Scrupulous Conservatives and the Moore Conundrum
Roy Moore has given scrupulous conservatives (SC) a new reason to help liberals destroy America.
When the "Access Hollywood" tape came out, SCs bemoaned the fact that Trump accepted groupies’ consensual offers of free gropes while ignoring the fact that the behavior appeared to be something that happened years ago. While such behavior is hardly wonderful, the SCs seemed to forget that the alternative to Trump was a woman who supported dismembering viable pain-capable unborn women-to-be simply because their parents wanted a boy.
Putting feelings ahead of logic, SCs told us that not voting for Trump wouldn’t really help Hillary win and hence didn’t increase the risk of creating a pro-abortion anywhere any time for any reason majority on the Supreme Court.
To SCs, feeling “pure” and untainted is the driving factor in their voting decisions. While charges of past indiscretions seem to trigger SCs loathing, they oddly weren’t bothered by the fact that Bush was an alcoholic -- as it shouldn’t have since he’d been on the wagon for a long time. Apparently only people who are sexually impure can never repent and reform in the minds of SCs.
In the case of Moore, there are three young women who said he hugged and kissed them consensually when they were above the age of consent, one woman who said he attacked her, and one girl who said he tried to get her to have sex with him in a grossly inappropriate and criminal way but accepted no for an answer.
The fact that the media has to include the three women with whom Moore did nothing wrong is one of the many problems with the charges against Moore.
The woman who claimed that Moore assaulted her has now disappeared after the authenticity of Moore’s inscription in her yearbook has been called into question. Her unwillingness to submit the yearbook to independent analysis has, for the moment, rendered her claims somewhat dubious.
Which leaves one still possible claim against Moore. While there are a number of problems with the claim, ranging from the girl not having a phone in her bedroom to how did the east coast elite Washington Post reporters find this woman when people who lived near her -- democrat operatives who wanted to destroy Moore for years -- couldn’t, we can’t positively say that she’s not telling the truth. Further Moore adamantly denies the charges and unlike almost all the other recent cases there aren’t multiple women, or girls in the case of Roman Polanski, pointing to a pattern of sexual misconduct.
Because there is a chance that the charge is true, all conservatives are a little uneasy about supporting Moore. Yet the SC’s position is that any defect on the part of a conservative candidate is instantly disqualifying, which is actually a very anticonservative position.
In America, conservatism is generally based on Christian principles, which include the ideas of redemption and forgiveness. If Moore did do this one thing decades ago and never ever did it again, does it mean that he’s still unfit or does it mean that he’s a sinner like the rest of us who strayed seriously once and then, through the grace of God, repented and reformed?
One of the greatest saints, Saint Augustine, lived such a horrible life that his mother, Saint Monica, prayed for 20 years for his conversion. He too was saved by turning to God, and no Christian rejects what he wrote after he reformed because he led a dissolute and immoral life in the past.
When Bill Clinton first ran for the presidency he admitted on “60 Minutes” that he’d cheated on his wife, but Hillary and Bill said that that was in the past. At the time, while still opposing Clinton for his odious policies, most conservatives were willing to give him a pass on the adultery if it was in the past and it had ended.
Interestingly, the same liberals who tell us that vicious criminals can repent and hence should be released early and have their voting rights returned are declaring that Moore’s decade-old possible crime is both unforgivable and something he can’t have repented of.
Ignoring for the moment both the possibility that Moore is completely innocent and the idea that if he sinned once but then lived a good life for decades after, perhaps he should be forgiven, the truly major problem with the SC position is that it essentially presumes that Moore’s opponent is morally unobjectionable.
Jones, Moore’s opponent, has said that he opposes any and all restrictions on abortion. He supports the physical dismemberment of viable, pain-capable unborn babies. He supports sex-selection abortions which target women to be. If one believes the science which says that a new human being is formed at the moment of conception, that makes Jones an ongoing supporter of mass murder on an unbelievable scale -- nearly 60,000,000 babies killed since Roe v. Wade.
Jones also supports allowing any man who self-identifies as a woman to use women’s bathrooms, thereby ensuring equal opportunity for heterosexual pedophiles. Currently gay pedophiles can stalk their victims in the bathroom and Jones wants to extend that right to heterosexual predators.
The reality is that it’s cowardly, not noble, to refuse to support a flawed yet reformed man over a pro-abortionist who supports laws enabling pedophiles. SCs value their own feelings of superior smugness more than they do the safety of little girls or the lives of the unborn who will be violently snuffed out if Jones is elected.
It’s one thing to oppose Trump when there were other options, such as Ted Cruz, or to oppose Moore during the primaries, but it’s quite another to say that it’s better to have a pro-mass murder of the unborn uberliberal in the Senate rather than a pro-life man who may have done something horrible decades ago.
The SCs argue that rational conservatives are simply unconcerned and morally inferior. Yet the reality is that someone who, in an election between Peter and Satan, would vote for Satan because Peter sinned is not morally superior at all.
No one who thought that Moore has molested underage girls in the recent past, say as recently as 10 years ago, would vote for him. But it’s not a sign of moral inferiority to declare that in the face of one “he said she said” claim that supposedly occurred decades ago to choose to forgive and vote against an abortion supporter.
Everyone who is planning to vote for Moore would be ecstatic if the charge could be proven to be false, yet the reality is we need to put on our big boy/girl pants on and pick the solution that is best for keeping the children safe in America.
Now is not the time to be scrupulous and put one’s feelings of self-righteousness ahead of what’s best for the country and the children.
You can read more of tom’s rants at his blog, Conversations about the obvious and feel free to follow him on Twitter