next Thursday is. Artificial excitement around a local sports team.
It’s genuinely weird when someone doesn’t have a social profile online these days, and this would cover that. It would also serve to drown out any actual information on you.
@Daryl’s other brother Darryl:
I’m a straight white male who makes a pretty good living. I’ll likely be fine, here in Trumpistan.
But I worry for women (and now young girls), LGBT’s, anyone who’s skin color isn’t lily white, and the poor, the sick, and the elderly.
They are all fvcked now.
Tomorrow the SCOTUS will hear the Masterpiece Cake Case. Gorsuch will rule for the plaintiff and the real erosion of civil rights will begin apace.
@Daryl’s other brother Darryl:
Maybe. I suppose it depends on what, exactly, you’re predicting here. Me, I worry about one of two outcomes – a new gilded age lead or a low-intensity civil war.
The good news is that I think the GOP is split on which of those they are trying to usher in. The establishment seems to be pushing for a new gilded age with a pretty clear separation between an investor/capitalist class and a contingent labor class. I think the infowars/Breitbart crowd honestly wants to see massive civil conflict, or at least, wants the kind of militarized, ethnically homogeneous state that would require a massive civil conflict.
My guess is we’ll split the difference – a new gilded age in the coastal cities, a return to ‘Redemption’ style political violence in the South/Appalachia/rural Midwest, and some unpleasant mix of the two for the rest of the country.
@Gustopher:
Oh…so you’re saying I probably shouldn’t wear my anti-facial recognition makeup in public anymore?
@CET:
Why, exactly, would it require a massive civil conflict?
The courts are being packed as we speak. Politicians from both sides are supine. Trump will likely be pinned with obstruction of justice…and there will be zero consequences. No one has the balls to stand up. Who is going to lead a massive civil conflict? Chuck Schumer? Laughable.
Another example…take this new tax bill. It will almost automatically decrease home values in Blue States by some 20%…and no one is making a peep.
No…Trumpism is transforming this country for the worse…and everyone is just accepting it as the new normal.
@Daryl’s other brother Darryl:
You really think Kennedy, having shepherded same-sex marriage through, is going to hesitate to back same-sex wedding cakes?
@mcain6925:
Kennedy is also an advocate of religious rights (the right to jam your religion down the throats of others) and freedom of expression…so his vote is not anywhere near a lock.
@kjones:
You’re a liar defending a child molester.
@CET: If you are a reader of science fiction you may already know that William Gibson has been remarkably prescient on this. If you haven’t read him try The Bridge Trilogy and The Peripheral.
@Gustopher: Companies like that exist, but mostly for people who have had their reputations damaged, particularly when content posted on social media took off. Legitimate reputation repair businesses help these people to basically load up on posting boring or inoffensive content, the result of which is that the overall balance of the digital trail starts to shift. (These are completely different from the hucksters who offer to delete content–there are a lot of sketchy “reputation repair” companies out there.) The legit ones basically know essentially how Google works and get results by figuring out how to improve search results. Sort of hyper-personalized SEO. Could work for people before something happens too I guess, but I think search tends to prioritize recent content, IIRC.
Back to the topic at hand, I’m aghast at this level of caving. There are no moral principles left in the GOP if they are willing to look the other way on Roy Moore.
There should be a new game show for Alabamans called “how low can you go”.
OK, lets welcome from Mobile, contestant A. Heres your question: a Democrat is running against a GOP guy who just killed your dog. Who do you vote for?
A: Which dog did he kill? If it was Rusty, I still vote against the Dem.
Ok, Contestant A, how about if the guy raped your daughter and then killed your dog?
A: Well now, what do you mean by rape? Did he just cop a feel? Masturbate? And again, which daughter was it? Delores? Hmmmm, er….I guess I still have to vote against the Dem.
OK Contestant A, let’s say the Republican guy killed your whole family, burned your house down and killed all your dogs?
A: Now, is he against abortion and supports the 2nd Amendment? He does? Well, now, I still gots to vote against the Dem.
Ok Constestant A, lets say the republican killed all your family, burned down your house, killed all your dogs but believes we shouldn’t repeal Obamacare?
A: What??? He supports Obamacare? No way can I vote for that communist!!!!
And that’s the way it is…..America, Dec. 4, 2017
@Daryl’s other brother Darryl:
I guess that depends on what you’re worried about. I’m less concerned with Trump himself and the trivia of the culture wars than with the moves an emboldened alt-right makes after he’s old news. If Moore is still a competitive candidate just because he can say the correct empty pieties, I assume the Klan (and their more modern counterparts) will start grooming candidates in sympathetic states. It doesn’t take much of a stretch to imagine police or militia beatings of ‘fake voters’ outside minority polling places in the south become a regular thing, with maybe the occasional assassination of political dissidents (‘terrorists’) for good measure. The Democratic party might take that lying down, but I’d expect a more kinetic response from the communities affected.
But, if you’re mostly just worried about decreasing property values in NY and CA (which, frankly, I’d welcome) and LGBT couples having to read google reviews to find sympathetic wedding photographers (the horror!)….yea, that’s going to happen and it won’t be a big deal.
@Mr. Prosser:
Thanks for the reference! I haven’t read any Gibson in a while, I’ll have to give that a look.
If you read history, it’s worth checking out ‘The Impending Crisis: America Before the Civil War, 1848-1861’ and Fraser’s ‘Blood of Spain.’ I thought both had useful things to say about the current situation and some of the less desirable possible outcomes.
Indeed…I mean, it was no big deal that blacks had to sit in the back of the bus…at least they got to ride on the bus…it was no big deal that those who ran food counters in department stores refused to serve blacks…they could have taken their business elsewhere…perhaps we should extend this thing where people don’t have to serve certain people because of their sexual orientation…if someone doesn’t want to provide a service for a Jew or a Hispanic or even some poor white yokel, why should he have to? What could all of that possibly hurt, apart from some fool’s feelings…
@the Q: This was the first clever thing you’ve written in quite a while–maybe ever. Thanks for the laugh.
Thank you Just ‘nutha…now let me go back to excoriating the neolib DINO boomers lol,
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