Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post took time recently to accuse Republicans, specifically Representative Barbara Comstock of Virginia and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina of sounding “altogether too complacent, too passive and too resigned” to Roy Moore’s failed U.S. Senate candidacy. Moore, of course, spent the last several weeks giving conflicting answers in response to accusations that he is a child molester.
Comstock, representative for Virginia’s 10th district, has spent her time very differently. She has taken a leading role in pushing for congressional reforms aimed at combatting sexual harassment. She, alongside Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), told a House committee they had personal knowledge of sexual harassment as a widespread problem among members of Congress. She has co-sponsored a resolution that, among other small changes, requires all lawmakers and their staff to complete anti-harassment and anti-discrimination training at the start of each session. Comstock sees the resolution as a quick fix, and is looking to make broader, more authoritative changes to the law. In an interview with NBC4 Washington she promised not to quit until “we take out all the trash.”
Comstock wants to change the system that has allowed congressman to use taxpayer money to quietly hush up their accusers. We now know that the office in charge of those claims, the Office of Compliance, has paid out $17 million to victims since it was first formed in the 1990s. Comstock wants the harassers to pay that money back, and in dramatic fashion earlier this week said that their names should be made public: “We should be naming past people,” Comstock said on Fox News Sunday, “Those names should be disclosed, they’re going to come out one way or another. And they should.”
Comstock has actively worked to address the problem of sexual harassment, and on numerous occasions criticized Roy Moore directly. “Roy Moore should not serve in the U.S. Senate,” she said November 10 in a social media post, “…the defense from some of his supporters is beyond disturbing.” More recently, in an interview with NBC, she said she hoped Moore “will [resign] and do the right thing…For that matter, Al Franken can go hit the door with him.” She is the only Republican to have called for the resignation of Blake Farenthold, the Texas congressman who offered to repay the $84,000 settlement paid to one of his former employees. Early in the 2016 election, Comstock urged Trump to drop out of the race after his “grab em’ by the” comments were made public. She denounced his comments as “disgusting, vile and disqualifying,” and went so far as to say “I cannot in good conscience vote for Donald Trump and I would never vote for Hillary Clinton,” in October of last year.
Why would Rubin go so far as to call Comstock “complacent” and “resigned” to Moore and the broader problems he represents? Rubin offered only this tidbit from Fox News Sunday as evidence:
Chris Wallace: But I want to ask you directly, does it … bother you as a Republican congresswoman to see President Trump and the Republican National Committee supporting Roy Moore?
Comstock: Yes, I mean, it doesn’t represent me. I don’t think it represents most of the Republican women, as well as my colleagues like Senator Tim Scott and others, and Cory Gardner have made clear.
Rubin is appalled by Comstock’s supposed lack of moral outrage, but it’s unclear why. If the rumors are true, Comstock’s sexual harassment reforms threaten at least 40 current members of Congress, whose transgressions she wants made public. Commonsense says at least half of them are Republicans. If Comstock were a political opportunist, she wouldn’t be pushing her own party into the spotlight. A number of Republicans may deserve to be labeled GOP win-at-all-costs extremists, but Comstock is hardly one of them.
