Roy Moore denies sexual misconduct allegations

When this came out, I read the accounts carefully, and apart from eyewitness accounts, the thing I was able to pick out is that he did marry late (at age 38), and that the kind of wine referred to in the accusations was an extremely popular summer wine at the time, to the point of being something of a cultural cliche. So the allegations are plausible in many ways.

The one thing that is very interesting, though, is that there are at least claims that the Post sat on this one until now—if indeed they knew about the allegations before, but sat on them until now, it does indeed cast doubt on their credibility. Classic “October Surprise” if true, though this time in November.

It’s a shame, if this is true, that Moore is being given the bums’ rush now instead of during the primaries, as he’s got a string of things he’s done—birther, Ten Commandments statues, illegal payments from a foundation, refusal to heed Supreme Court precedent, two removals from office—that suggest that he’s not going to have the requisite “plays well with others” to get things done in DC if he goes.

Which is to say that true or false, this very well could be a setup, a setup that Republicans could have avoided if they’d just looked at his biography. More or less the same setup I was afraid we had with Trump, and quite frankly I don’t think we’re out of the woods yet on that account, either.

With more people now publicly accusing him and interviews with local residents and coworkers who knew him, the accusations seem to have more credibility. Even if true, what is dangerous is the rush to punish him before anything has been proven or established. People are so emotional (and often hypocritical) about sexual issues that people quickly abandon due process of law. That is dangerous. All you need today to ruin someone is an accusation of a sexual crime. Even if a person is later proven innocent, the damage to reputation is irreversible.