They didn’t want Moore to begin with.
I’m sure they were looking for a way to distance themselves from him.
They still haven’t got one clue where the party is headed despite them.
Boy are they in for a tough seven more years. This is going to hurt like hell, watching the nation return to it’s founding principles, at least closer than it has been in a long long time.
And in reality, what a young man did 40 years (!) ago is not evidence or his character in contrast to how he has lived since.
In addition, great men of history often had character defects such as with the bottle or with women, and their are worse sins:
A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren. (Proverbs 6:17-19)
And a fair-minded book seems to be 'Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers, Thomas Fleming, ...