A daily roundup of the biggest stories in right-wing media.
Commentary on sexual misconduct continued to dominate the conservative press on Thursday. At the Federalist, Ouachita Baptist University philosophy professor and “superhero against the dark forces of political correctness” made a case for supporting Roy Moore:
Here is one thing we know and should admit from the start: in his early thirties, Moore had a penchant for dating teenagers. Apparently, this was not an uncommon occurrence during this time. In fact, this practice has a long history and is not without some merit if one wants to raise a large family.
[…] [Doug] Jones has gone on record that not only does he support abortion, but he supports unrestricted abortion, even opposing a ban on abortion after 20 weeks. This is morally equivalent to supporting infanticide. So either Jones knows exactly what he’s doing in supporting killing babies in utero but doesn’t care, in which case he’s a moral monster, or his moral compass is in such need of calibration that one should never trust his judgment in moral matters. Politics, of course, is inextricably bound with such matters.
In my mind, Jones’ position is so extreme that a vote for him is a vote for the greater of two evils by a wide margin. It’s hard to imagine much worse than the mass murder of innocents. That’s also not taking into consideration his many other views with which conservatives disagree.
National Review’s David French condemned the piece:
This man is a philosopher? Of course we’re always choosing between imperfect men, but there are profound differences between conventional politicians and a man who tried to rape a teenager when he was a D.A. Believe it or not, the American political ranks are chock-full of politicians who possess better character than Moore, whose pasts are far less checkered. I don’t even have to get to the difficult process of line-drawing to have confidence in declaring that Christians should not vote to put a credibly-accused child abuser in the Senate.
[…] If condemning Roy Moore is “virtue-signaling,” then I’ll virtue-signal all day. I’m not urging any person to vote for Doug Jones. I would never vote for a pro-abortion politician. But if you believe this election will make any material difference in the prevalence or legality of abortion in the United States, then you need a civic education. In fact, it’s far more likely that electing a man like Moore will damage the pro-life cause.
At Townhall, Laura Hollis decried “the war on men.” “Not all men are monsters,” she wrote. “And morality shapes culture. But that conclusion is deeply unpopular with large segments of the American population, especially on the left. The ‘anything goes’ ethos of the sexual revolution—and the abandonment of individual restraint and traditional sexual morality—has only empowered the Harvey Weinsteins of the world.” At the Daily Wire, Matt Walsh characterized the wave of allegations as a potential witch hunt:
A man who faces these sorts of allegations is expected to apologize, and if he does not apologize, if he attempts to explain, or add context, or defend himself to any extent, his stubbornness is just seen as a symptom of his guilt. Keillor denied the charges against him, and USA Today called his statement “defiant” and “weird.” What’s so weird about a guy claiming his innocence if he is in fact innocent? Have we completely ruled out that possibility?
The whole thing reminds me of the last scene of The Crucible, where John Proctor is told he must confess to witchcraft in writing or be hung for witchcraft. His choices are not ideal: either admit your guilt and be seen as a witch, or deny your guilt and be hung as a witch. Proctor chose the rope. Most of these men choose to confess. But does that mean they’re all guilty?
And even if they are all guilty, do they all deserve to be destroyed?
RedState’s Brandon Morse unearthed a video of Jenna Bush Hager and Hoda Kotb oiling a male flag-bearer at the 2016 Olympics to argue that women aren’t held to the same standards on harassment. “[T]his clip of women ogling and putting their hands all over strange men is sending signals that dismissing someone’s accomplishments is cool if they’re a man and their body is sexy enough,” he wrote. “Our culture, and NBC — who vaguely said they have a set of “core values” that must be followed by its employees — seems to have a double standard here. At this time, it appears our culture believes one sex deserves more respect than another.”
In other news:
Conservatives assessed the prospects of tax reform in the Senate and the potential political aftermath. At National Review, Jibran Khan took a look at the Joint Committee on Taxation’s analysis of the Senate bill, which found that it would increase the deficit by $1 trillion:
Would making these cuts permanent be the best solution? While the cuts seem to spur some GDP growth, they also lead to massive deficits. Over the next ten years, the estimates show annual ratios such as $246 billion in revenue loss to $39 billion in additional revenue from growth. It continues along these lines until the sunset of individual rate cuts. After this, the plan is in the black; however, it seems unlikely to me that Congress would leave a vote-loser like a pending tax hike on the books without extending it, which would dig the deficit hole once more. It is difficult to see this as anything but extremely fiscally irresponsible.
At Commentary, Noah Rothman criticized the liberal response to comments from Sen. Marco Rubio, who told lobbyists that tax reform would lead to entitlement cuts:
In 2017, the trustees who manage Social Security’s big trust fund revealed that the program will reach insolvency in 2034. Medicare’s hospital trust fund is on pace to go broke in 2029. Non-discretionary spending already absorbs almost 70 percent of the federal budget. Even if it were possible to identify every instance of “waste, fraud, and abuse,” the elimination of such evils will not save these programs. Confiscating the wealth of every single millionaire and billionaire in America would purchase mere minutes on the doomsday clock. These programs will have to be reformed sooner rather than later.
Democrats and their sympathizers in media can pretend they haven’t heard Republican incessant warnings on this subject, but their theatrical displays of shock over comments like Rubio’s only suggest they haven’t been paying attention. The most avoidable financial crisis in modern American history is coming. The Republicans who observe this empirical fact are not the problem, even though their liberal detractors do put on a good show in acting as though they were.
