Dems are using the Roy Moore sexual scandal to spin 2018 races

Axios ^ | 11/20/17 | Shannon Vavra

[DoodleDawg]

Democrats are working to use the sexual misconduct allegations against Roy Moore to campaign against Republicans up for elections in 2018 and some are using the controversy to try and raise funds for themselves, Politico reports.

Why it matters: They're making it an electoral issue when Republicans can likely do the same and spin it right back at them, given Sen. Al Franken's misconduct with journalist Leeann Tweeden. Bottom line is you can expect this issue to play out in 2018 campaign messages, and candidates on both sides of the aisle will be expected to answer for their colleague's behavior and alleged misconduct at the polls, according to Politico.

[NKP_Vet]

Corfman is lying. She never mentioned Moore taking her to his house when she first concocted the story. That would have been the first thing to bring up. The Wasington Post must be passing out the big bucks. Moore was not married then and I guarantee you he lived with his mother.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

What do they say when Moore wins?

That we’re deplorable, of course . . .

There are reasons for statutes of limitations. In this case either the claims are wrong, are overblown, and/or do not represent the behavior of the accused in the past three decades. What has to happen, IMHO, is that - win or lose - Moore must sue the reporters who dug up (created?) the memories of the women who have been accusing him.

In the 1990s “recovered memory” was seriously thought by many to be a thing. I had occasion to research it in my local library late in the decade, tho, and I was appalled at the concept and the reality. The process of “recovering” memories actually was an effective brainwashing procedure which reliably produced “memories” of events which in fact had not happened. If you submitted to the procedure, you would inevitably would create false “memories” which you quite literally would be unable to distinguish from real memories. Because the nature of memory is that fragile. It is truly scary stuff. You would swear on a stack of bibles to clearly recalling things which (if the poor target of the “memory” creation was very, very, lucky) could be utterly disproven. And it wouldn’t be your fault. You would be telling what, for all the world, seemed to you to be the truth.

Mark Pendergrast has written books about the phenomenon of “recovered” memory, the latest and most up-to-date of which is

Memory Warp: How the Myth of Repressed Memory Arose and Refuses to Die (October 1017)

From Amazon:

Independent scholar Mark Pendergrast is the author of many critically acclaimed books of nonfiction, including Victims of Memory, City on the Verge, and Uncommon Grounds.

His new book, Memory Warp, revisits the subject of repressed memories, a faddish pseudo-scientific form of therapy that ran rampant in the mid 1990s, destroying literally millions of families by creating false memories of childhood sexual abuse. Pendergrast's breakthrough book on the subject at the time, Victims of Memory, helped to expose the misguided nature of repressed-memory theories, and all major researchers on the nature of memory have agreed with his conclusions.

Memory Warp updates the issues covered by the earlier book, but it is not a new edition, as it thoroughly covers developments since that time. While it is partly fascinating social history of our recent past, documenting how this incredible juggernaut of pseudoscience came to be, it also shows how these misguided theories continue to fester today. Pendergrast warns that we may face another major outbreak if we do not learn from the past.

The Morning Guys chat with Mark Pendergrast – November 14, 2017 links to an interview with the author. Pendergrast asserts that the whole Jerry Sandusky trial depended on recovered "memories” so completely that he is certain that Sandusky was wrongly convicted. His other current book, The Most Hated Man in America: Jerry Sandusky and the Rush to Judgment documents his findings to that effect.

The thing is, “recovered memory” cases (the term is now discredited, and no one admits that that is what they are pushing when prosecuting what they are sure is a “perp”) are such emotionally charged cases - child abuse exclusively, AFAIK - that people take leave of their sense of fairness and due process, and become irrational. One FReeper apparently left the forum because of the abuse he received for posting articles questioning the treatment Joe Paterno got because of the Sandusky scandal. If Pendergrast is right, dozens of FReepers owe some apologies big time. Along with the last Republican Governor of Pennsylvania, who used the case to get that office.

So what we have in the Moore allegations is in part women who were at least subliminally coached to remember - from 35 years ago and more - behavior by Moore which looks bad now. Remember the Amirault case in Massachusetts, the case out in Washington state, and others. The Amirault family was railroaded, and Mrs. Amirault was kept locked up by her prosecutor even after it was known that she was innocent. There was a similar case down in Florida, in which Janet Reno was the prosecutor. They knew he was innocent, and they still kept him in jail for considerable time afterward.

The bottom line is that win or lose, Moore will have an uphill battle to get his reputation back. If he wins they will try, and perhaps succeed, in running him out of the Senate. But if he sues and takes it to SCOTUS, I bet Justice Thomas will recognize a “high tech lynching” when he sees it. The best case scenario is that he sues the socks off of the Washington Post in particular and the AP and its membership in general.

[Sacajaweau]

Yes she did. She said he called her on her bedroom phone. He picked her up a little ways from her house and they drove about 3o minutes to his house. She said it had a dirt drive.

Moore isn't stupid....A 14 year old?? I don't think so.

The supposed "assault" was on their second "date" to his house.

I doubt he lived with his mother....BUT it's more likely that he was renting than owning a house. He was 32.

Anyways....her mother said she didn't have a phone in her bedroom so that was a lie.

And I think she's now saying the encounter wasn't outside but inside the courthouse. I have to go back and listen again.

P.S. I'm 73....Never necked with someone on the floor on a blanket. That's what couches are for...and beds...

[PGalt]

Thanks, c_I_c. Interesting.

[NKP_Vet]

I don’t believe a word of her story. Not a word.

[rlmorel]

That was a good post, in my opinion. I have long felt that way about these “recovered memories”. I lived in Massachusetts when that whole Amirault case took place, and the closer I followed it, the more disturbing it became for me.

I just felt from the beginning an uneasiness that grew into something approaching revulsion at what was happening. I couldn’t elucidate it, but I felt in my heart there was something wrong in the way the case was being prosecuted.

What bothered me as much was my personal difficulty in intellectually separating out what was appearing more and more like a dishonest and sinister campaign to tar anyone who questioned it from the emotional feeling that taking that stance could possibly set a child abuser free.

For personal reasons, the entire thing was very difficult to observe and dissect, separating intellectual and emotional anchors on my views on the case.

In the end, I was able to see it for the travesty of justice that it was, but it was difficult for me to get there.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Likely you weren’t reading the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal at the time. Dorothy Rabinowitz got interested in the Wee Care Nursery School case working as a television commentator in New Jersey, and earned a reputation that impressed the WSJ editors.

That got her a gig there as a columnist, and she wrote blistering Op-eds about the Amirault prosecution. And about the similar prosecution in Wenatchee, Washington.

[rlmorel]

True...never read the Wall Street Journal.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Back before Talk Radio and the Internet, the editorial page of the WSJ was a lonely voice of sanity. I think I started reading it in about 1973 or so; picked up the idea from my father-in-law, tho I’m not sure he read the editorials as assiduously as I.

I still read it, but it’s not the same now. Or rather it is, and I’m not as sure about open borders as I admit I was then. I was originally unenthusiastic about Trump, but I came around on that. Thank God, Trump has been doing a lot of good. Especially for the courts, but also on the regulatory front. The WSJ admits that, but still is too critical of Trump. And Moore. I feel they will come around about Moore, in the long run.

[rlmorel]

I never read the paper, but did read editorials when the Internet took hold. Read those quite frequently, and still reference some very good ones.

I too was completely lukewarm about Trump. I don’t watch television, and haven’t for a couple of decades now, so I only knew about Trump anecdotally from others who watched “The Apprentice”, and also had shallow knowledge of his reputation as a wealthy businessman, but that is about it.

So I didn’t really have any feelings one way or another about Trump when he entered the race.

I didn’t have a negative view of his candidacy because he wasn’t a traditional politician, quite the opposite. Like many on here, I view our political process as being somewhat broken, and inhabited by professional politicians whose views on matters, interpersonal conduct, and how to get things done diverge sharply from my own.

I believe at the time, I was generally inclined towards Ted Cruz, but that is more an indication of the weakness of available choice than anything positive about the candidate. I admit there were times when Cruz would make statements that made me sit up and say “Well, I wish I heard more people speaking out on this the way Cruz just did!” but that was about it.

I am thrilled with Donald Trump. To be up front, I am not a fan of the “brash, loud-talking New Yorker” personality that some people love. But in his attacking of liberal and RINO cows, Trump has become MY “brash, loud-talking New Yorker”, MY attack dog.

And I love him for it. We are long overdue. I was so unfailingly sick and nauseous at hearing people I felt I had to support talking about these heinous, anti-American pieces of crap as “My esteemed colleague across the aisle” when I desperately wanted someone to stand up and say it like it is.

During and up to his election, I gave him my full support because the alternative was Hillary Clinton. That is like giving me a choice between a wonderful dinner at the world’s finest restaurant with the world’s greatest view, or being tied to a chair in a leaky cellar with rusty pipes and having my eyes burnt with hot pokers, genitals cut off, and fingernails pulled out. In other words, I supported him fully because the alternative was so appallingly and irrevocably bad.

However, since his election my admiration for his no-nonsense approach has grown, and my total and unswerving support for Trump arrived completely on the day he gave his Rose Garden address to announce the United States was withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord. I had been longing for a leader to stand up and say the things I have long thought about Anthropogenic Global Warming, that the entire thing is a money/power grab and is a giant hoax. I very nearly stood on my feet and began cheering all by myself when he said those things.

That, and his propensity to view “agreements” in the same way a businessman would view an “agreement”. That is, if an agreement is a losing proposition (in the business world, your company loses money with no gain, and no prospect for changing in the framework of the agreement...that is, you will go out of business eventually) then you don’t stay with it. You change it or get out of it. You don’t keep doing it because it is cutting your own throat. You change or get out. That he approaches things that way with agreements with other countries is long, Long, LONG overdue.

So, sorry to ramble on. But yes...I am completely on board with Trump.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

You should “ramble” more often.