Very few congressional Republicans wanted Roy Moore to win. They knew, for one thing, that Democrats were prepared to link them to him for at least the next three years. Rather than make it clear that Moore had no place in the GOP, however, many referred blithely to “the will of the people” and the necessity of “letting the people of Alabama decide.”
Of course that was garbage. Moore had been credibly accused of pursuing teenaged girls—one of them 14 at the time—when he was in his 30s. He claimed that sharia law was in force in Illinois and Indiana. He said the United States was “the focus of evil in the modern world” on the grounds that it glorifies immorality. Situation normal for a man twice removed as chief justice of the Alabama supreme court for refusing to obey lawful federal authority.
Republicans on the Hill knew full well that Moore’s behavior nullified any moral claim to sit in the U.S. Senate. Almost all said so privately. Some said so publicly with a conditional clause: “if these allegations are true” or “if the story is credible.” But that was a truism, on the order of saying, If he embezzled money, he should turn himself in. We didn’t need truisms; we needed judiciousness and clarity.
Those who said openly that they credited the allegations against Moore and that they would have nothing to do with him whatever the voters might say deserve great credit. The most important was Alabama’s senior senator, Richard Shelby. On the Sunday before Election Day, speaking to Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union, Shelby said what (we hope) every Republican thought: “So many accusations, so many cuts, so many drip, drip, drip. When it got to the 14-year-old’s story, that was enough for me. I said I can’t vote for Roy Moore.” From a man who rarely appears on the Sunday morning television circuit, and for whom there was very little political upside, these words meant something.
Cory Gardner of Colorado, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, announced that his committee would not fund Moore’s campaign—and unlike the Republican National Committee did not change his mind. Mike Lee of Utah withdrew his endorsement without hedging, as did senators Steve Daines of Montana, John McCain of Arizona, and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. “I believe the women,” Nebraska’s Ben Sasse said on Twitter, and offered no weasel words. Arizona’s Jeff Flake wrote a check to Moore’s opponent, Doug Jones, and posted a picture of it on Twitter. Representative Lee Zeldin of New York said it quite colloquially: “That creepy Roy Moore dude should exit stage left.”
Democrats will no doubt claim Republicans were silent about Moore, and many were. But not all. And only one high-profile Republican was enthusiastic about his candidacy and stuck with him to the end—Donald Trump. The Republicans who defied the president and opposed Moore deserve our admiration and
our gratitude. Others in the sordid affair acquitted themselves well, too. The Washington Post’s team of investigative journalists brought us the story of Moore’s sexual aggression through solidly sourced work and when Project Veritas attempted to trick them into running scurrilous lies easily passed the test. Exemplary reporting; real news.
More than anything else, though, we salute the valor of the women who spoke to the Post for the November 9 story. By putting their names to the allegations and inviting the scorn and abuse of Moore’s most ardent supporters, they exhibited the sort of uncalculating courage we don’t see very often in Washington. Their conduct put us in mind of Winston Churchill’s remark about courage. It is, he wrote, “rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because . . . it is the quality which guarantees all others.”
