Roy Moore, Alabama's Republican Child Molester Hero

It looks like Roy Moore is going to follow the Schwarzenegger/Trump manual on how to fight sex allegations, plus smear the accusers, plus attack the press, plus fund raise off the outrage, plus get all his family, friends, and cronies to offer defenses. It's the same House of Cards dynamic that helped Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign in 2003. If people suspect a political trap, they'll discount the news, whether or not it's accurate. Everyone enthusiastically supports groping when it's their guy with the grabby hands. Will these robust counterattacks work (and they usually do work), post-Weinstein?:

37 percent of Alabama evangelicals think the allegations are an obviously fake political attack designed to smear a conservative candidate. The fact that liberals are scared enough of Moore to mount an attack like this just shows how effective he is—and thus even more worth supporting.

It’s worth keeping in mind that vanishingly few Alabama evangelicals have read the Washington Post story. They’ve seen summaries in their local newspaper. They’ve seen Fox News coverage emphasizing that it all happened 40 years ago and was “just dating” of 17-year-olds. They’ve heard from local Republican leaders that it’s all an invention. They’ve listened to talk radio that’s dismissed the whole thing as a liberal hoax. And they’re primed to believe all this because they really don’t want to vote for the Democratic fellow anyway.