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If anybody thinks Roy Moore is going to step aside, even if he did what was alleged, they've not been paying attention to his career and they've not been paying attention to this political environment.
— Brian W. Schoeneman (@BrianSchoeneman) November 9, 2017
I know: How deep is down? Per Politico, they’re stuck either way:
GOP leaders desperately want Roy Moore off the ballot. But they have neither the legal nor the political leverage to force the defiant ex-judge out of the race…
But some absentee ballots have already been sent to voters, which appears to make it impossible to install someone in place of Moore on the Republican Party line…
Apart from the legal considerations, Moore owes no loyalty to Republican leaders in Washington, who backed another candidate in the primary and spent millions of super PAC dollars to defeat him while Moore won the nomination on an anti-McConnell platform.…
Though Republicans have begun looking into options to replace Moore, Alabama law requires the candidate roster on the ballot to be set 74 days before an election. If Moore does withdraw, however, any votes cast for him would not count.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and other Republicans have suggested that GOP Sen. Luther Strange, the appointed senator who lost to Moore in the special primary, could put himself forward as a write-in candidate. State law bars a candidate who lost in a primary from appearing on the general election ballot as an independent, but it does not appear to forbid a write-in campaign…
Earlier in the day, White House legislative affairs director Marc Short said on CNN that “there’s no path forward” for Moore if the allegations were true… Short raised the possibility of legal action to get a new candidate in the race if Moore drops out.
“Remember that the president supported Luther Strange in that primary,” Short said. “I think what’ll happen is that there’s options for write-in candidates and there’s also options for lawsuits I think will arise about [the] path forward. But I don’t think we should begin going down that pathway until we give Roy Moore the chance to defend himself and defend his character.”…
The RNC, which hammered Dems for their Weinstein money, has a joint fundraising agreement with Moore. They did not respond to a question of whether they’ll end it https://t.co/eKx9Kt4Jw2
— Sam Stein (@samstein) November 9, 2017
Mr. Pierce. at Esquire:
… I may be entirely too cynical but I think, if Moore has the sand for it, he will follow this up with an explanation of how he had sinned, as all fallen humans do, but that Jesus has forgiven him and washed him in the blood of the Lamb, and now it’s time for him to bring his redeemed hindquarters to godless Washington to show the heathen the path to glory that he’s been blessed to follow. That might work…
As a devout Cynic my own self, I wonder: When exactly did Moore turn into a rabid public Bible-humper? Just as some ex-drunks become raging teetotalers, convinced that no human could possibly enjoy the occasional alcoholic beverage without sinking into helpless addiction, there are more than a few “reformed” sexual criminals who re-focus their addicts’ energies on their particular version of Holy Writ. Mere speculation — barring further reports of his behavior during the last thirty years — but ‘Judge Roy’ would not be the first aging predator who seized upon the Bible as the best defense for him, and by his restrictive logic everyone else, against the temptations of the flesh.
Friday Morning Open Thread: How Low Can the GOP Go?Post + Comments (328)