A Detestable Defense

Even as national Republicans strongly pressed Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore to quit the race, his staunchest defenders doubled down in dismissing sexual-harassment allegations against him. Sadly, the lengths to which some are going to defend Moore are downright grotesque. And they’re damaging the entire Republican Party in the process.

Moore stands accused by several women of sexual touching and kissing back when he was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney and they were teenagers — one only 14 at the time. He’s denying the allegations, branding them Democratic-inspired lies.

But his worst defenders denying the accusers but rather dismissing the alleged misconduct as minor.

State Auditor Jim Zeigler, for one, considers Moore’s behavior “not a big deal” and bizarrely likened it to Joseph and Mary in the New Testament. “There’s nothing immoral or illegal here,” he said.

Marion County GOP chairman David Hall called it irrelevant, noting that “she’s not saying anything happened other than that they kissed.” (Again, she was 14.)

And Geneva County chairman Riley Seibenhener declared: “Other than being with an underage person, he didn’t really force himself ” on her.

Actually, the then-youngest accuser said, Moore took her home, partly undressed her, touched her sexually and tried to get her to reciprocate.

Which is why the GOP’s Senate campaign wing on Friday severed its fundraising relationship with Moore’s campaign.

At this point Moore’s defenders are all Alabama Republicans or eccentrics like the folks at Breitbart (whose late founder, ironically, exposed Anthony Weiner’s sexting with young girls).

The candidate himself refuses to acknowledge the demands of many leading Republicans, including President Trump, that he quit the race.

That leaves it to Yellowhammer State voters to decide Roy Moore’s fate — but with what would normally be a safe GOP seat increasingly looking like one that Alabama Republicans deserve to lose.