Josh Barro/Business Insider:
Maybe Democrats are doing the right thing for political reasons: They hope to make Republicans look bad for not holding their own accused sexual harassers and abusers accountable, up to and including the president. That's fine. The whole point of democracy as a political system is it's supposed to align lawmakers' crude self interest with the public interest.
"You're just trying to show you're better than the other party so you can win an election" is how it's supposed to work.
Jennifer Rubin/WaPo:
Don’t celebrate Franken’s disgrace. And don’t let Trump and Moore off the hook.
Second, good people do bad things, and bad people do bad things. They both should be punished. However, the former is cause for sadness and regret but not for clemency. Franken should go, but I find no joy in seeing him disgraced. We should be prepared for people we like, admire and respect to be laid low by the rolling thunder of the backlash against sexual harassers. Some will insist they played by one set of rules in one profession and now are being held to another. That ignores a central point: There must be a universal standard for decency. The fact that they did not recognize it at the time does not mean they should get off the hook now.
If the whole Franken episode leaves you sad and/or disgusted, you’re in good company. Now that has to be turned into righteous anger to remove other, more serious alleged sexual predators.
Ford Vox/Stat:
I’m a brain specialist. I think Trump should be tested for a degenerative brain disease
As the president’s demeanor and unusual decisions raise the potential for military conflict in two regions of the world, the questions surrounding his mental competence have become urgent and demand investigation.
Until now, most of the focus has been on the president’s psychology. It’s now time to think of the president’s neurology — and the possibility of an organic brain disorder.
Andy Barr was a Franken speechwriter, great insight. Great suggestions. And here‘s follow-up, from Business Insider:
Democrats are setting themselves up perfectly to pummel Republicans on sexual harassment in 2018
'There's no winning with Roy Moore'
While the Republican National Committee reversed its stance on Moore in recent days, deciding to support him again, many top Republicans are escalating their opposition to Moore and to the party's protection of alleged abusers.
Breaking with House Speaker Paul Ryan, who has dodged questions about Farenthold, Rep. Steve Stivers, the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, suggested on Thursday that Farenthold should reconsider running for office again.
"I think the filing deadline hasn't happened in Texas and Blake Farenthold has some thinking to do about whether he wants to run for reelection or not," Stivers told Business Insider, adding that the GOP needs to "push folks where there's serious allegations or proven allegations aside."
"We have zero tolerance for that kind of behavior and we’ve made that clear," Stivers said.
David Brooks/NY Times:
The G.O.P. Is Rotting
Today’s tax cuts have no bipartisan support. They have no intellectual grounding, no body of supporting evidence. They do not respond to the central crisis of our time. They have no vision of the common good, except that Republican donors should get more money and Democratic donors should have less.
The rot afflicting the G.O.P. is comprehensive — moral, intellectual, political and reputational. More and more former Republicans wake up every day and realize: “I’m homeless. I’m politically homeless.”
Mike Gerson/WaPo:
Republicans are failing the Roy Moore test
The Moore test has exposed corrupt arguments. All those who say “Let the voters of Alabama decide” are applying popular sovereignty to a matter of basic morality. Abraham Lincoln would not be amused. If Republicans have any remaining ties to the great man, they will not count votes when fundamental principles are at stake. We do not let the people decide on the rights of minorities. And the people do not decide on the rules of morality.
And the Moore test has exposed corrupt institutions. The basic argument here — that ethics can be ignored in the process of doing great work in the world — is precisely what brings institutions into disrepute. The Catholic Church covered up sexual predation on the justification that it was otherwise doing great work in the world. Some evangelical Christians are now publicly playing down credible charges of sexual predation for the same reason. And they are doing tremendous damage to the reputation of the Christian church in the process.
In the above Storify, Nancy French experienced the bigotry of the Moore people first hand while stumping for Mitt Romney.
Kurt Bardella/USA Today:
Roy Moore is the last straw, you can now call me a Democrat
This is not a party I want to be associated with any longer.
This is not a party that is trustworthy enough to protect innocent children from sexual predators.
The more time I spent on my own, with no clients to defend, the more I came to realize that Republican positions on the most pressing challenges facing our society were out of alignment with what I believed. This is a party that constantly buries its head in the sand on climate change, racial profiling, guns, LGBTQ equality, income inequality, food insecurity, paid family leave and the treatment of women.
The embrace of Moore by the Republican Party’s top “leadership” is all the proof you need to know that this is a party that no longer stands for anything.
I believe that the Democratic Party will do more to create equality in America than the Republican Party ever will.
Politico on how to beat Roy Moore:
How black voters respond to Jones’ all-out courting could decide the election Tuesday — and no one knows how well it has worked.
“I haven't talked to anyone who really has a clue how that's going to shakeout this go-around because not only are you talking about certain historical demographic trends and expectations, you're talking about enthusiasm,” said Vance. “I wish I could answer that question, but I can't, because I think the bottom line is there is no way to know.”
HuffPost:
A new national Pew Research Center poll released Thursday shows that President Donald Trump’s approval rating is declining among demographic groups that previously gave him relatively high numbers, particularly among evangelicals.
According to Pew, Trump’s approval rating among white evangelical Protestants dropped 17 percentage points from February to December, down from 78 percent to 61 percent. Eighty-one percent of white evangelical voters backed Trump in the 2016 presidential election, NPR reported.
Though the decline was not as steep, Trump’s approval rating also dropped among adults 50 and older (from 47 percent to 38 percent) as well as among whites (49 percent to 41 percent). As Axios noted, Trump’s approval rating had either remained the same or dropped among every demographic group Pew polled.