Daily Beast:
Steve Bannon And Allies Have Second Thoughts About Roy Moore, Sources Say
Team Breitbart was defiant at first that the charges were BS. But even their resolve is starting to wane.
Several of Bannon’s most trusted allies have already told him that it would be “insane,” as one put it, to believe at this point that the Moore accusations are baseless. They have also warned that the time is rapidly approaching when he would have to disavow Moore before it appeared as though he was simply caving to political pressure. (Critics of Bannon, of course, argue he should never have backed Moore in the first place.)
Brendan Nyhan from Sept/Oct:
One of the crucial lessons of the past year, turns out, is just how much of American politics is governed not by written law, but by norms like these. For instance, the president isn’t required to divest himself of his businesses, but previous occupants of the White House have followed this tradition. Carter even put his peanut farminto a blind trust to avoid conflicts of interest. By contrast, Trump handed the reins to his sons, maintaining the rights to directly extract profits from the trust that controls his business empire. It’s not illegal, but before this year, it was a line no modern president had crossed.
Social scientists have long understood the importance of norms—the unwritten rules and conventions that shape political behavior—but our political system has largely taken them for granted. As a result, we have been slow to recognize how vulnerable these informal constraints on power are to someone who refuses to follow rules that everyone else respects.
Trump’s assault on norms started during the campaign, when he encouraged violence among his supporters, attacked the ethnicity of a federal judge (a double norm violation) and called for the imprisonment of his opponent. Once he was elected, many observers assumed this pattern would cease: Surely there are constraints on this kind of behavior from the president.
Keep that in mind. Shared values and norms matter. For example, when you look at Alabama the norm of not voting for predators and child molesters will, in the end, win out (I believe).
HuffPost:
GOP Senators Believe Roy Moore’s Accusers But Not Donald Trump’s
They have no idea why and don’t want to talk about it.
David A Hopkins/Honest Graft:
What Matters for Moore Is the View from Alabama, Not Washington
The
accelerating litany of
serious accusations against U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama has prompted incumbent Republican senators to denounce and distance themselves from their party's embattled nominee over the past few days. Reactions within the chamber that Moore seeks to join next month have been uniformly harsh, ranging from the
withdrawal of previous endorsements to calls for Moore to be
immediately expelled from the Senate if he were to win the December 12 election.
Reporters are busy this week
chasing down reluctant Republicans in Capitol hallways to
put them on record about the Moore situation, revealing what appears to be a rough consensus that (a) Moore should drop out of the race and (b) a more suitable Republican candidate should mount a write-in campaign regardless of whether he does drop out.
This is all perfectly newsworthy, but not likely to matter too much in terms of what happens from here. Moore has no particular reason to listen to what Washington Republicans say. If he thought that he couldn't win despite their opposition, he might consider withdrawing to avoid a humiliating defeat—but why would he think that? After all, Moore defeated the appointed incumbent, Luther Strange, by nine points in the Republican primary runoff even though Strange enjoyed the backing of virtually all of the party's national elected leadership.
Cook Political Report:
So, yes, this race is a hot mess that is likely to get messier between now and December 12. And, the circumstances of a special election and the allegations against Moore combine to create as much uncertainty as we’ve seen in a Senate race since 2000 when Democratic Gov. Mel Carnahan was on the ballot despite his death in a plane crash three weeks before the election. The contest moves to Toss Up, as it is the only appropriate way of describing this uncertainty. Stay tuned.
Nationally:
Ron Brownstein/CNN:
GOP tax plans could fuel the suburban revolt against Trump
But the epicenter of last Tuesday's earthquake was northern Virginia. The result from the prosperous, growing, diverse and well-educated suburbs outside Washington, DC, clearly signaled that suburban voters unhappy with Trump were willing to express their discontent by voting against other Republicans on the ballot. In fact, the results signaled that Trump's weaker performance in 2016 than previous Republican nominees in well-educated suburbs around major cities may be a new normal for other GOP candidates so long as Trump's racially infused nationalism is defining the party.
Max Boot/Foreign Policy:
Trump’s Worst Trip Ever. Until His Next One.
A look back at the American president’s rollercoaster ride through Asia.
The president’s conduct in Beijing serves as a reminder that bullies are also cowards. Trump is aggressive in confronting those weaker than he is — Gold Star parents, for example, or journalists — but when confronted with a true tough guy like Xi or Putin, he cowers and simpers.
Only when Trump arrived at his next stop, in Vietnam, did he go back to tough talk on trade. He delivered his familiar “America First” message, telling the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, “We are not going to let the United States be taken advantage of anymore. I am always going to put America first, the same way I expect all of you in this room to put your countries first.”
It does not seem to occur to Trump that his go-it-alone message is at odds with his attempts to mobilize other countries, China in particular, against North Korea. Such unilateralist talk also leads other country to conclude that they can no longer count on the United States, and therefore they must somehow go their own way. Thus America’s Pacific allies are moving ahead with the Trans-Pacific Partnership minus the United States, Trump having pulled out of this important trade treaty at the start of his presidency.
Kathryn Brightbill/LA Times:
Roy Moore's alleged pursuit of a young girl is the symptom of a larger problem in evangelical circles
One popular courtship story that was told and retold in home-school circles during the 1990s was that of Matthew and Maranatha Chapman, who turned their history into a successful career promoting young marriage. Most audiences, however, didn’t realize just how young the Chapmans had in mind until the site Homeschoolers Anonymous and the blogger Libby Anne revealed that Matthew was 27 and Maranatha was 15 when they married. Libby Anne also drew mainstream attention to Matthew Chapman’s writings, in which he argued that parents should consider marriage for their daughters in their “middle-teens.” At that point the Chapmans stopped receiving quite so many speaking invitations.
I posted the tweet storm version, but for those of you who prefer narrative form, here it is.
WaPo:
At the very least, Sessions's consistent memory lapses before Congress don't help the president's public image. A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found 49 percent of Americans think it is likely Trump committed a crime in connection with possible Russia meddling, although more say this view is based on suspicion rather than evidence.