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Roy Moore: Sexual Predator?

Shocking allegations against the crusading fundamentalist Alabama Republican
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So. I was out of touch all day in Atlanta, gave a talk last night, came back to the house and … well, hello Judge Roy Moore.

Alone with Corfman, Moore chatted with her and asked for her phone number, she says. Days later, she says, he picked her up around the corner from her house in Gadsden, drove her about 30 minutes to his home in the woods, told her how pretty she was and kissed her. On a second visit, she says, he took off her shirt and pants and removed his clothes. He touched her over her bra and underpants, she says, and guided her hand to touch him over his underwear.

“I wanted it over with — I wanted out,” she remembers thinking. “Please just get this over with. Whatever this is, just get it over.” Corfman says she asked Moore to take her home, and he did.

Corfman was 14. Moore was 32. More from the Washington Post scoop:

This account is based on interviews with more than 30 people who said they knew Moore between 1977 and 1982, when he served as an assistant district attorney for Etowah County in northern Alabama, where he grew up.

More:

 She says she talked to Moore on her phone in her bedroom, and they made plans for him to pick her up at Alcott Road and Riley Street, around the corner from her house.

“I was kind of giddy, excited, you know? An older guy, you know?” Corfman says, adding that her only sexual experience at that point had been kissing boys her age.

She says that it was dark and cold when he picked her up, and that she thought they were going out to eat. Instead, she says, he drove her to his house, which seemed “far, far away.”

“I remember the further I got from my house, the more nervous I got,” Corfman says.

She remembers an unpaved driveway. She remembers going inside and him giving her alcohol on this visit or the next, and that at some point she told him she was 14. She says they sat and talked. She remembers that Moore told her she was pretty, put his arm around her and kissed her, and that she began to feel nervous and asked him to take her home, which she says he did.

Soon after, she says, he called again, and picked her up again at the same spot.

“This was a new experience, and it was exciting and fun and scary,” Corfman says, explaining why she went back. “It was just like this roller-coaster ride you’ve not been on.”

She says that Moore drove her back to the same house after dark, and that before long she was lying on a blanket on the floor. She remembers Moore disappearing into another room and coming out with nothing on but “tight white” underwear.

She remembers that Moore kissed her, that he took off her pants and shirt, and that he touched her through her bra and underpants. She says that he guided her hand to his underwear and that she yanked her hand back.

“I wasn’t ready for that — I had never put my hand on a man’s penis, much less an erect one,” Corfman says.

She remembers thinking, “I don’t want to do this” and “I need to get out of here.” She says that she got dressed and asked Moore to take her home, and that he did.

Read the whole thing. 

Lo, Alabama’s state auditor thinks this a big to do about nothing:

Asked whether or not the report would upend Moore’s campaign, Ziegler predicted that Alabama voters would be angrier at the Washington Post for “desperately trying to get something negative” than Moore for his dalliances with teenage girls decades ago.

“He’s clean as a hound’s tooth,” Ziegler claimed, before relying on Scripture to defend Moore.

“Take the Bible. Zachariah and Elizabeth for instance. Zachariah was extremely old to marry Elizabeth and they became the parents of John the Baptist,” Ziegler said choosing his words carefully before invoking Christ. “Also take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus.”

“There’s just nothing immoral or illegal here,” Ziegler concluded. “Maybe just a little bit unusual.”

Where do you even start with that? It’s okay for a 32 year old man to fondle a 14 year old girl because St. Joseph supposedly did it to the Virgin Mary? What a blasphemous cretin that Ziegler is.

Or this cheap pandering to Christian conservatives?

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David French says allegations aren’t proof, but cautions conservatives not to be too quick to dismiss these.

Daniel Dale called a few of the GOP county chairmen in Alabama. This is the kind of answers he got:

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To which a reader responds:

We have descended to the point where it is better to see a pedophile in office than elect a Democrat. I weep for our country.

I don’t weep. I am still in a state of shock. But I shouldn’t be. If the allegations against Moore are true, obviously he should withdraw from the race. Doesn’t sound like he would — and he might even win. In that event, Democrats will make him the GOP poster child in the 2018 election, and the GOP will deserve it.

Here’s what I don’t get: the eagerness of so many conservatives at this point to double down on defending Moore — this, versus the “wait and see” stance. We already know that credible allegations of sexual predation don’t matter to most Republican voters. In order to believe that Moore is not guilty of something serious in this matter, you have to believe that four women are lying, as well as people those women told at the time what had happened. You have to believe that the woman making the worst allegations — on the record, by the way — is out to get Roy Moore, even though she was a Trump voter in 2016. Again, none of this proves anything, but if Alabama Republican voters put Roy Moore in office, and the Senate seats him, it’s going to be a massacre for Republicans on Election Day 2018.

But: if Moore is elected and the Senate refuses to seat him, think about how vicious the Trumpist base will be in seeking retribution. The White House has called on Moore to step aside if the allegations are true. Alabama voters didn’t listen to Trump during the primary, choosing Moore over the candidate Trump endorsed. So we’ll see.

I think Mitch McConnell must have one of the world’s worst job.

Look, if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t care if the accusations against Roy Moore are true, that all that matters is defeating the Democrat, then you have allowed tribalism to destroy your moral sense. That’s not something you can recover from easily.

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