[continued from previous message]   
      
   guided her hand to touch him over his underwear.”   
      
   Initially, Republicans met the allegations – which Moore denies – with the   
   kind of response one would expect from a responsible major party. The   
   Republican National Committee pulled its support from the campaign, and   
   Republican leaders including Republican party chairwoman Ronna Romney   
   McDaniel and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell called on Moore to   
   step aside. Then, about a month after the allegations broke, Trump   
   officially endorsed Moore by tweet. And, on the very same day, the   
   Republican National Committee recommitted itself to the Moore campaign.   
   “The RNC is the political arm of the president,” a senior RNC official   
   explained, “and we support the president.”   
      
   This is worth repeating. In 2017, the Republican party now babbling   
   nonsense about public schools and LGBTQ people grooming children for   
   sexual abuse ?– the party that spent the past week in the Senate arguing   
   that Democrats are soft on pedophiles ?– officially backed a credibly   
   accused child molester for election to that very body. If the Republican   
   National Committee had gotten its way, there’s a chance we would have   
   spent the past week hearing Roy Moore opine on Jackson’s ethical   
   qualifications. It’s a mercy of sorts that we heard instead from the likes   
   of Hawley who, as the White House noted earlier this month, refused to say   
   whether he’d vote for Moore during his own campaign.   
      
   The Republican party’s ambivalence on child abuse extends beyond pure   
   politics and the protection of accused politicians. Nearly 300,000   
   children between the ages of 15 to 17 were married in the United States   
   between 2000 and 2018. An estimated 60,000 of them were below the age of   
   sexual consent in their respective states; it’s thought that roughly 80%   
   of American child marriages overall are between girls under 18 and adult   
   men. Activists across the country have been pushing hard against those   
   figures over the last few years. And while resistance to child marriage   
   bans can be found on both sides of the ideological spectrum ?– which one   
   would expect given that child marriage was legal in all 50 states as   
   recently as 2017 – some of the most dogged defenders of the status quo   
   have been red-state Republicans. Not long ago, for instance, the Kansas   
   City Star called Josh Hawley’s state of Missouri “a destination wedding   
   spot for 15-year-old brides” – especially ones who had been impregnated by   
   men, thanks to uncommonly lax laws that facilitated the marriages of more   
   than 7,000 children between 2000 and 2014.   
      
   When a ban on marriages to children 14 or younger advanced by a Republican   
   party representative came up for a vote in February 2018, it was opposed   
   by 50 members of the Missouri house – two Democrats and 48 members of her   
   own party. Thankfully, that bill still passed the chamber, and a   
   comprehensive ban on all marriages of adults over 21 to children under 18   
   was signed into law in Missouri later that year. But the significance of   
   Republican lawmakers’ hesitation wasn’t lost on the marriage ban’s   
   advocates. “Last week they were arguing that the government should be   
   involved in approving a minor’s abortion,” Missouri representative Peter   
   Merideth told the Riverfront Times after February’s vote. “So it’s a mind-   
   boggling contrast when a minor who’s not even old enough to enter into a   
   legally binding contract is being told they can enter into a relationship   
   that makes statutory rape legal.”   
      
   It’s no mystery why Hawley and other Republicans are more interested in   
   inventing child abuses and a record of leniency for abusers among   
   Democrats than they are in criticizing their own party’s tolerance for   
   predators. The more interesting question is why Democrats haven’t   
   discredited the right’s narratives on this front more forcefully. While   
   the party’s hands aren’t fully clean ?– Bill Clinton was on Epstein’s   
   flights too, after all ?– the hesitance to engage more aggressively   
   probably has less to do with that than it does with their preference for a   
   particular mode of response to Republican attacks in general.   
      
   Feigned surprise and the performance of indignation have been the twin   
   pillars of Democratic counter-messaging for as long as anyone can   
   remember. Pundits have puzzled about the lack of cover Dick Durbin and   
   Senate Democrats offered to Jackson over the course of the hearings; one   
   explanation that makes as much sense as any other is that Democrats   
   assumed the attacks on Jackson would backfire naturally and make Senate   
   Republicans look bad ahead of November’s midterms. Time will tell if they   
   were right, but we have ample reason to doubt it. They’re running against   
   a party that’s repeatedly defended the abusers of children with few   
   lasting electoral consequences ?– a party whose hypocrisies rarely matter.   
      
       Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)