They weren't sitting in boardrooms with Rockefellers or vacationing in Maine with the Bushes or reorganizing corporations with Romney.
Moore lost enough votes from ordinary Alabama Republicans to lose the election.
Second, the Alabama GOP stood by Moore, so far as I can see, though Washington Republicans didn't.
And Moore was running as an anti-Establishment maverick: it was to be expected that he'd alienate the party Establishment in Washington.
If he hadn't been a #flawedcandidate, he would have won and maybe picked up votes by campaigning against the Washington Establishment and the DC Swamp.
Moore was not a "flawed candidate". He was a perfectly good candidate that was torpedoed from both sides of the Uniparty running Washington.
Voters in his state didn't think so.
They weren't sitting in boardrooms with Rockefellers or vacationing in Maine with the Bushes or reorganizing corporations with Romney.
Nobody implied that they were.
Moore lost enough votes from ordinary Alabama Republicans to lose the election.
To a large extent as a result of party officials behaving exactly as if the accusations were true. Not only did they pull support while declaring him reprehensible, they urged people to vote for Doug Jones. Shelby urged them to "write in" a candidate, and coincidentally this record number of "write in" votes would have given Moore the victory.
Second, the Alabama GOP stood by Moore, so far as I can see, though Washington Republicans didn't.
This is absolutely right.
And Moore was running as an anti-Establishment maverick: it was to be expected that he'd alienate the party Establishment in Washington.
Attacking him as a reprobate goes way beyond acknowledging that someone is in opposition to your policy positions. They don't even hit Democrats that hard. They were out for blood with Roy Moore. He was more than just someone with whom they disagreed on policy positions, they treated him like a serious threat.
If he hadn't been a #flawedcandidate, he would have won and maybe picked up votes by campaigning against the Washington Establishment and the DC Swamp.
Again, the evidence shows the polls were running in his favor by 15 percentage points or More, and you think some flaw (from the perspective of the people of Alabama) was suddenly noticed by them, and it is this "flaw" which caused his loss?
He lost by about 1.5%. Is it remotely possible that it was not his character flaws that cost him that 1.5%, but could it have been unprovable accusations of rape and child molestation which the Party officials acted like were true, that did the trick instead?
Seriously, I am at a loss as to how people can say "flawed candidate" instead of "Accusations of child molestation and rape."
I can't see how anyone can say it with a straight face anyways.
Voters are perfectly incapable of telling the difference by a wide margin. Many of the people who voted against Moore did so not because of the accusations so much as the argument that voting for him was a morally and intellectually flawed act. People didn't arrive at that conclusion, they just went with the general current as portrayed in the media. "Think" had nothing to do with it.
But that is beside the point. As others have pointed out, every step in this election was a result of the painful stupidity of Mitch McConnell. He picked Luther Strange with all his baggage and wound up with Roy Moore with all his baggage, whom he torpedoed to wind up with a democrat, making his already long odds of having a single accomplishment even worse. That is a keystone cops level of incompetence where every action just levels up the stupidity.
Mitch started digging and never stopped making things worse. He and Ryan will go on making the hole they are in deeper because they are born losers and that is all they know how to do. Whether you like Roy Moore or hate him, he isn't the senate majority leader.