Roy Moore: Poor Judgment?

Former state justice Roy Moore is running as the Republican candidate in a special election next month for Alabama's U.S. Senate seat, a job once held by Jeff Sessions before he became President Donald Trump's attorney general.

Moore is believed to be an extreme-right man of God, basing his decisions on the Bible rather than the U.S. Constitution, which has caused him to twice be elected--and twice removed from--his role as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.  The first time was for disobeying a federal order to take down a monument to the Ten Commandments from the steps of the state justice building.  The second was for directing other judges to continue enforcing the state's same sex marriage ban, even though it was declared unconstitutional.

But now Moore's Senate campaign has encountered a major road block.  There have been reports from several women who allege that Moore took sexual advantage of them when he was in his 30s and when they were teenagers, some of them below the state's age of consent.  Moore is now 70.

The former justice joins the lengthy list of once-powerful men whose careers came to a screeching halt when women (and some men) started accusing them of sexual harassment decades ago, but were too afraid to make public until now.  It has already claimed the careers of producer Harvey Weinstien, director James Toback, actor Kevin Spacey, comedian Louis C.K., commentator Bill O'Reilly and countless others in media, business and government. (The Democrats don't have their hands clean in this matter, either.  See:  the Kennedys, Bill Clinton, Anthony Weiner, etc.)

Despite calls from both parties to drop out of the race, Moore is having none of this.  He has denied the allegations, refuses to step aside, and has threatened to sue the women in question and the Washington Post, which broke the story.  He would also help get rid of Mitch McConnell as the Senate's majority leader.

Scandal or not, Moore is the overwhelming favorite to defeat his Democratic opponent in the special election.  The GOP publicly may not want anything to do with Moore, but if his election keeps one more Democrat out of a Senate they already control, they'll take the risk.  If they can work with a man who has also been accused of sexual harassment in the past and have no plans to dump him (that would be President Trump), then they could certainly work with Moore.  However, if the GOP is really serious about ousting Moore, maybe they can convince Sessions to quit his job--which hasn't been going too well anyway--and get his old one back as a write-in candidate.

The women who have so far broken their silence about their unwanted sexual experiences with rich and powerful men (and sometimes not so) deserve our respect and support.  One wonders if anything positive is going to come out of this, as men and women try to deal with how to relate to each other going forward without having to resort to sleeping your way to success.

UPDATE (12/13/17)):  Nightmare averted.  Moore lost the election to his Democratic opponent Doug Jones Tuesday, with African-American support and enough folks voting for write-in candidates to save the great state of Alabama from national embarrassment.  We haven't heard the last from the old judge, however.  Moore refuses to concede and has demanded a recount.  But when President Trump tweets congratulations to Jones, then drops Moore like a bad habit, it's over.