In a political sea overflowing with often phony red herrings, the sexual abuse accusations against Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore could actually make his party look less unacceptable than it already is.
With mounting and seemingly credible accusations of offenses worthy of lengthy prison terms were they not past statutes of limitations, accusations that are rightly leading to widespread calls for Moore’s ouster from the ticket, even the GOP’s congressional hard right guard has pulled its support from the former judge and prosecutor. Most notable are the thumbs-downs from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan.
The problem is, before the onslaught of public outrage over the accusations, GOP leadership was all in for Moore and his draconian politics.
Let’s be sure we have this straight, GOP: An openly gun-toting, anti-immigration homophobe who has twice been removed from the bench, thinks certain people should face legal consequences for their sexual preferences, and avidly touted the birther nonsense against President Barrack Obama is just fine, but a child molester will not be tolerated. At least it’s good to see any faint glimmer of human decency or morality from the sycophantic Trump wing of the Republican Party.
That is, if even the cries of outrage against Moore’s alleged sexual misconduct can be regarded as genuine coming from a party that has shown so much indifference to decency, humanity and simple truth in the past two years that it’s becoming alarmingly easy to forget its willful defiance of the constitution that every office-holder has sworn to uphold and defend.
Are GOP leaders really suddenly so reviled by one of their own, or nothing more than acutely aware of the irreparable political harm it would do them to support a child molester?
What plays in their heads when they think of Moore? Herky-jerky black-and-white visions of his alleged victims’ confused, tearful young faces, or near-future pictures of the inexorable plummeting of their own approval ratings and headlines of their re-election defeats if they dare take the side of a would-be colleague credibly accused of something horrendous? Women saddled with horrible memories they can never outgrow, or scenes of celebrations over partisan victories by the moral heroes who showed America that they weren’t partisan at all?
In all fairness, we can’t presume to know their minds, but we do have enough indicators of their character to ask ourselves those hard questions that they may never be asked.
If they stand ready to take health care from millions of Americans, defy the Constitution by ignoring the previous president’s nominee for Supreme Court, continue to support a gun lobby in the face of daily slaughter, and support a president who pumps an almost unfathomable daily diatribe of lies, insults and childish pipe-dream bilge out of the White House, what’s the difference if they cozy up to a U.S. Senate candidate who thinks homosexuality should be a crime, President Obama wasn’t really an American, and the 9/11 attacks were punishment from God for the big city’s wickedness?
How can a likely but unproven past as a child molester make Moore much more unfit for office than he already is? In the meantime, the GOP leadership, including McConnell and Ryan, may be able to slip a dubious tax reform bill past America’s diverted noses, buy a little distraction from the Russia investigation, and hang on to a Senate seat by, as McConnell has suggested, replacing Moore with Jeff Sessions on the ticket.
The stench of a tainted red herring, after all, is bound to distract more noses.