The reporting on this is generally pretty terrible.

He was looking for a 'surrogate mother' and offering to impregnate his staff sexually?

I mean, come the **** on. I realize we're all on a "man the right wing is so deep into bad faith arguments, these idiots have no shame" but boy howdy if this isn't just a canonical example. Can't we all agree "hey babe, let's have sex, have my babies, I'll pay you millions" is just a set of bad pick up lines for old rich bozos, not a genuine offer to be a surrogate ****ing mother? I mean Franks was gonna auto-abort any spawn he created. Why are reporters buying into this whole surrogate mother shenanigans? Dude was trying to get laid and sexually harassing his staff. Even though this story is obviously embarrassing to the point of Franks having to resign, it's still charitable by making it seem like this dude was genuinely interested in starting a family and just had a bad idea about how to get there, instead of the reality: Trent Franks desperately wanted to **** the women that worked for him and thought that "have my Christian babies" bull**** might work. Instead of "Franks accused of offering money to potential surrogate mothers" isn't the REAL headline "Trent Fanks sexually harassed his staff, had dumbest of spiel to try to get them into bed."

I would actually argue this story is MORE embarrassing to him than if he had just hit on them and told them he wanted to sleep with them. Like, if a man walked up to a coworker, or a random woman and said, "I want to have sex with you," or walked up to her and said, "I want you to have my baby."

I think the second is worse... I think it's creepier. I don't think they're doing him any favors, except maybe with his evangelical base... who of course would believe anything he said anyway.

I was referring to Tiny Dupuy calling a hand around a waist “groping her”, maybe pay attention to stories before you comment and you won’t look dense.

Yeah, I don't think the whole carrying a child thing is a part of the usual rich old guy sexual proposition routine.

Franks has two kids via surrogate at present.

I still think it's just a bad, pretensive story Franks is telling. Obviously most people will assume he's just a creep but I'm convinced plenty of low awareness types are reading the headlines like Franks is a sympathetic wannabe father with some infertility problems who is bumbling around trying to have a baby, instead of the reality buried like 3 paragraphs deep, which is he's just trying to **** his staff, full stop. Performative bumbling with some vaguely sympathetic story is like one of the main tools in the Sexual Harassment Toolbox: oh heavens no I wasn't making propositions of staff for sex, it was purely my non sexual procreative desires that bizarrely manifested as an insistence my coworker conceive our child naturally via intercourse.

I think you at least have to give him points for creativity. Franks as the good Christian man trying to promote a culture of life and do his quiverfull thing despite his struggle with infertility is a spin I've never heard before.

Honestly, it's so bizarre that I'm inclined to believe that he really was genuinely interested in having someone be a surrogate mother and maybe getting a little action from the secretary was a side bonus. Obviously, it's completely inappropriate and gross either way.

Maybe. But believing especially stupid, nonsensical or bizarre bumbling is how The Bumbling Style wins. 'There's no way this guy is this dumb, he's not exactly wholly a predator, this is so dumb and bizarre...maybe we have to assume he's just naive and bumbling' is a conclusion greatly servile to the predator's side of it. They'll take whatever sanctuary they can manufacture and 'poor thing, just wants a baby' is good enough.

Maybe you're savvy enough not to give him that cover either way but I suspect this works on alot of people because the rest of us drop it and don't stigamatize this enough because we give the Bumblers that little inch of plausibility.

The tell is like the vast quantity of money, too, and the apparent requests to actually **** that guy to have his kid. There is no, absolutely no Biblical justification for that whole sequence of a married man offering huge sums of money to his coworkers to have sex with him and procreate outside of a tortured, bad faith readings of the Bible used by pervs to get laid.

A true bumbler who just wanted a kid and had some Biblically based opposition to artificial insemination would never, ever arrive on that specific outcome and have their desires manifest just like that. Instead, a creep who wants to **** his staff but needs a story to tell naive his Christian supporters and network and try to ply sex out of his staff via their potential guilt and misplaced desire to help that guy would arrive on exactly that and other crazy ****.

tl;dr summary: Frank's bizarre justification should give you less reason to think he wanted anything other than sex. It's a Black Swan of Stupid because the purported story is obviously fraud.

Only way this story could be more perfect is if it comes out he had a vasectomy.

And did he have sex with the mother in both cases?

Never underestimate the Bible. I'm pretty sure Abraham's infertile wife send him off with her Egyptian slave Hagar so he could have children and later regretted it and drove her and the kid, Ishmael, off and that's where Islam comes from. Something along those lines.

Yeah, what’s funny is that this story was used by Joseph Smith and others to justify taking multiple wives. But the people against that were like “no no no....all this story says it’s that’s it ok to get your wife’s approval to have sex with women you employ/own for the purposes of having kids”.

Dunno, but it's only one case. Twins.

If you think Moore is terrible but gotta fall on the sword to defend franken, you may be a partisan slappy. Can't they both be bad?

Of course they're both bad, good riddance to Franken. Moore is quite a bit worse, though.

My prediction is that Moore is elected (duh) and then another accusation comes out and McConnell and those other scumbags work to get him removed or resigned before the midterms.

What though? He's a pedophile who got banned from a mall because he was trolling around too many underage girls who has multiple credible accusations of underage molestation at minimum. The GOP already tried to sink him once even trump tweeted in favour of his opponent and he still won. What makes him resign iyo?

Seems easier just to ignore him.

Don't see how that will be possible. Won't they need his vote on any close legislation for at least ~2 years?

I don't think they plan on passing any major legislation on partisan lines the next couple years. After taxes, there isn't really anything they can do without dems anyway.

Oh, it won't be anything more credible than what's already come out. I guess I'm saying that the GOP decided that it would be worth taking their lumps for a week or two and support him for the election. Then, once he's in, they will jump at any chance to remove him for someone they like more, while claiming some moral high ground, and probably doing some kind of retcon elision of all of their support.

Of course, this hinges on them thinking that Moore could be any kind of an anchor on their 2018 chances.

Obviously, they can't make him resign, right? But they can kick him out? Or, if the ethics committee can come up with a finding in time for them to boot him and look good doing it leading up to the election, they'll jump at that option.

And even if Moore is hurting them, they may decide that joining together with dems and going against the president to remove him is worse.

While I'm sure there are some who hold this view, it's certainly not the main stream view in the democratic party. For example, Franken resigned as a result of pressure from his party.

Also, Roy Moore's sexual crimes are so much worse. And Roy more is a dreadful human being. Four random awful Roy Moore facts:

-has repeatedly claimed President Obama is a non-american muslim
-has said he agrees with Putin that America is a source of evil (because of gay marriage)
-thinks muslims shouldn't be allowed to serve in congress
-has said America was better off during slavery (because families were closer apparently. Note: families of slaves were constantly torn apart in property transactions, because people were property back then).

They got Chuck Shumer too???

Not so fast my friend!

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/pol...m_npd_nn_tw_ma