The allegations reported this week about Florida Republican Party Chairman Christian Ziegler and his wife, “Moms for Liberty” co-founder Bridget Ziegler, are salacious enough to sufficiently occupy the press for weeks. A three-way relationship involving a couple of the so-called morality police of the GOP goes badly south, ending up in a rape allegation against Christian Ziegler: OK, that’s bad. Real bad.
And as reported by Lori Rozsa and Will Oremus, writing Saturday for The Washington Post, it gets even worse.
On Oct. 2, the woman had agreed to have a sexual encounter with Ziegler that was to include his wife, Bridget, the affidavit says. But when the woman learned that Bridget couldn’t make it, she changed her mind and canceled. When Ziegler told her in one message that his wife was no longer available, she replied, “Sorry I was mostly in for her,” she said in a message, according to the affidavit.
According to the affidavit, the woman told Sarasota police that Ziegler then showed up at her apartment uninvited and raped her. The woman reported the alleged assault to police two days later, and a rape kit was done at a Sarasota hospital, the affidavit states.
So, according to the affidavit, the entire underpinning of “Mom’s for Liberty” — the self-appointed moral scolds accusing school boards nationwide of allowing the “sexualization” of children via books about gender and sexual orientation (for allegedly “promoting” bisexuality, among other things) — is probably disgraced for good, as it should have been long ago.
Got it.
But I’m also really interested in the reaction of the rest of Florida’s Republican Party.
As Rozsa and Oremus report:
“It’s certainly deeply, deeply troubling,” said state Rep. Spencer Roach, a member of the Florida GOP executive committee. “I would describe this as just an absolute body blow to the Republican Party. Everyone that I’ve talked to about this is in an absolute tailspin.”
[***]
“They have held themselves out to be paragons of the Christian conservative family values, a prototype,” Roach said. “And I think there’s a very heavy sense of betrayal, certainly within the Republican Party.”
OK Republicans, help me understand here. Your party’s leader, Donald Trump, is a man who has been judicially adjudged as committing the rape of E. Jean Carroll. That’s not an allegation, it’s a judicial determination. He’s also been accused by 26 women of sexual assault, harassment and battery as well.
How is this qualitatively — or “morally,” if you prefer — any different than what Ziegler has allegedly done? Do your fellow party members feel a “heavy sense of betrayal” about Trump’s alleged actions? Are they in “an absolute tailspin” about those charges? Why or why not?
What say you, Florida Republicans?
