Moore needs to get gone

Mitt Romney got it exactly right yesterday. Innocent until proven guilty is for criminal convictions — not elections. Republican Roy Moore of Alabama, who stands credibly accused of initiating a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old girl when he was 32, ought to do the right thing for his party and his state and drop his campaign for the U.S. Senate.

Elections, of course, ought to be up to the voters. If the people of Alabama want a man like Moore to represent them in Washington, well, it’s tempting to say they’ll get what they deserve.

But there are universal standards that ought to be upheld by those who serve in our nation’s most important institutions. Moore violated those legal, ethical and moral standards long before the latest allegations about his personal conduct. He was twice removed from the Alabama Supreme Court, once for defying a federal court order to remove a statue of the Ten Commandments from a judicial building, once for ordering judges to continue enforcing a ban on gay marriage even after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional.

This week’s revelations are deeply disturbing. Moore vehemently denies the claims reported in The Washington Post, and many Republicans have conditioned their criticism of him with the disclaimer, “if it’s true.”

Fair enough — but we go back to what Romney said. When Moore won the primary in September we called him “a throwback to a dark age and a dark time” and that may turn out to be the nicest thing we can say about him. He can claim victimhood if he wants, but his continuing presence in the race is ruinous to his party and an embarrassment to his state. He should go.