INDIANAPOLIS – After claiming that he wanted to follow Roy Moore’s footsteps in Indiana, it’s now Roy Moore mimicking Congressman Rokita, taking ownership of his slogan for Moore’s final fundraising push and tying the Indiana Senate candidate closer to the bigot and alleged pedophile in Alabama.

A report in The Hill yesterday noted that Moore has made Congressman Rokita’s “Defeat the Elite” slogan his own. Moore “is raising money with a campaign titled ‘defeat the elite,’ an apparent response to multiple Republicans donating to his opponent” after multiple women came forward to level claims of pedophilia and sexual abuse against him, the article read. Congressman Rokita has used the same slogan since kicking off his own campaign in August.

But before Moore was copying Congressman Rokita, it was the Congressman claiming that he’d mimic Moore in Indiana. The day after Moore won the Alabama Senate primary, Congressman Rokita released a memo claiming that he’d take up Moore’s mantle here in Indiana. At the time, Moore’s record of pedophilia had not yet come to light, but he was still known as a hateful bigot who had discussed the death penalty for members of the LGBT community and stated that Muslims like Congressman André Carson should not be seated in Congress.

Congressman Rokita has yet to weigh in on Moore’s candidacy since his national party and president endorsed Moore. He still also has yet to provide a satisfactory answer for why his campaign would release such a memo if he weren’t comfortable linking himself to Moore.

“Congressman Rokita’s campaign once claimed he’d follow in Roy Moore’s footsteps, and now he finds himself linking arms and slogans with him. It doesn’t matter when Congressman Rokita began using “Defeat the Elite” for his campaign—in the eyes of the nation, that’s Roy Moore’s slogan now, and whenever Congressman Rokita trots it back out he’ll simply be raising the banner of an alleged pedophile,” said Will Baskin-Gerwitz, Senior Media Strategist for the Indiana Democratic Party. “Hoosiers must ask themselves, was it more alarming that Congressman Rokita saw something to emulate in Roy Moore? Or that an even-more disgraced Moore still sees something in him?”

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