This facebook thing where you can see what your friends are commenting on, even if the posts aren't from people you're personally friends with, leads to some really great stuff.

Today it's a midwestern attorney. I've seen this guy a lot before, he's friends with two of my friends (both lawyers), he's a pretty standard upper middle class white guy GOP slappy. Not like a total "I believe everything on Fox news" type, but "I'm fine with rich white guys who are casually racist as long as they aren't dropping N-bombs all the time" type of way.

ANyway, this guy posts

Ok, seems good so far.

then down in the comments, a 3rd party, someone I haven't seen before,

And the OP has a couple of replies

so far so good...

Then another guy throws the wrench into the machinery

and OP falls off the cliff

"I was all for standing up against pedophiles until I realized it might change an electoral outcome I favor."

Perhaps this can be one of those Republican moral elites that cuserounder thinks we need. Hey, your friend isn't perfect but look at how good his first impulse was until he realized he might be tangentially effected.

It's clearly to blame for debasing the Republican party's standards in a million ways. It should have been obvious to them where it would eventually lead (Trump, if not pedophilia), and when Trump ran it should have been clear that supporting him would lead to stuff like this (no crime matters if it's a Republican accused).

But who can fix this from the outside, and how?

I don't think I've celebrated any of it, and I've been critical of it. I think at this point in time, two things are clear:

A) Democrats, as the parties are aligned, cannot consistently win, or even compete, in large regions of the country.

B) Democrats can't police decency within the GOP with any success.

So, we need *someone* to tell them how deplorable they are who they might actually listen to. The alternative is to accept having 10-15 states always capable of giving us Roy Moore type candidates, accept having 2-3 of them in the Senate at any given time, and just live in a perpetual state of anger/depression/shock/whatever that shock turns into over it.

In other words, do you want to spend the next 10-15 years screaming at how bad they are while nobody who can do anything about it listens, or do you want to spend the next 10-15 years trying to leave wiggle room for someone in a leadership position that party to do something remotely approximating the right thing?

Or do you see an alternative that I don't?

I'm kinda surprised TRUMP hasn't tweeted a TOLD YA SO yet

RE: cuse. I don't think we scream at people. That's a false choice.

The left should state clearly what our priorities and values are and put forward our leaders to push our principles and criticize our opponents.

If that falls flat, don't strain around trying to find the least deplorable deplorable and thank him for his guts and courage for standing up to the dregs of his party. That just confuses people. The goal isn't to hector deplorables into being better people, it's to present and communicate clearly what our values are. Firm pats on the back for Mitt Romney for his brazen guts telling people not to vote for a ****ing pedophile is madness. We're not trying to get Mitt Romney elected as Senator of Alabama, Utah, or make him President in 2020 as a GOP protest candidate. We have a party and a movement of our people that aren't just slightly less horrible than pedophiles.

Unfortunately, we tend to suck at this. Tuesday gave me some hope we can do a better job of that in '18 and '20, in particular in competing in red areas and persuading certain types of previously Republican voters.

The fact that there hasn't been a concerted effort to paint Democrats as the party of values since "Grab em by the pussy," the party that is respectful of the military since Khan and the widow in Florida, and the party that believes in American rights and ideals since basically everything in the last year seems negligent to me.

We attack them, but don't create messaging that, for example, could reach any non-racist Christians.

I think we have plenty to gain politically from Romney speaking out on this, from Romney winning in Utah or from Romney primarying Trump. I'm not saying we should send him money or vote for him, but not attacking him on this seems fair/smart to me.

For sure, Romney is a great example (probably example 1A) of the elite, establishment, 1%er Republicans that made the deal with the devil to dog whistle at poor white Southern folks to get them to vote against their financial interests. He deserves blame for it, and hopefully we can get to a place where he (or someone prominent on that side) can be held accountable or acknowledge what was done.

But, I'm in favor of some small degree of morals existing on the right, and of having an opposition party that's a 6/10 on the scale of deplorability instead of 15/10. It makes for a less terrifying political future.

Last, but not least, wasting even 1% of any political debate with conservatives, of any TV time, of column inches, etc, on attacking Romney here seems like a fateful error. Anything related to this election should be spent entirely on Moore and anyone who defends Moore between now and the election. Let's not confuse them by attacking Romney.

That's my .02. I respect the other opinion from the left on this, I really do get it, I just tend to think more pragmatically in terms of results when it comes to politics.

tl;dr summary:

Less focus on deplorable redemption
More focus on communicating our values

Cheering on Mitt Romney's strong and gutsy "no molestation" message is celebrating literally the barest moral decency from the people who brought the sheep the wolves.

https://twitter.com/JeffFlake/status/928977419939201029

Come on, Jeff. Yes it is. Search your feelings. You know it to be true.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/henrygomez/...48#.xrlWxAqmrJ

Encouraging Republican infighting seems massively +EV to me. Less deplorable Republican leaders attacking trumpers can lead to lots of people staying home.

Attacking Romney and Flake and everyone who stands up to Trump just seems like a way to unite voters against liberals. Let them focus on each other, not the " virtue signaling libs "

We can do that while still having strong messages. Just sit it out, and let them fight. But attacking Romney seems -ev.

I like the idea that this is a Democrat hitjob, like the Democratic Party ever, ever, ever would think of concocting a child abuse allegation on the eve of a race where they were 6 points behind. The Democratic Party would just write off the race and try and find some white collar suburb to contest.

all this tells me is that 55% of alabama men want to **** children

So in that thread, my friend who is friends with this guy posts this

That's the best utilization of that meme yet.

Anyway I hope no one confuses this for making light of molesting someone but you gotta admit it's disturbing that up until yesterday, Moore is a prohibitive favorite despite saying homosexuality should be criminalized, opposes Muslims from serving in public office, and says kneeling NFL players violate federal law, and THIS is the thing that might disqualify him.

It's like Trump's Access Hollywood tapes moment. I really have no interest in debating whether protecting children from sexual predation is a higher social value than say the rights of gay people to live without fear of persecution or the authoritarian nature of religious tests for office, but it's quite strange where people draw the line. That is to say, Roy Moore has literally been showing himself as a truly horrible human on literally any measure. That he's ALSO a molester is shocking but, not really? It just goes to show how much we've normalized demonizing gay people and all of the other **** Roy Moore is infamous for, how much that is just part of the broadly acceptable political spectrum. Thank goodness molesting kids remains a third rail, but slightly disquieting it's like the only one left. If it even is.

Nah, they'd ignore that race, ignore the other suburbs race as well, and pump all their $$ into Diane Feinstein winning her Senate runoff against another Democrat.

It's an incremental third rail for a relatively small group of voters. Most people who already were planning to vote for Doug Jones hit the third rail with Roy Moore a long time ago. And most people who were planning to vote for Moore will never hit it, no matter what.

My gut sense is that the number of voters who will switch from Moore to Jones is vanishingly small. If you planned to vote for Moore a month ago, then you almost certainly are incapable of voting for a Democrat. Some Moore voters surely will stay home. The only question is how many.

If Moore wins, then the only conclusion is that no set of conditions exists in which a Democrat can win a Senate seat in Alabama. The Republicans will never have a less attractive candidate than Moore, and the Democrats will rarely put up a better candidate than Jones.

I also think it's quite possible that Moore drops in the polls, but outperforms them significantly. I think there's a subset of people that won't say on the phone, "Yeah, I'm voting for the child molester," but when they get in the voting booth, they'll freeze up and rationalize it to avoid voting for a liberal.

Yeah I've lost my faith in polls. I never actually believed in them that much, but they've been wildly inaccurate in the age of trumpism. Not just in favor of them, they were way off in VA as well. Aren't most still done by landlines? I've never been called for a poll ever, so they probably don't even talk to the 18-35 year old voters.

Wat. Try reading again, I wasn't talking about a plurality.

And it's a picture of Broaddrick, who made the claim, then recanted it, only to re-claim when Trump came calling.

Moore I think will drop out amid pressure from the party. Evidently it is too late to insert someone else such as Strange on the ticket for example. According to Foxnews (so it probably is true if it's bad for GOP) the only options if he drops are for Kay Ivey to either leave the seat vacant til 11/18 or appoint Jones til then. As a woman she will be in a real tough spot there

Why do you think this?

Moore and the party establishment don't exactly see eye-to-eye. Pretty much any Republican with any name recognition endorsed Luther Strange in the primary. Moore owes the Republican Party NOTHING.