Yesterday afternoon, President Trump addressed press questions about Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, who in mid November was accused of having sexually assaulted two teenage girls when he was in his thirties. Perhaps predictably, Trump did more to defend Moore than to acknowledge the apparent credibility of his accusers.
“He denies it. Look, he denies it,” Trump said of Moore. “If you look at all the things that have happened over the last 48 hours. He totally denies it. He says it didn’t happen. And look, you have to look at him also.”
The president is right that Moore has categorically denied the allegations. In fact, he has become more intensely combative than ever and refused to end his campaign, despite calls from high-profile Senate Republicans and the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s decision to stop supporting his candidacy.
Trump went on to tacitly endorse Moore, attacking his opponent, Democrat Doug Jones. “We don’t need a liberal person in there, a Democrat, Jones. I’ve looked at his record. It’s terrible on crime. It’s terrible on the border. It’s terrible on military,” Trump said. “I can tell you for a fact we do not need somebody who’s going to be bad on crime, bad on borders, bad for the military, bad for the Second Amendment.”
In these remarks, Trump endorses the exact logic that countless Republicans used to justify supporting his own presidential candidacy, even after his seemingly endless missteps and his own well-verified history of sexual misconduct.
For the last couple of years, our political sphere has become infected by the insidious view that, if one’s opponent is bad enough on any given policy issues, that’s reason enough to justify voting for anyone who occupies the other spot on the ballot — it’s a binary view that has been much denounced by many thoughtful people before me. Alabama is just the latest example.
Who cares what felonies our candidate may or may not have committed, what sex crimes he may or may not have committed against minors? Sure, he might be a bad guy, but he’s our bad guy. At least he’s on our side. At least he’ll vote right. At least we’ll be winning.
This is the argument playing out right now in Alabama, in much the same way that it played out across the nation last year. Trump’s comments are the new iteration of the endless charge levied against the “Never Trump” movement last year: If you aren’t willing to vote for Trump, and enthusiastically to boot, you must be a bona fide supporter of Hillary Clinton. If you won’t vote Moore, you must love Jones.
Unlike last year, though, the stakes in Alabama are remarkably low. It was understandable that some on the right believed they should hold their noses and cast a vote for Trump to save the country from spending four years under the iron thumb of a virulently progressive Schoolmarm-in-Chief.
But in Alabama, for one Senate seat, not even for a full term? This is a special election; whoever is elected will serve only until 2020. Not to mention the fact that a few GOP votes in the Senate are already very much on the fence. What good is Roy Moore’s — potentially unreliable; he opposes Obamacare repeal, for example — Republican vote when Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and John McCain stand poised to cross the aisle on any number of big issues?
And yet so many on the right — including our president, it seems — are willing to elevate a man credibly accused of sexual assault against minors, to preserve that one seat. Alabama governor Kay Ivey acknowledged last week that she has no reason not to believe Moore’s accusers but that she plans to vote for Moore anyway because we need his vote in the Senate.
Democrat Doug Jones is not a suitable candidate, either, of course. Most concerning to me, he occupies the farthest-left section of the pro-abortion-rights spectrum. But the desire to keep Jones out of office surely can’t justify voting for anyone who runs against him. There must be a line somewhere. For reasonable Republicans, one would hope that credible allegations of sex assault against minors would be on the far side that line. For President Trump, apparently, they’re not.