From 'somber' to 'apoplectic,' Roy Moore raises new terror for Republicans

If Tuesday night’s election results made Republicans fear becoming a minority in the new Congress in 2019, Thursday’s allegations against Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore raised a new concern: the prospect of seeing the party’s razor-thin Senate majority reduced to 51-49 much sooner.

Just days after a series of demoralizing election results, Republicans were rocked by reports that Moore pursued inappropriate relationships with girls as young as 14 while an Alabama district attorney in his 30s. Moore, a former state supreme court chief justice, is now 70.

Moore already carried baggage from numerous controversial pronouncements on religious and social issues that his would-be GOP colleagues in the Senate were reluctant to defend. Many Republicans — including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin — said Moore should step aside as a candidate if the allegations are true; a few did not even use that qualifier.

But Moore has his defenders. Some dispute the veracity of the accusations by the four women who came forward. (Moore himself called the allegations “fake news.”) Alabama’s state auditor invoked Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Joseph in support of Moore. The firestorm became the latest rift between President Trump’s most fervent supporters and “Never Trump” conservatives. While Trump did not endorse Moore in Alabama’s Republican Senate primary, instead backing appointed incumbent Sen. Luther Strange, many of his populist backers did.

Chief among them was former top White House strategist Steve Bannon, who swiftly compared the bombshell to the “Access Hollywood” tape that nearly derailed Trump’s presidential campaign. That recording featured Trump engaging in lewd talk about women and bragging about his sexual conquests.