The Atlantic

The Republican Party Slinks Back to Roy Moore

A month after the first allegations of sexual misconduct against the U.S. Senate hopeful in Alabama, the GOP steps down from the moral high ground.
Source: Brynn Anderson / AP

The British journalist and sometime-politician Winston Churchill supposedly once said that Americans, having exhausted all alternatives, will do the right thing. If Churchill were writing today, he might offer a parallel formulation: The Republican Party, having exhausted all other alternatives, will do the politically expedient thing—an axiom demonstrated vividly over the last couple days in the GOP’s decision to support U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore in Alabama after all.

On Monday, President Trump made explicit what he had long made clear in practice: , despite multiple allegations of sexual misconduct involving teenage girls. Later in the evening, the Republican National Committee announced it would reopen the money pipeline to Alabama it had shut off when the party at large cut Moore loose—or so it

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