Moore has taken to using Congressman Rokita’s “Defeat the Elite” slogan on campaign materials
INDIANAPOLIS – Indiana’s three GOP senate front-runners have yet to follow the lead of the national Republicans trickling back towards Roy Moore, with the RNC jumping back into the Alabama Senate race last night. There’s only a week to go until the election, however, and Hoosiers are waiting to see if the three men will remain silent or support an accused pedophile now that it’s becoming politically expedient.
The RNC’s admission last night that it would get back involved on Moore’s behalf came soon after a formal endorsement of Moore by President Trump on Twitter. President Trump’s support of Moore led to a stream of Republicans who have flip-flopped and are willing to show support for him, including Mitch McConnell.
Three men who haven’t yet done so, however, are Congressmen Messer and Rokita and Rep. Braun. All of them last month called on Moore to withdraw from the race, albeit in sometimes tortured language. However, it took nearly a week for all three men to leave Moore after multiple reports emerged of him sexually abusing teenage girls, including one as young as 14.
Congressman Rokita also still has yet to provide an adequate explanation for his campaign’s controversial memo claiming that Congressman Rokita would follow in Moore’s footsteps in Indiana. Instead, it’s the alleged sexual abuser following in his footsteps, with Moore adopting Congressman Rokita’s “Defeat The Elite” campaign slogan on twitter and in fundraising emails.
Still, all three men currently stand against an alleged pedophile’s election to the U.S. Senate, even though that means they’re increasingly out of step with the new position of their national party and its leaders, including President Trump. With their minds on their own election next year, the candidates must be wondering what the ramifications will be of splitting with the president on one of 2017’s highest-profile elections.
A reversal by Congressmen Messer and Rokita wouldn’t shock, as it wouldn’t be the first time that they had put more importance on standing behind a Republican candidate than on taking the word of multiple women. After all, both Congressmen Messer and Rokita continued to support then-candidate Trump last year after he was infamously caught on tape bragging about sexual assault, while 16 women had accused him of sexual harassment or assault.
“Hoosiers and voters across the country have been disgusted watching as national Republicans all the way up to the president have put partisan politics before basic morality,” said Will Baskin-Gerwitz, Senior Media Strategist for the Indiana Democratic Party. “Having watched it take public shaming to compel the three men to drop their support for a reported pedophile in the first place, Hoosiers must wonder if their refusal to re-endorse Moore is a moral stand, or simply an opportunistic silence. Will Congressman Rokita and his primary opponents embrace the man mimicking him on twitter, or will they continue to break with their party and do the right thing?”
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