All about the agenda

Trump Urges Voters to Pick Roy Moore Instead of ‘Liberal Jones’

And, anyway, sex criminals need to stick together.

With a little more than two weeks until a special election for the Senate in Alabama, President Trump on Sunday [today - PV] doubled down on his criticism of the Democratic nominee, Doug Jones, and reiterated his support for Roy S. Moore, the Republican candidate, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by a number of women.

“The last thing we need in Alabama and the U.S. Senate is a Schumer/Pelosi puppet who is WEAK on Crime, WEAK on the Border, Bad for our Military and our great Vets, Bad for our 2nd Amendment, AND WANTS TO RAISES TAXES TO THE SKY,” Mr. Trump tweeted on Sunday morning.

“Liberal Jones would be BAD!” he tweeted less than an hour later.

Why Trump Stands by Roy Moore, Even as It Fractures His Party

Mr. Trump’s decision to reject every long-shot plan to save the Senate seat reflects the imperative that an unpopular president faces to retain his political base, a determination that he should follow his own instincts after having felt steered into a disastrous earlier endorsement in the Alabama race, and even his insistence that he himself has been the victim of false accusations of sexual misconduct.

. . . .

But in tying himself to Mr. Moore even as congressional leaders have abandoned the candidate en masse, the president has reignited hostilities with his own party just as Senate Republicans are rushing to pass a politically crucial tax overhaul. 

Mr. McConnell and his allies have been particularly infuriated as Mr. Trump has reacted with indifference to a series of ideas they have floated to try to block Mr. Moore.

. . . .

[Trump] sees the calls for Mr. Moore to step aside as a version of the response to the now-famous “Access Hollywood” tape, in which he boasted about grabbing women’s genitalia, and the flood of groping accusations against him that followed soon after.

. . . .

Absent action from Mr. Trump, party leaders have explored — and abandoned — a number of ways to derail Mr. Moore. 

They considered recruiting another Republican to run a write-in campaign against Mr. Moore and Mr. Jones, but two private polls showed that such a candidacy would have no chance of success.

. . . .

Mr. McConnell and his allies have believed for weeks that disaster awaits, win or lose, if Mr. Moore remains in the race: Either the Democrats will claim the seat on Dec. 12, or Mr. Moore will win and thrust the party into an agonizing monthslong debate over whether to expel him.

. . . .

The Senate leader has told fellow Republicans in private that Mr. Moore’s nomination has endangered the party’s hold on the Senate, according to people who have spoken with him — his starkest acknowledgment so far that the political environment has turned sharply against his party since Mr. Trump’s election. 

Mr. McConnell has also reiterated his intention to move against Mr. Moore if he is elected, though Mr. McConnell has made clear that he thinks that the candidate is unlikely to win.

Clearly, if the GOP ejects Moore from the senate the Democrats plan to attack their action as undemocratic, both seeking votes and seeking to widen the chasm between Moore's Trumpist supporters and the DC Republicans.

. . . .

Should Mr. Jones win, Democrats would need to take only two more seats in 2018 to regain a majority in the Senate — still a difficult task, but one nearly unimaginable just a month ago. 

A victory for Mr. Moore could be just as punishing for Republicans, because it could taint their candidates across the country by association with a man accused of child molestation.

That last, of course, is a lie by a New York Times writers.

Moore is not accused of child molestation, but of sexual misconduct with a number of young women of legal age and exactly one fourteen year old.