A daily roundup of the biggest stories in right-wing media.
Conservatives continued to assess the fallout from the sexual misconduct allegations against Roy Moore on Tuesday. National Review’s Alexandra DeSanctis wrote a piece arguing that defenders of Moore—and Trump—in the face of assault allegations “betray conservative women.” “Women on the right routinely have to explain that one can be a Republican without accepting sexual assault as just ‘boys being boys,’ ” she wrote. “Of course, part of the blame goes to disingenuous feminists and leftists who take every opportunity to discredit conservatism and its female constituents. But conservatives who attempt to defend Trump and Moore as moral and upstanding men contribute enormously to the problem.”
Also in National Review, former newspaper publisher and convicted felon Conrad Black defended Moore:
Moore has denied the allegations, but some of the answers he gave to Sean Hannity on Fox News about “dating teenage girls” when he was in his thirties were unimpressive. It is an issue because of the acute sensitivity to physical harassment of women and even greater public outrage about any form of abuse of minors. Both are well-founded and justly righteous public attitudes. Their application in this case is mitigated by the absence of authoritative corroboration, any seriously alleged pattern of repeated misconduct (as in the Weinstein allegations), and the fact that the alleged incident is violently denied by the former chief justice of the state, occurred 38 years ago, did not involve any direct physical grope or probe, [Ed. Note: Leigh Corfman alleges that Moore undressed her, touched her over her underwear, and placed her hand on his underwear when she was 14] was not reported to law authorities (and was not necessarily illegal if it happened at all and certainly is not actionable now) and was given instead to the trusty first battery of reliable Democratic artillery in the media. (After the Watergate character assassination, the Washington Post holds that status permanently, like the nuncio of the Holy See being the dean of the diplomatic corps in all countries that attended the Congress of Vienna.)
It is a reasonable supposition that most people in public life have something not much less embarrassing than this in their backgrounds that remain unknown, one form of misconduct or another. It is also true that even if this incident occurred, as long as it was not repeated, it does not disqualify Moore from being a senator, if he has had 38 subsequent years of unexceptionable sexual and romantic conduct.
At RedState, Caleb Howe pondered the potential consequences of a Moore win:
The fact is, these are credible accusations. They are not proven, but they are credible. In this case. With this man. With these witnesses.
The consequences of a Moore win would play out across the GOP. And to what end? You may think you are preserving a particular number of votes, but that’s not so if you’re tanking other races. Every Senator will have to answer for Moore now. Already. How much worse will that be if he sits?
And how much worse are we if he sits and then even more comes out? If he turns out to be guilty as sin. What are we, then?
Gateway Pundit ran a post about “Bombard,” a YouTube “body language expert” who concluded that Moore’s denial of the latest accusation against him in a brief appearance before the press Monday was “genuine”:
Bombard notes Moore keeps perfect eye contact with various members of the crowd.
“He looks at everybody — that’s good!”, says Bombard.
Bombard then goes on to note as Moore touches on the allegations that he’s clearly disgusted by the claims as he’s talking out of the side of his mouth.
Moore puts genuine emphasis on his words, while his speech is in-sync with his body movements.
Bombard notes Moore is not stiff while fighting back against the allegations.
“He’s being genuine and looking at those who are looking at him,” adds Bombard.
On his radio show, Rush Limbaugh reminded listeners that Moore was a Democrat at the time his misconduct allegedly occured:
Did you know that before 1992, when a lot of this was going on, that Judge Moore was a Democrat? You didn’t know that? How about all these people saying, “Yeah, yeah, everybody knew about Judge Moore, he’s a good ol’ boy!” While he was a Democrat, nobody said a word. When he supposedly was attracted to inappropriately aged girls, he was a Democrat.
In other news:
Conservatives responded to a column in the New York Times from Michelle Goldberg (formerly of Slate) arguing that Juanita Broaddrick’s rape accusation against Bill Clinton should be taken seriously. The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro criticized Democrats taking a second look at Broaddrick for their tardiness on The Ben Shapiro Show:
Slow clap for coming to the correct conclusion 25 years after the fact. Slow clap for that. Juanita Broaddrick came out with her allegations in like 1992. And she alleged that Bill Clinton took her into a room and forced himself on her, and physically raped her, and that there was a dinner afterward that she attended where Hillary Clinton came up to her, patted her on the hand, and said “Thank you for all you do.” Meaning, “Keep your mouth shut.” The left for two decades has been ignoring Juanita Broaddrick, and pretended that Juanita Broaddrick didn’t exist. During the last election cycle, when the Trump campaign brought up Juanita Broaddrick, the media quashed interviews with Juanita Broaddrick—they said, “This is old news. Why would we cover this. And only now, when the election’s over, and when they’re trying to look to weaponize all sexual allegations against the right do they finally admit that this stuff happened.
NewsBusters’ Clay Waters gave the column reserved praise. “It’s a fairly big step from a fiercely pro-abortion Democratic defender like Goldberg,” he wrote. “But she still can’t stop blaming the ‘right-wing,’ as shown in the text box, ‘Coming to terms with Bill Clinton and right-wing disinformation.’ ”
