Trump's Plan For Alabama: Back Roy Moore Without Mentioning His Name

It is, as one critic put it, a “moral escape clause.”

LACHLAN MARKAY
11.26.17 4:20 PM ET

An insurgent Republican firebrand, reviled by party leadership and facing well-funded opposition from both parties, bests his deep-pocketed GOP establishment primary rivals, and weeks before the general election finds himself besieged by allegations of sexual misconduct. His supporters won’t make an affirmative case beyond the need to control the future composition of the U.S. Supreme Court. The best argument most can muster is: at least he’s not a Democrat.

Last year, that firebrand was Donald Trump. Now it’s Roy Moore. And it’s the latter who is leading the charge among those supporting the former.

Trump’s own transgressions involved both the notorious Access Hollywood tape, released a month before the election, on which he was heard bragging about being so famous that he could sexually assault women—or, as he put it, “grab them by the pussy”—and a slew of women who accused him of assault and harassment. For Moore, the allegations are decades old, but even more serious: that in his 30s, he sexually assaulted teenage girls and routinely hit on others.

In both cases, the candidates saw immediate and widespread political defections. Then-Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus even encouraged Trump to withdraw from the race. Most of Moore’s would-be Republican colleagues in the Senate quickly rescinded—or at least qualified—their endorsements after allegations began surfacing early this month. But support among the base of the party persisted for both, not necessarily because of the merits of the candidates themselves, but because of the prospect that other option was a victory for the Democratic Party.

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