Senate Republicans Grapple With How To Answer The Roy Moore Question

WASHINGTON Even as new and disturbing allegations were coming out about the predatory behavior of Roy Moore on Monday, Senate Republicans were still split on how to deal with Alabamas Senate nominee. Some GOP lawmakers continue to offer their conditional support, while others are calling for Moore to step down, the Senate to never seat him or for Alabamians to simply vote for the Democrat.

I would literally if I were in Alabama I would run to the polling place to vote for the Democrat, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) told reporters Monday night, adding that he would prefer to have a Republican write-in candidate but that he would vote for Democrat Doug Jones over Moore, no doubt.

Flake also said the Senate should expel Moore if he is elected, but he didnt think it would come to that. I think he, frankly, will drop out, Flake said.

National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) also said Monday that Moore was unfit to serve and should be expelled from the Senate if he wins, but other senators werent quite ready to deny Moore a seat if he beats Jones in the Alabama special election on Dec. 12.

To expel somebody, dont you have to listen to both sides of the story? Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters Monday night.

Graham did say the accounts of the women accusing Moore of groping or carrying on relationships with them while they were in their teens had the ring of truth, and he said Moore should step aside. When the head of your own partys senatorial committee is advocating you get expelled before you get elected, I just dont think you have a very bright Senate career ahead of you, he said.

But Graham wouldnt say Moore should be denied a Senate seat if he wins. That appears to be a line that most Senate Republicans still wont cross.

For Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), there would be Constitutional issues if senators didnt allow Moore to be seated. But there then is the issue of whether he is allowed to remain in the Senate. That would involve an investigation by the ethics committee and a very complicated process.

Collins is instead advocating for a write-in campaign for the current interim senator, Luther Strange (R-Ala.), who lost to Moore in a GOP primary. The other Alabama senator, Republican Richard Shelby , also seems to be pushing for a Strange write-in campaign, saying Monday night that he found the accounts of the women accusing Moore to be disturbing and believable.

When Shelby was asked about the damage that Moores behavior might cause the GOP, he acknowledged that Moore was tainting the Republican brand. If this keeps up, itll be irreparable damage.

Its drip by drip, cut by cut, Shelby added. It doesnt look good.

The drip, drip, drip continued throughout Monday, as more Republican senators took tougher stances on Moore this time, without the conditional if true and another woman came forward to say Moore had sexually assaulted her in the most aggressive account to date.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) began the day saying he believed the women accusing Moore and that Moore ought to step aside.

Moore responded by turning McConnells comments against him.

The person who should step aside is @SenateMajLdr Mitch McConnell. He has failed conservatives and must be replaced. #DrainTheSwamp

Judge Roy Moore (@MooreSenate) November 13, 2017","type":"rich","meta":{"author":"Judge Roy Moore","author_url":"https://twitter.com/MooreSenate","cache_age":86400,"description":"The person who should step aside is @SenateMajLdr Mitch McConnell. 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The person who should step aside is @SenateMajLdr Mitch McConnell. He has failed conservatives and must be replaced. #DrainTheSwamp
Judge Roy Moore (@MooreSenate) November 13, 2017

But after a news conference in which a woman said that, when she was 16, Moore groped her and squeezed her neck to force her head toward his crotch, Republicans began to take another look at their initial stances on Moore.

Even Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who was one of the first senators to endorse Moore and had stood by him even as other Republicans fled, flipped the burden of proof to Moore.

I am not able to urge the people of Alabama to support his candidacy so long as these allegations remain unrefuted, Cruz said Monday.

Moores defense seems to be only that all the women who say he acted inappropriately when he was in his 30s and they were in their teens are simply lying, even as increasing accounts of Moores behavior add to the credibility of the accusations.

Late Monday, an Alabama news site claimed residents of Gadsden believed it was common knowledge that Moore flirted with teenage girls and hung out at the mall when he was the district attorney for Etowah County. The New Yorker even said Moore might have been banned from the towns mall for approaching teenage girls.

Democrats have mostly stood back, letting Republicans struggle with the varying degrees to which theyll separate themselves from an alleged child molester. But the sudden blow-up of Moores campaign has its own risks for Democrats.

One the one hand, Jones needs the revelations of Moores behavior to be bad enough that Republicans dont come out to vote for Moore. On the other, Moores candidacy is blowing up at such a spectacular rate that Moore may actually step aside.

A saving grace for Jones may be if Moore still seems to have a core of support that makes his candidacy viable one poll after the first round of accusations showed Moore still winning by 10 percentage points and Moore has a history of disregarding what others think anyway. (Moore was removed twice from the state Supreme Court for ignoring higher court orders, once for defying orders allowing gay marriage and another time for refusing to remove a statue of the Ten Commandments from a state judicial building.)

As much as Senate Republicans come out against Moore, the Senate candidate will do what he wants, even if it means tarnishing the GOP brand.

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The one person who may actually be able to seal Moores fate, President Donald Trump , has thus far stayed out of the fray, with the White Houses official position being as communicated by press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders that, if true, Moore ought to do the right thing and step aside.

At some point, Trump almost certainly will have to say something. But, at this point, his silence is also almost certainly signaling to Moore that he can stay in this race.

As Flake said of Moore on Monday, I dont think hes listening to Senate Republicans, frankly.