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.
You say that so confidently. Follow the thread for Pete's sake. Here's what I was responding to:
Establishment Republicans stayed home or wrote-in the name of other candidate.
If the Republican Establishment is thousands of people in just one state, it doesn't make sense to talk of a Republican Establishment. It wasn't moneybags and lobbyists who didn't come out to vote for Moore. It was ordinary Republican voters -- at least enough of them to make a difference.
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 it was just about a policy dispute, they would have given him support. They thought he was unstable and they were scared that they'd spend years hearing about things he did and said. They didn't want to be saddled with these charges for year after year.
Seriously, I am at a loss as to how people can say "flawed candidate" instead of "Accusations of child molestation and rape."
Flaw number one was that he couldn't shake the accusation. Once voters saw that maybe they detected other flaws.