First of all, I’d forcefully defend against those allegations... call the liars out for who they are. Moore didn’t come close to that. His weak answers to a friendly interviewer such as Hannity showed he lacked the enthusiasm to insist he was innocent of those charges.
It’s not about a “perfect” candidate. It’s about winning that damned seat that never should’ve been lost.
Hannity put forth the premise that if Moore admitting to dating "teenagers", then the accusations against him were true. Hannity did not try to separate the "molesting of a 14 year old girl", and the "attempted rape of a 16 year old girl" from the accusation of dating teenagers.
In most people's minds, the molestation of a 14 year old and the attempted rape of a 16 year old are grounds for instant rejection, while the dating of 18 and 19 year old "teenagers" was just regarded as merely "creepy."
Hannity lumped everything together in one package, and then asked Moore if he dated "Teenagers."
Hannity should have focused on the two serious accusations, and not made an issue of the far less serious accusation of dating young women, but Hannity conflated the two things together and put Moore into a terrible spot.
First of all, I’d forcefully defend against those allegations... call the liars out for who they are. Moore didn’t come close to that.
Back at the time, there were three named witnesses who came forward to refute the claims by that women who said Moore attempted to rape her, and many pointed out that much of the woman's story simply didn't ring true, such as being unable to unlock her car door and just leave.
These three people that came forward all said they were frequent patrons of the "Hickory House" during the year in question, and they didn't see either Moore there, or the woman claiming she worked there. One of the people who came forward was a waitress that worked there at the time, and she said that the accusing woman didn't work there at the time of the alleged incident.
On top of that, we discovered the woman forged Moore's signature and the date on her Yearbook page.
The other woman had a history of being a mental nut case, with one or more attempts at suicide, and a history of promiscuity and drug usage from an early age. Her timeline does not stand objective scrutiny and her story has serious problems with it, but unless you were keeping up with this stuff, you wouldn't have known about it.
This stuff did not get on the regular media for the obvious reason that the media was being used as a weapon to destroy Moore.