Senator Child Molester--Not!

With the election of Roy Moore, we now know that the idea of Republicans upholding some kind of morality is an absolute, fucking lie. Charles Blow:

Republicans have surrendered the moral high ground they thought they held, and have dived face-first into the sewer.

There will be no way to shake the stench of this homophobic, Islamophobic, sexist, racist apologist and accused pedophile. He is them, and they are him. Any pretense of tolerance and egalitarianism, already damaged by a Republican history of words and deeds, will be completely obliterated.

Update:  Never happier to be more wrong. By about one and a half percent, Doug Jones was elected. Maybe there is a limit to just how big of an asshole people will put up with.

Steven Law of the conservative Senate Leadership Fund is already pulling out the knives.

This is a brutal reminder that candidate quality matters regardless of where you are running. Not only did Steve Bannon cost us a critical Senate seat in one of the most Republican states in the country, but he also dragged the president of the United States into his fiasco.

Update (December 13):  Jonathan Cohn thinks the GOP is in trouble.

One of the most remarkable results Tuesday was exit polling that showed Alabama voters split down the middle, 48 percent to 48 percent, on whether they approved of [von Clownstick's] performance in office. That’s quite a statement from voters in a state that voted overwhelmingly for [Fuckface] just a little more than a year ago.

And Amanda Marcotte notes that turnout matters--a lot.

The lesson here is simple: Democrats should stop chasing those elusive Republicans who have had enough. Generally speaking, they will vote for a child molester over a Democrat. There is no "too far" for Republicans, at least when it comes to beating Democrats. Instead, stop treating constituencies that loyally vote for Democrats as an afterthought, and put them first, both in policy and in organizing.

Update (December 14):  Ron Browstein agrees that the GOP has problems.

Jones beat Moore with a strong turnout and a crushing lead among African Americans, a decisive advantage among younger voters, and major gains among college-educated and suburban whites, especially women. That allowed Jones to overcome big margins for Moore among the key elements of [von Clownstick's] coalition: older, blue-collar, evangelical, and nonurban white voters.

This was the same equation that powered the Democratic victories in the Virginia and New Jersey governors’ races. The consistency of these results suggests that Democrats are coalescing a powerful coalition of the very voters that polls have shown are the most disenchanted, even disgusted, by [Fuckface's] performance and behavior as president.

Heather Digby Parton summarizes.

[Dear Leader] is creating a rabidly loyal following among shrinking demographics, while inflaming those groups that are growing.

And continues.

Then there were the brave women who came forward to tell their stories about Roy Moore stalking and molesting them when they were teenage girls. That took a lot of guts and undoubtedly made a difference in the race. Women supported Jones by a 57 to 42 percent margin, while men gave Moore almost the identical advantage, 57 to 40 percent.

It's true that a majority of white women went for the Republican (as a majority of white voters have typically done in recent years), but many more white college-educated women voted for Doug Jones than usual. That demographic is moving rapidly into the Democratic column and there are many reasons for it, most obviously that the Republican Party keeps nominating misogynists for high office and dismissing women who come forward to reveal the truth about their characters.

Update (December 15):  Jones won despite ongoing voter suppression.

Chauncey DeVega notes that notes that Moore won the vast majority of white votes.

Sociologist Michael Kimmel explained the toxic allure of sexism and racism for white Republican voters to me by email: "I think that the tradition which Moore represents is one of 'everyone knowing their place.' That is, women in the kitchen and black people subservient to whites. And in that sense, 'making American great again' is returning to that imagined era."

Naturally, a double standard still exists.

If black Christians cited scripture to make excuses for a man who by all accounts and preyed on underage girls for decades, sober people on television would call for a "national discussion" about whether the "black church" was a public menace. On cue, right-wing bloviators would issue poisonous rhetorical questions: Where are the black fathers? Where are the black leaders? Where do black people learn such values?

Update (December 17):  Andrew O'Hehir says it's not just about winning.

One way of framing the looming contests of 2018 and 2020 is to ask whether a party with no ideas can defeat a party with no soul. ... I don’t mean that question to sound as moralistic or prejudicial as it probably does. Maybe ideas and ideology don’t much matter in American politics, or at least don’t matter now. [Fuckface von Clownstick] certainly doesn’t have any.

But at some point the question of what ideas animate the Democratic Party -- and whether ideas even matter, in the ... symbolic shadow-play of American politics -- will become unavoidable if we are to have a functioning democracy.

And Neal Gabler thinks we're facing serious and permanent damage to our politics--that conservatism has become a civic religion.

Modern conservatism, like debased religion, has an explanation for everything, and there is nothing mysterious or spiritual about it. [Von Clownstick] understood the desire for some all-encompassing answer, as demagogues always do. Demagogues assume the proportions of religious leaders, but without the moral instruction. Through a process of simplification, they purport to tell their followers what happened and who is responsible. In short, they provide cosmology, not for the purpose of enlightenment, but for the opposite — benightedness.

The way to defeat them is to live ethically.

[P]rogressives need to provide an alternative narrative ... that will explain the world without distorting it. It should tell the story of economic inequality, and of plutocracy, and of the role of conservatives in enabling these things. It should also provide a positive vision of community and mutual assistance and global interdependence. It should promote compassion and empathy. It should be simple, powerful and affirmative, and it should be repeated endlessly the way [Fuckface] repeats his racist/nativist/sexist/phobic narrative. I am convinced that you don’t fight fire with fire, which is why I am dubious of Democratic efforts to out tough [Dear Leader]. You fight fire with water.

Update (December 24):  Apparently, Senator Mitch McConnell sent a memo to the White House proposing ways of postponing the election.

In the weeks leading up to the special election, as accusations of misconduct appeared to weaken Roy Moore’s standing in the polls and it seemed he might leave the race, Republican leaders explored options for delaying the election—presumably to reduce their party’s chances of losing.

Update (December 28):  An asshole and a sore loser.

Update (November 27, 2018):  The child molester got stopped, but not the white supremacist.

Update (June 20, 2019):  What. The. Fuck.

Disgraced former Alabama Judge Roy Moore, who has been accused by multiple women of sexual assault, is running for the U.S. Senate again.