Roy Moore selective outrage

[StCyril]

I've never been a fan of Roy Moore. Not particularly fond of the type of Republican who votes for him, or their apologia over him.

That being said, how can Democrats differentiate their outrage over the fact that Roy Moore was nominated for the Senate, against their apologia over not only nominating, but electing to office several times and even considering a presidential run, for a man who straight-up got away with murder for my own hometown of Massachusetts.

I'm speaking of the late and known philanderer Ted Kennedy.

[aviewaskewed]

Three things I think:

1. Hyper partisanship

2. As much as it ruffles people to say, it is just simply true: Times were different then. Attitudes were different, and people felt differently about Kennedy which gets us to...

3. Kennedy was fighting for very Liberal causes that the people of Massachussets wanted. They were willing to look the other way at indiscretions to get the outcomes legislatively they wanted (and it is undeniable Kennedy was very effective in his role).

This is not just something that effects American Politics. You just had Cardinal Bernard Law laid to rest with full honors in the Vatican (he was head of The Boston Archdiocese and covered up a lot of the abuse there. When this came out he was whisked to the Vatican and there are those still lamenting that one scandal ruined a promising career and kept him from doing more). This is a tricky conversation that we are going to continually have ad infinitum: What sort of behaviors and indiscretions are a "point of no return" for someone who serves in a position of power? People are always going to come to different conclusions, for different reasons, and a lot of times those reasons are going to be crappy and hypocritical.

[EdyKel]

As @aviewaskewed pointed out, they were different times. The parties were closer than they were today, and weren't hunkered down by hyper feminism and hyper anti-feminism as they are now. If anything, this type of behavior was a lot more accepted back then, with a lot more of it going on. Of course, it was a lot easier to hush this stuff up, since any act of sexual groping, or harassment, can be shouted out to every corner of the country in a matter of seconds through the net.

I know you are just looking to find some hypocrisy to underscore the left with, but your comparison with Ted Kennedy falls kinda flat. Roy Moore, and Ted Kennedy, were part of an era that accepted this type of behavior - and, apparently, many of Moore's supporters still do. Democrats, in response to this, to show that they take this stuff serious, have forced Al Franklin, and John Conyers, to step down from Congress in the last month, with calls for Ruben Kihuen, of Nevada, to do the same - though he won't seek reelection. It sounds like Democrats are cleaning house of any member who are accused of allegedly sexual assaulting, groping, or having affairs, with the opposite sex, in an effort to differentiate themselves from Republicans, who have a hard time denouncing this stuff.

And I think Ted Kennedy was more known for his sexual misconduct (along with with his brother) than the accidental death of a women in a car accident.

[orangebomb]

Roy Moore is a repugnant person with a history of blatant refusal of authority that isn’t based on Evangelicalism or an outdated worldview that made most of the Republican establishment cringe with disapproval. The biggest difference between him and Ted Kennedy and Al Franken is that in the former, it was in a time sexual assault was tolerated to an extent, (and considering that the Kennedys weren’t exactly the most chaste family out there) and in the latter, he confessed to his misgivings and resigned, which allowed him to save face.

That’s not to say that I support or condone their behavior in any way, but when you compare their respective incidents and response to them, there is a reason why there is a level of outrage that Roy Moore has gotten compared to Kennedy and Franken has. I can acknowledge that there are going to be some double standards with certain politicans now and in the future, but this is something that you can’t always take in a vacuum, especially when you have someone like a Roy Moore who is clearly unfit for public office, and that’s not including his sexual misconduct.

[StCyril]

So... our justification for a double standard and hypocrisy is because it was a different time?

I don't recall murder ever being acceptable, and when you boil it down that's essentially pretty much all that Kennedy is guilty of. Let's face it the only reason he got away with it was because of his name.

[EdyKel]

At 12/22/17 07:47 PM, StCyril wrote: So... our justification for a double standard and hypocrisy is because it was a different time?

I don't recall murder ever being acceptable, and when you boil it down that's essentially pretty much all that Kennedy is guilty of. Let's face it the only reason he got away with it was because of his name.

I kinda suspected that you would try this shit. I mean, first, your whole argument was bizarre, to say the least. I mean, Ted has been dead and buried for about 6 years, now, and you are trying to compare him with Moore, when there are better examples of double standards, and justifications for immoral deeds by the left, especially over sexual misconduct. Yet, you are trying to stick the left with something even more egregiousness than sexual misconduct, and claiming that a conspiracy theory that the left supported Ted over Murder, even though it was officially called an accident a car accident.

Have you fallen so far down the rabbit hole that your are so desperate to use conspiracy theories to create an argument against the left?

[aviewaskewed]

At 12/22/17 07:47 PM, StCyril wrote: I don't recall murder ever being acceptable, and when you boil it down that's essentially pretty much all that Kennedy is guilty of. Let's face it the only reason he got away with it was because of his name.

Not exactly no. Murder is all about intent, i.e. "did Ted at any point in the situation decide 'I am ending this person's life'"? I think more then likely it could be classified as manslaughter. It's also beyond question this didn't ruin Teddy because he last name was Kennedy and he was the last hope of the Democratic Party to put a Kennedy in the White House and ride the myth making of Camelot. If you doubt that, congrats, you've become the partisan of the Left that you don't like on the Right. Just because you tend to articulate better doesn't make you better.

All that said, you are barking up the wrong tree a bit here. If you're best shot is to talk about a Senator who's been dead for 6 years, whose worst indiscretion was 30 or 40 years ago, because when you look for an equivalent to Roy Moore on the Left you can't find it because:

1. No one is being accused of having committed pedarist sexual assault. Or attempted pedarist sexual assault.

2. Anyone who is being accused of any kind of sexual misconduct is being made to publicly resign and except shame (you're also missing some really salient arguments that there are less high profile Republicans quietly stepping down before their scandals in this arena blow up)

Look, only an idiot says "awful things aren't always awful" or "crimes for one, aren't always crime for another". Awful is awful, crime is crime. But here's the thing, it is entirely possible to look at two awful things in the very same realm and say "well, that seems more awful to me".

Personal example? Al Franken and Roy Moore both did a disgusting thing to me that by no means they should have been doing. But because of Roy Moore's choice of victim, I find his actions to be worse and more reprehensible.

[Kwing]

I don't like Republicans either but I can't help but be skeptical about scandals involving politicians, probably because the chance of them being engineered to tear someone down is astronomically higher than the instance of false allegations in any other field. There are a lot of people with a lot of money and a lot to gain from ending a political career. Evidence or no evidence, I can't help being really suspicious.

[StCyril]

At 12/26/17 12:49 AM, Sause wrote: Especially when scandals pop up right around election time.

Yeah that always irked me a little...