Haunted by Hastert’s ghost

In the moments when they deign to explain their support for abhorrent Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, who stands credibly accused of having preyed on girls as young as 14, President Trump and other Republicans coat their amoral opportunism in a patina of reason. “Why did these women only come forward now?” they ask, pointing out that Moore, a public figure in Alabama for decades, has only recently been accused of offenses dating back to the 1980s.

Then they resume attacking the character and credibility of people whose only crime has been daring to tell the truth about a man who tried to take advantage of them.

For Republicans especially, this assertion reeks of most cynical forced amnesia. It was just two years ago that one of the biggest names in the party was outed as a serial child molester. And his crimes only came to light years after the fact.

Denny Hastert was, between 1999 and 2007, the speaker of the House — the longest-serving Republican speaker in American history.

And after all this service, in 2015, in one of the most stunning and painful episodes for the modern GOP, he was brought low.

An FBI probe into suspicious banking withdrawals revealed he had paid hush money to a man claiming to have been sexually abused by the then-high school wrestling coach in the 1960s and 70s. Digging revealed that Hastert had paid his victim some $1.7 million over the years.

Then it came out that Hastert had abused at least four teenage boys during his coaching days — who were then cowed into silence, as so many victims are, by guilt and fear and intimidation and the reasonable desire to reclaim their lives.

Despite Illinois’ statute of limitations on child sexual abuse having long expired, Hastert was sentenced to 16 months in prison for violating federal banking laws, and forced to publicly admit the reason for the hush money.

This was a man elected to three terms in the state House of Representatives, then to 11 terms in the U.S. House. Who was in the national spotlight for eight years.

If Republicans were capable of even a shred of self-awareness, they would remember this searing episode — the terrible crimes Hastert committed, the secrets his victims carried around for decades — and accept the detailed and credible accounts offered by Moore’s accusers.

They are beyond self-reflection. They are beyond shame.