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The Real Problem with the Judge Moore Situation
Just as a thought experiment, let’s say that all those very belated accusers of Judge Roy Moore in Alabama are telling the truth. Okay. In this world (which may or may not be Actual Reality, considering we are in the middle of a witch hunt situation) we now have a super-creepy and sleazy guy as our Republican Senate nominee.
Whose fault is it? Trump reluctantly backed Strange, the establishment guy, so it’s sure not his fault. The GOP and other contributors spent between $15 and $30 million dollars on Strange, a cost of as much as nearly $140 per vote he got. Those are some darned high costs.
But wait. What was all that cash spent on?
Where was the oppo research that should have turned up at least something shady here on Moore? How about Republican candidate vetting? Why do all these women suddenly appear about a month prior to the December 12 special election? And how is it that from a count of zero sex allegations over a 40-year legal and political career, Moore had four appear in the same Washington Post story? All uncoordinated? None familiar with one another? Seems mighty coincidental to me.
I can only see three possibilities here.
First, that our GOP leaders are utterly and hopelessly incompetent. If the WaPo can turn up four different women at once, why didn’t Republican candidate and oppositional research during the primary turn up even one? If it was so well-known in the Gadsden area that Moore was a creeper or at least an ephebophile, how is it that Luther Strange and other Republicans remained blissfully unaware of it? And how can we voters trust such pathetic information mastery in our leadership?
Second, that the Democrats are making the whole thing up. The WaPo is heavily in the tank for (D)oug Jones, who is a pretty weak candidate with little funding (the DNC sure can’t afford to fund him) and no political experience to speak of. Now, I’m not saying this is happening, but politicians have always found it to be cheaper to buy mud for the other candidate than buying goodwill from the public, especially when their party essentially owns the press. It seems most Alabama voters have been leaning toward this possibility.
The third possibility is the one that scares me to death. It is possible the GOP knew all this stuff about Moore but sat on it because they were overconfident that Strange would be the candidate. Even with Strange’s not-entirely-unpredictable loss, they knew they could get a do-over with this “fresh” information. In other words, they had worked out a strategy in which even if their establishment candidate failed, they could destroy Moore, declare him to be not a Republican, and force an entirely new election while keeping Strange, a McConnell loyalist, in his temporary Senate seat.
If I’m correct and the third possibility is the truth, then the GOP is actively disenfranchising its own voters in Alabama. Far from doing their job and enacting the policies of their constituents, they are working against them — and working to keep the swamp swampy.
Is it any wonder that Republicans are rebelling against their would-be masters?
Published in Elections
Jamie,
Excellent thought experiment. I think all three of the possibilities are in play. It’s a shame that adults of supposed wit and sagacity won’t at least consider the possibility of all three scenarios.
Regards,
Jim
Their oppo research goes back to the person’s childhood. How far back does ours go? Do we really do any oppo research? This is asymmetrical warfare, and we are losing.
Ding, ding, ding!! We have a winner! Hell, the GOP probably went out to pay these women to make these accusations. The GOP leadership in DC hates the voters. McConnell, McCain, etc hate the voters. If they can’t fool them into voting DC GOP, then they will disenfranchise them. These people are scumbags.
Agree with Jim.
Great analysis Jamie
I agree with both statements. We need a convention of states pronto. DC is not going to give up their power, so we the people are going to have to take it from them. A pox on both their houses.
Perhaps Trump knew and that was why he went along with the establishment candidate. I wouldn’t find it odd that the Republicans did not make a public issue of this in the primaries. He is a long time figure, and it seems now it was pretty common knowledge; why bring it up if it is old news?. The sexual harrasement floodgates have been opened. Don’t know why, but Moore is caught up in it.
Teachers know who the bad teachers are. Nurses know who the bad nurses/docs are, etc. If you asked a teacher about another teacher, they won’t tell you they are an idiot; a kind of professional courtesy. The last thing you want to hear from a nurse is that the doctor that is just about to operate on you is incompetent and has lots of post op problems.
I have to go with #1, simply due to Occam’s Razor and the (loose) paraphrase of something Krauthammer likes to say: “Never attribute to sinister motives what can be explained by simple incompetence.”
#2 seems unlikely to me given what appears to be very credible evidence and the fact that multiple people who do not know each other all made up the same (completely false) story (I know, conspiracy theorists, that’s what THEY want you to think!).
#3 would require too many moving parts and forethought (seem #1 above).
You know who the real people to blame are. The voters. They chose the creep. Always it is some one else’s fault. Always there are plots with in plots with in conspiracies. How about no one looked into it because they thought Moore looked batty enough to begin with that the voters should have known better. Maybe the voters need to be disenfranchised more. Especially in primaries. So long as the party lets the careless, stupid, ignorant, and uninterested pick its candidate you should expect more lowest common denominator candidates to take the field. The people get to chose who holds the office that is more than good enough.
Just think how many state resources are wasted on paying for party primaries every other year? Why? There is not public interest that is served by how and who any party nominates candidates for public office. All costs should by right be paid for by the party in question. Not the taxpayer in general. The tax payers pay for the election. Everything up to that is arbitrary.
Run the thought experiment to completion. With a thought experiment one shouldn’t just contemplate what did happen, one should also provide suggestions for what should have happened and then contemplate the consequences of that alternate sequence of events.
Is the argument that the RNC should have disqualified Moore from running if they knew all this in advance? Is the argument that the RNC should have released this information to the public before the nomination? How would either of those scenarios satisfy the voters that the RNC has their backs?
If you don’t want the RNC putting its finger on the scales of a nomination vote, then that means the RNC has to keep quiet even when they know a candidate is a miscreant.
If the RNC knew all this stuff about Moore it put them in a serious no-win situation. Disqualifying him for accusations that had never been tested in court would have enraged Republican voters. Furthermore, if the RNC merely knew that there were rumours about Moore, then they really had no cause to disqualify him and, therefore, campaigning against him on other grounds was their only real option.
The responsibility for blowing the whistle on a candidate falls on their opponent. Is the argument that the
Doug JonesLuther Strange camp knew all this about Moore but chose to sit on it? While not outside the realm of possibility, I personally doubt that’s what happened. I’m more inclined to believe that the Strange camp had heard rumours but decided the evidence wasn’t solid enough for them to use against Moore.i.e. Like a good Republican,
JonesStrange was following Reagan’s 11th Commandment.As to the question of why the WaPo was able to get these four women on the record all at the same time, I find it very easy to believe that the Democrats had the dirt on Moore in their back pocket and were waiting for the right moment to use it. It would make little sense for them to release the hounds before the nomination.
Val,
Now at least you are being honest. I recommend that you immediately start a movement to exclude the State of Alabama from the Union. The Alabamans might not like it but we masters of the universe know best.
Regards,
Jim
Wow, So much for the people are sovereign. Guess you would prefer the old smoke filled room, where our betters choose are leaders for us.
He’s a sleaze, but he’s our sleaze. Any thirty year old male that has been excluded from a mall because he’s trolling for high school girls might be an indicator of predatory behavior. All the criticisms of Teddy Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and Anthony Wiener from the Right sound rather hollow now.
Draining the swamp is a worthy goal, but Mr. Moore is the swamp.
Sorry, mea culpa, I got Jones and Strange mixed up. I meant Strange, not Jones.
I have LOTS of questions regarding Roy Moore. Much of this happened when he was in his 30’s , he’s what? 70-something now? How has he behaved in this area in the past 40 or so years?
I really hate these media storms, where we never get the chance to take a breath and process the information that we are given. I know this is politics and stinks of a strategy. From what I heard when Moore was behaving in this manner he was a Democrat. When did he change parties? Was he a single man when this was all happening? Maybe getting married changed him? Was he a Christian then? Has he repented? I’d like more information and context, but I don’t live in Alabama so I guess what I think doesn’t really matter since I won’t be voting for him anyway. But I would like to know more about how the man has been in the past 40 years.
Indeed, the question of his fitness for government should be left to the voters of Alabama. Really, the only national component to the story is whether or not the RNC and other national GOP institutions are enablers for Moore. This helps explain why so many national Republicans have distanced themselves from Moore, and why even President Trump endorsed Strange.
The old “I may not like how they do things in [enter state here] but it’s their right to do things that way” talking point would be politically disastrous (assuming the allegations are true) for the federal GOP.
If Luther Strange had won, the same people asking why the GOP let this happen would be accusing The Establishment ™ of stealing the election.
Because The Establishment ™ is always wrong, and it is always The Establishment’s ™ fault.
I never liked Moore. I’ve never been on his side and he’s never been on mine. However, it’s Alabama’s choice. The Alabama GOP picked this man. They own the choice. They aren’t asking for my money or my support, and a damn good thing they aren’t.
But: If he goes under, look for the usual suspects on Ricochet to cry betrayal and whine about how the LIVs and the RINOs and the cucks and the blah, blah, blah sabotaged his campaign by not giving money. Don’t look for anyone supporting Moore to admit they made a mistake.
Two words: Gloria Allred.
This sort of thing is totally her M.O. Whenever a Republican/conservative is accused of sexual misconduct, you can be assured that Allred will be on the dais (and isn’t it odd that she’s nowhere to be seen when folk like Bill Clinton or Anthony Weiner are accused of such things?).
It makes perfect strategic sense to gather up accusers and wait for just the right moment to unleash them all at once. It’s what Allred does.
One could be forgiven for wagering that Allred also had an alternate group of accusers all lined up in case Luther Strange had won the nomination. It’s kinda sad, really. They won’t be getting their fifteen minutes now. If only Alabama voters had gone the other way!
Blaming “the Republican establishment” in this case is just plain silly. Everything to do with this “scandal” is driven by the Democrats (and Moore himself, assuming the accusations are true).
If one truly believes in bottom-up grassroots politics, one shouldn’t be looking to Washington for campaign cash anyways.
One more possibility – that the eRepublicans are making the whole thing up.
Any and all may be true. But if this is, as it appears to me, a manufactured scandal timed to doom the candidate, it may well be Republicans behind it, not Democrats.
We already know they would rather lose the seat than see it go to yet another ‘outsider’.
Who do people on this thread think oppo research is so perfect and exacting? You can’t “oppo” what isn’t known. I keep reading “why are these women coming forward now?” They didn’t come forward. Someone found them and dragged them out.
I don’t know. It is really possible that the GOP is bad at research. I don’t think they would sit on it if they had it. That is not really McConnell’s style. If he has info he uses it .
I think McConnell has some level of responsibility for this out come. I think he was confident that Strange would beat Moore. That is why he helped set this up as the match up. McConnell’s PAC spent a bunch of money to push Mo Brooks (of the Freedom Caucus) out of the race. He helped to choose Moore as the opponent for his preferred choice of Strange, thinking Moore was to weird to win.
Not just “someone”. Someone very specific, with a very long history of doing exactly this sort of thing.
What surprises me most is that anybody’s ever surprised. Allred literally wrote the book on how to maximize the effect of sexual misconduct accusations.
Citation for what, my opinions or the statement that we all know Republicans would rather lose the seat than win with Moore?
Absolutely. Repeal the 17th Amendment as an hors d’oeuvre
Moore may be a sleaze, but the criticisms of Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and Anthony Weiner run a little deeper and more serious than just being a creep. Plus the allegations there had more support and more contemporaneous support than forty year old he said she said.
Let’s not obliterate distinctions, including legal vs illegal. Let’s not discard due process even in the court of public opinion let alone actual court. I honestly don’t know the truth of this situation. I don’t know whether I believe the accounts or not, but even if I did, though, that’s not enough at this point. What would it be based on? Some emotional reaction? What are the facts? The fact is we don’t have facts. Isn’t that a giant moral hazard – for us to allow he said she said to automatically ruin someone’s life? Because that kind of things happen even to ordinary people without anything so grand as a senate seat on the line.
I can agree with that but as long as it is in place the people decide.
You can make lefties blood boil by saying Moore is still better than a Dem. When they accuse you of supporting pedophilia, just tell them we fought the moral war and lost when Clinton was President so now we are just using the bar they set. I have gotten nameless trolls to ban me doing that.
No matter what happens, Dems will only hold that seat for a couple of years since the winner is finishing Sessions’ term. I imagine the anger in AL will be high enough to field a candidate early and sweep him in with a landslide.
Save your fight for the House seats. If the Dems take the House, they will impeach Trump even if the Senate refuses to remove him. I don’t trust the Republicans not to go along in the Senate.
The biggest threat we face is losing the House, because Dems would then control committees and hearings. Gowdy and Nunes would lose their power and the guilty will escape once again.
We need to do oppo on Dems….and have to look no further than Dems in Congress.