Southern evangelicals continue to rally to beleaguered Judge Roy Moore despite the fact that his apparent preference for underage girls would normally make him an unlikely Senate champion for social conservatives. But they just don’t care about those repeated allegations of child molestation.
Weeks before the special Senate election, they’ve re-anointed Moore because they are more afraid of looming liberal goliaths. And if their leaders aren’t lying, evangelicals will come out in droves on Election Day.
Plenty of pastors easily deny reports that Moore had semi-nude dalliances with girls as young as 14-years-old when he was a powerful law school graduate. About an hour south of Birmingham in the city of Millbrook, Ala., one preacher tells the Boston Globe he doesn’t know how much these women are “getting paid but I can only believe they’re getting a healthy sum.”
National leaders seem completely indifferent that a self-described man-of-God would have a taste for teenagers. Because, you know, it was the 1970s. And, after all, Democrats are even worse.
“The hypocrisy of Washington has no bounds,” says Franklin Graham, son of powerful evangelical preacher Bill Graham. “So many denouncing Roy Moore when they are guilty of doing much worse than what he has been accused of supposedly doing.”
Hate of Washington is so great that Moore zealots have even flirted with heresy. Hours after the first Washington Post story dropped, Alabama State Auditor Jim Zeigler tried defending the old dating habits of the 70-year-old Republican with the Christmas story.
“Take Joseph and Mary,” Zeigler told me over the phone. “Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus.”
That zeal has buoyed Moore. Clinging to the candidate, they’ve kept him competitive. While the polls have swung like a pendulum, the average from RealClearPolitics has the Republican down by just 0.2 points against Democrat Doug Jones.
All of this, of course, seems absolutely out of character. The question on every commentator’s lips is how the religious right can rally to an accused child molester barely two decades after condemning former President Bill Clinton for his Oval Office romance with an intern?
The answer is easy. Evangelicals are less concerned with Moore than afraid of Jones. That Democrat has put on every piece of leftist armor, endorsing transgender bathrooms and backing late-term abortions. Deep down, it would seem, evangelicals are simply picking what they perceive as the lesser of two evils.
Can you blame them? How can character count for much once politics becomes tribal?
