Caleb Howe: The Truths and Fictions of the Roy Moore Debacle

Source: RedState | November 14, 2017 | Caleb Howe

That is the correct word to describe the Roy Moore campaign, the accusations against him, how those accusations are being dealt with, the defenses against them, and the way the right is handling all things. Debacle.

One hardly knows where to begin. There are so many takes out there about the situation, and so many parts to the fiasco around it, that it can be daunting trying to make any sense of it. But one thing we cover a lot at RedState is GOP fault lines, and they are stark here.

Let me say up front that, despite much protestation to the contrary about who was endorsed by whom, the defense of Roy Moore has clearly and obviously been mounted by the Trumpists, whereas the people who sought to abandon or oust Moore are clearly of the non-Trump variety, be it the GOPe, “NeverTrump”, or simply individuals objecting on moral grounds or otherwise.

This is simply a fact. Trumpism is defending Moore. Hannity, Gateway Pundit, the list goes on. Whether Moore was theirs to start, he is theirs now. Dinesh D’Souza, a major voice in Trumpism, said it himself on Twitter. “I was lukewarm on Roy Moore,” he wrote, “until the last-minute smear. Now we must elect him to show that the @washingtonpost sleaze attack failed.”

And that characterization, that this is a calculated but flimsy political attack to take Moore out, is the line that Roy Moore is standing on. It is what nearly every defender is focused on. And nearly every defender is a Trumpist. That’s simply a fact.

Here are some other facts.

Nothing has been proven regarding Roy Moore’s alleged misconduct. No charges have been filed. There is no court case to refer to. Moore categorically denies the allegations.

Two women, not five, have alleged criminal conduct. The other women who were quoted regarding relationships with Moore while they were teenagers alleged no criminal acts, but only inappropriate behavior or interest in teenage girls by a man in his thirties.

The alleged misconduct and Moore’s purported interest in young girls are all to have taken place about four decades ago. Nothing has been alleged in this story to have occurred in the meantime. During that period of time, no similar allegations were made against Roy Moore, or at least none have yet been uncovered and reported. It is true that he ran many campaigns and was a controversial figure for a good deal of that time, without any such incidents or allegations thereof coming to light.

Roy Moore was interviewed by Sean Hannity on Friday. Hannity did not say that relationships with young girls and older men are fine as long as there is consent. However, Roy Moore came very close to saying so in his responses to Hannity.

The reports that one of the women in the original Washington Post article, Deborah Wesson Gibson, was a democrat plant rely on incorrect information. Gibson is a sign language interpreter and, as Sarah Rumpf lays out in detail here, she was working for the deaf community when translating for Hillary Clinton, not volunteering to aid the campaign.

Those are facts.

So the big issue on the Trump side is that this is a wild, unfounded accusation, concocted by the hated MSM, and is unfair and scary. You’ll have to suspend your dismay that this perceived problem of fairness is given far more weight and seriousness on the right than the notion of actually molesting a teenage girl, for the moment, so we can address that characterization.

The question raised is whether this is an incredibly unfair and dangerous precedent regarding how guilt is perceived and how careers are handled.

On Twitter last week, someone tweeted to me “pardon me, but I thought conservatives opposed crucifying someone over flimsy accusations.” That sort of encapsulates the outrage. You could see it all over social media all weekend. The words “due process” have seen more use than at any point in the last few years, and were especially being shared by people who last year couldn’t stop tweeting “#LockHerUp” over Hillary’s unadjudicated sins.

One wonders first why it would be assumed that conservatives, generally speaking, share an opposition to “crucifying’ someone over accusations. This is not a politically partisan point of view. I don’t want to crucify anyone over fake accusations, but it’s not because I’m a Republican.

This is part of a broad classification problem that the so-called right in America suffers from and is subject to. The ideas that unite the Trump point of view are not specifically or inherently political. Like with the left, they are a sort of checklist of things one is supposed to think. One is to think the media is bad. One is to think that everyone is out to get you if you’re on the nominal right. One is to think political correctness is a terrific scourge and among the greatest dangers facing the Republic.

There are so many more items on the checklist. And that checklist is part of the problem the GOP is facing in the Moore situation. I’ll get back to that in a moment. The question first is whether this is an unfair witch hunt.

Not just an unfair witch hunt, a flimsy one that can easily be repeated against anyone else. You see, part of the general sentiment is that this flimsy accusation can easily be repeated at any time. Indeed, many on social media and blogs assert that this is something that happens routinely, or “every” time a Republican runs for office.

That is demonstrably not the case, but it’s hard to convince a tribe of voters for whom political history began when Donald Trump descended the heavenly escalator.

At every level of Trumpism, this is the first line of defense.

……

Even here at RedState, a number of people in the comments section have suggested that the charge against Moore could happen to “any of us” and that there would be no way to defend against it.

This objection completely fails to take into account the difference between an unfounded, unsubstantiated claim that someone might hurl at you on the internet, and the detailed, sourced reporting in the initial WaPo story. We’ve been over it here at RedState already. Dozens of people were interviewed. A woman made a credible claim about her past. Since that time, a second woman has made a credible claim.

Even if you don’t believe them, you can’t treat that as being exactly the same as just some rando tossing out insults in an Instagram post.

I mean, look, unsubstantiated and stupid allegations were brought against Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, and Marco Rubio during the 2016 primary (mostly by the Trump wing) yet they all survived them. Those foolish false claims didn’t become “known facts.” My question would be, if it’s so easy, if this is so flimsy, if it can happen to any of the Senators now distancing themselves from Moore … why hasn’t it? Why hasn’t “the media” taken out Ted Cruz in this way? Or Mike Lee? If it’s so easy, why not?

The answer, of course, is that it is not just some simple anonymous tweet. Besides, a simple anonymous and unsubstantiated claim WAS Tweeted during this Moore debacle, and the Moore defenders were all over it, repeating it breathlessly far and wide and treating it as credible and Very Serious.

And it is not just a “Bezos blog”. No one on the right has ever denied the MSM bias against Republicans. But everyone on the right, including Steve Bannon and his website, quote and reference and get information from those same MSM outfits. Selectively, of course, in the same way Trump does. But reporting does happen, and the truth, the unalterable truth that is not affected by your agenda or your outrage, is that people on the right rely on outlets like the Washington Post all the time, even thought they have gotten many things wrong and worked against Republicans in the past.

The reason that matters, the reason I bring it up, what it MEANS, is that you can’t simply write it off by saying “Oh it’s the WaPo.” That’s not a good enough reason to dismiss the story, and especially not a story involving the sexual violation of a minor. In fact doing so is despicably callous and sick.

You take this seriously. That’s what you do. Roy Moore was utterly dismissive of the charges, and so are his defenders. That’s inexcusable. Even if you believe he is innocent, you don’t blow it off as “Bezos blog.” There are real people making allegations. We know their names. They aren’t anonymous.

You can’t treat this as nothing, and you can’t just dismiss it as a “hit job.” Doing so is … ugly.

…..

I rely a lot on character assessment. It’s not wholly reliable, of course, as the last year and a half alone stands in testament. But it is important. It’s that sense we have of someone or something that isn’t quite right. The less right they are, the stronger the sense. In the case of Roy Moore, in my view, the sense is strong indeed.

I thought his interview with Hannity was just awful. His answers didn’t indicate in any way that he thought the notion of a man in his thirties romantically pursuing a 17-year old was inappropriate or even unusual. In fact he explicitly left open the possibility that he did, in fact, do that very thing.

His public appearances prior to this left the same bad taste. A man with bad judgment. A man with impulse control issues. Something indefinably unsettling about him.

These things come into play whether you admit or not. We all have a degree of sensing such things. Clearly, we are either not sensing the same things, or some of us are choosing to ignore the instinct for partisan reasons.

But it does matter with regard to the idea of the big smear. This accusation would be far more challenged to find purchase had it been made against, say, Mitt Romney. Or Billy Graham. It wouldn’t be so believable. But it was made against Moore, and so it is.

…..

You see, the truth is, you have to take the whole picture into account. Everyone on the right spends a lot of time worrying about slippery slopes and precedents, but not enough arguing each case on its own merits.

This is not a dangerous dip into trial by public opinion. There is no trial at all. It’s not weaponizing random accusations. These are not random. It’s not a witch hunt. It’s not going to be repeated against other candidates.

The fact is, these are credible accusations. They are not proven, but the are credible. In this case. With this man. With these witnesses.

The consequences of a Moore win would play out across the GOP. And to what end? You may think you are preserving a particular number of votes, but that’s not so if you’re tanking other races. Every Senator will have to answer for Moore now. Already. How much worse will that be if he sits?

And how much worse are we if he sits and then even more comes out? If he turns out to be guilty as sin. What are we, then?

…….

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  • Discussion
  • Consistent #19955

    Consistent #19963

    Steve Deace: My Roy Moore Endorsement

    I am being asked legit questions about where my endorsement stands. Since I believe in as much transparency as possible whenever I can, I want to explain why I have not pulled my endorsement yet. I want to share my heart, so I apologize in advance for the length of this post.

    The issues I raised yesterday, and in fiery fashion, about the hypocrisy here are a separate issue from this post. And they will remain once the matter with Moore is settled. At some point we’re going to have to decide we’re going to fight for our people. Now, maybe this isn’t the right time, and I’ll get to that in a moment. However, one can think Moore is guilty or innocent, but see the total and complete fake horse puckey Kabuki Theater of the past few days. Make no mistake, anybody we try and get through the swamp/establishment/etc they will try and destroy if they can. My best sources believe it’s the Republicans/McConnell that have been feeding this story all this time — not the Democrats.

    These people hate us more than the Left. They’re why I’m no longer a Republican, not Trump. I just don’t think Trump is the solution, or if he is then the disease is incurable and best to leave the dead to die and/or not play with downed power lines but run away. Frankly, I think the party deserves a cruel death for all the voters like myself its lied to and betrayed for so many years (and continues to). And if I had the power to drop the guillotine on it myself, I’d raise the black flag and do it proudly without the black mask. I’d be proud to claim that kill and call it justice.

    This party is a syndicate that doesn’t deserve us, but I also recognize what many of you do who remain in it realize as well — right now there really isn’t another vehicle to even imperfectly confront the Left other than the GOP.

    However, hatred for the system and its ills and evils does not justify abandoning virtue to confront it. We do not “do evil so that good may come.” Therefore, as much as my flesh is tempted to dig in my heels out of deserved spite for these people, I’m ultimately not accountable to them — but my Maker. So that is not why I haven’t pulled my endorsement.

    Along the same lines, I also don’t support the notion that “Moore is/may be guilty, but we can’t abandon that seat to the Democrats who are worse.” My flesh sympathizes with that notion, too. We know what Doug Jones will do — be a pawn for every bad influence in the culture, while asking us to subsidize them all to boot. Plus, your anger at the clear double-standard that Bob Menendez is on trial and McConnell and company aren’t threatening to have him removed, but they are Moore who hasn’t been convicted of anything, is righteous indignation and justifiable. Yet my conscience returns to what I wrote in the previous paragraph. We cannot “do evil so that good may come” because if Moore is guilty of all the things being alleged here, he has done unrepentant evil by his own comments he continues to vehemently deny.

    At some point, some of us have to be willing to do what we think is right without excuse or disclaimer, even as imperfect as we may be as the vessels for such a stand. Some of us have to be willing to buck the prevailing winds and spirit of the age and say “here I stand, I can do no more. May God have mercy on my soul.” Rise above this time of the Judges in which we live. And that is precisely why I haven’t pulled my endorsement yet.

    Because I’m somewhat of a public figure, and one of the few with any platform of consequence in our movement who considers Moore both a friend and a champion, I know that if I were to pull my endorsement it would matter more than what a bunch of Republican elected officials currently think. Many of whom demanded Trump get out of the race, too, last year and he’s president now.

    Rather, the question of my (and really any) Moore endorsement at this point is a stand-alone question — do you believe he is guilty or innocent? There is no middle ground. Moore himself, as I said from day one when the story broke, has left no middle ground, either.

    I am trying to discern how, after knowing the man for years and watching stand in the gap when others ran, I could’ve missed all of this? The guy hasn’t even removed his mattress tags for decades he’s such a straight arrow. Because if I take the fact I know Moore out of the equation, I find both the Washington Post report, and the woman he came forward yesterday credible (even despite her association with the icky Allred). Now, that doesn’t mean I believe everything, because I don’t know what to believe, but credible enough to merit consideration at the very least.

    And as I said on day one as well, it’s just as possible these women are coming forward for political reasons/timing, as it is they’re doing so because women everywhere have rightfully had enough in various walks of life and are speaking up. And as long as they’re telling the truth, I hope/pray they keep doing so. “Let justice roll down like a river, righteousness like a mighty stream.”

    Still, I’ve been wrong about people before. Heck, I’ve been wrong about me before. I am the man Paul writes about in Romans 7, which is why Romans 8 is my favorite Scripture of them all, because it provides hope for a wretch like me. I am astonished how still, 14 years after God saved me, I can put the flesh on auto-pilot and embrace the darkness. What I’ve learned more in my walk than anything else is why we need to die daily to ourselves, for I daily see the difference between the days I do so and the days I do not.

    Nevertheless, here are the lingering questions I have that if it’s true Moore really is whom he’s being alleged to be, I need to have satisfied before I justify piling on and playing a role in perhaps effectively ending a man’s life and destroying his family.

    A man who served his nation in Vietnam when others, including a recent president and the current one, did everything they could to avoid their duty. A man with no other criminal or mischief record. A man who graduated from West Point, which only accepts and graduates the elite. That’s not to say West Point has a perfect record, but it’s got as good a record as there is in our culture. Heck, at this point I’d trust West Point to vet our young men before most seminaries.

    So given those high stakes, I cannot see how anybody would not grant the leeway to have these questions answered before we deliver the proverbial lethal injection:

    1. I avoided going after the judge for his response once the allegations broke because of our relationship, because I knew I couldn’t be objective. But he actually came to me, called me directly over the weekend, and without me asking vehemently and strongly denied everything right to me. Now, I’m a conservative who’s spent 10 years as a full-time activist in the GOP, so I’ve been lied to more times than I count — and often convincingly — by Republican politicians. If he was lying to me in that conversation, he’s the best one I’ve ever heard. So if he’s this good of a liar, and this much of a creep, shouldn’t there be other things in his life where this level of sociopath showed up? With Bill Clinton we saw systemic immorality, for example, that explained his predatory behavior. Systemic immorality that raged for decades well into his presidency. Not predatory behavior over here, and then perfect southern gentleman over there as with Moore. The narrative is essentially from the time he returned from his tour of duty until he got married, Moore was a sociopath and then it just stopped from that time forward forevermore. So why did it stop then? Who can control such urges for thirty years after acting on them so irresponsibility and wickedly for such a period of time? I have spoken to those who have known Moore longer and far better than me. All of them are standing behind him. I’ve even quizzed them. Cross-examined them. Offered alternative theories I thought were plausible. Nobody, at least so far, is budging. And if you’re a friend of Moore’s you’re not a typical Republican. In fact, you probably distrust to despise the typical Republican, because Moore has been at war with the party for more than a decade. These aren’t “roll Tide evangelicals” as we like to say. These are serious people, and so far none of them have jumped ship. Why?

    2. Why would Moore’s pastor put the credibility of his entire ministry on the line for Moore as he did yesterday? Gallant First Baptist church had less than 100 at last Sunday’s service. Its Facebook page has a whopping 34 likes. This isn’t a church known for grandstanding. Far from it, it’s a small congregation in the South — which means everyone knows almost everything about everybody, and probably shares things they shouldn’t while calling them “prayer requests.”

    Consistent #19964

    3. “Well, Steve,” some of you have said, “all these same things were said and done for Denny Hastert for years before we found out he was a pedophile. He was married to the same woman all these years, too. He was supposedly a decent guy, too.” That is a good point, except we only found out about what Hastert had done decades ago when the Feds were investigating his financial irregularities. And then it came out he was paying out blackmail for his heinous crimes. We’re now being told that the people of Etowah County knew all this time about Moore, so it’s not the same right there. There’s now stories that people aren’t shocked at all because, unlike Hastert, they knew about it. So how is it possible McConnell spent $30 million to win this primary, and yet with all that money couldn’t uncover the sinister “open secret” apparently many in Etowah County knew for decades? When they wanted Moore removed from office, not once but twice, how is it they didn’t uncover that which was an “open secret” in Etowah County? If they had this ultimate kill shot all this time, why didn’t they use it?

    4. Speaking of Etowah County, this is apparently the last place in America you want to raise your daughters if this story is true. For here is how they have punished Moore for knowing all these years he was the local creeper:

    • Two months ago Moore won Etowah County decisively by 14 points, 57-43. What kind of people vote — IN A PRIMARY — for someone they’re now telling the media they knew was a creeper?
    • When Moore was DA of Etowah County, he was investigated by the state bar (and cleared). How could they have not uncovered he was the creeper at the local mall during that very time?
    • In 1994, Moore ran for circuit judge in Etowah County. He received 64% of the overall vote from people who now say they knew he was a creeper. Making him the first Republican since before Reconstruction to win anything there.
    • In the 2000 Alabama GOP primary, only George W. Bush received more votes statewide than Judge Roy Moore. This time nominating the local creeper for Chief Justice of the state.
    • In the 2012 election, Etowah County voted for locally-known creeper Roy Moore for Chief Justice — a second time after he was removed from office the first time around — by 10 points.

    Etowah County pretty much sucks at life, folks. If this is true, this county ought to be ashamed of itself or worse. Give America a public show of repentance, complete with ash and sack cloth, for concealing this predator from us all these years by its own admission. And allowing him to falsely become a hero to people like me, when they knew all along who he really was.

    5. Finally there is the wife, Kayla. I spoke to her at length on Sunday after church. She was defiant, and 110% behind her man. Point blank she asked me why her word doesn’t matter, when she met Moore as a single mom at a Bible study in the South at a time and place it wasn’t easy to be a single mom. He married her, adopted her daughter as his own, and has been her faithful husband (included more children together) for over 30 years ever since. What more can a woman entrust to another man than their own life, and the life of her own daughter?

    There are other questions I have, but these are really the significant ones. There may be troubling answers to these questions I would prefer not to be true, but I will sadly accept them if they are and pull my endorsement and call for justice to be done.

    But until then, I will accept whatever criticism I receive for not doing so at this point. I’m a grown man, making a grown up decision, and I understand others will disagree deeply with the judgment call I’m making here. I don’t begrudge you of that, nor do I condemn those whose conscience has already guided them to walk away. It is a disgusting matter either way. Either Judge Roy Moore has terrible unconfessed sin in his life God has chosen to bring forth now, before he takes a seat in an already amoral body like the U.S. Senate. Or, the devil is orchestrating one of the greatest takedowns we’ve ever witnessed. I see no middle option, nor has the Judge offered one.

    Nevertheless, if it’s true then I have to admit I helped many people believe in a fraud and own that myself. It means I jumped to conclusions to elevate Roy Moore as I did. Therefore, prudence calls for me to not be hasty in making the decision to cut bait, either, when my judgement is clearly in question.

    As a disclaimer, I consulted with neither the Judge nor anyone in the campaign before writing this. My own staff didn’t know I was writing this until now, when I hit publish. I woke up more than an hour before my alarm went off, and felt convicted to share this. Thank you for reading it.

    EVERYDAY #19965

    Mr. Howe is wrong on a couple of points. It’s not just Trump supporters who are taking Moore’s side in this controversy. I’m as Never Trump as anyone can be, but when I see a guy accused without any corroborating evidence or witnesses, I have to cry “FOUL!” And there are other non-Trump supporters who agree with me.

    Another thing: I believe the prevailing theory that, while WaPo and a few other media outlets are running stories to bolster these allegations, someone or something else is behind these sudden accusations. I firmly believe the culprits are the liberal hierarchy of the Republican Party, perhaps in cooperation with the Democrats. The Democrats obviously covet that Alabama senate seat, so they would be more than willing to cooperate in a scheme to hang Moore out to dry.

    The Republicans’ motives might be less clear. Republican big-wigs don’t like Moore. During the primaries, they backed Moore’s opponent, Arthur Strange, a liberal Republican like them. But when the voters picked Moore, the fat cats’ disappointment was obvious. So they began to look for ways to discredit him.

    So why would they not swallow their disappointment and back their candidate chosen by the people? Well, despite their protestations to the contrary, the Republican hierarchy is as liberal as the Democrats. The two parties hate conservatives and anyone else who does not embrace the liberal agenda. Oh, Republicans might say they want to get rid of Obamacare and make all sorts of promises that might indicate they are conservative. But the fact is that deep down, they want to keep Obamacare and perhaps enhance it so that government can exert still more control over our lives. They will not keep any of the other promises they made to the voters because, in reality, they are opposed to the conservative principles contained in those promises. The reality is that we have two parties that both want the same things and those things will not benefit the voters who continue to elect them.

    Roy Moore represents everything the Republican Party of today is fundamentally opposed to. Bad enough the party has Ted Cruz and a few others who are thorns in their sides because they actually want to do what the voters elected them to do. The party can’t stand to have another upstart on their hands. They would rather have another liberal take possession of that Alabama senate seat. And they don’t care from which party that liberal comes.

    Howe may be right. Moore might be a lousy senator. But these allegations and their timing, coupled with the eagerness Republicans have exhibited in distancing themselves from Moore — in fact, calling for his removal from the ballot and threatening to deny him his seat should he win — indicate to me that the party wants to deny Alabama citizens their say in who represents them in the senate. Isn’t Howe uncomfortable knowing that the party might be trying to deny Alabama voters their right to choose? Or does he want both parties to pick our representatives for us?

    • This reply was modified 6 years, 4 months ago by EVERYDAY.
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