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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30042 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023

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Or to take a more relevant comparison - does Roy Moore discredit all conservative politics?

Reddittors would say yes, but everyone else would point out that conservatives disowned strongly enough that he managed to lose a general election as a Republican to a liberal democrat in Alabama.

He lost 48% to 50%, though, right? With Alabama something like 62% Republican, that means perhaps a quarter of Republicans there who would have voted for him didn't, and the rest held their nose and voted for him anyway.

I suspect the vast majority of his voters believed the allegations to be false, so their votes aren't evidence of evil, but willful ignorance isn't a great alternative. The guy's denials were waffling, self-contradictory, and self-incriminating. "I don't remember ever dating any girl without the permission of her mother." is not the sort of thing you say when you're into adult women.

but willful ignorance isn't a great alternative.

A lot of them are probably low information voters. I mean, yes, it’s higher profile than a typical generic Republican vs generic democrat contest, but the average voter is not very abreast of political news.

It’s also not entirely clear that Moore was in fact trolling for minors.

Bro, he had sex with a 13 year old after confirming with her mother it was OK.

Are you getting him confused with Gaetz, who hired a prostitute that turned out to be 17? Because in that case it seems like you’re probably right. But while the Moore situation has blame to go around, it seems pretty clear he knew she was a minor.

Bro, he had sex with a 13 year old after confirming with her mother it was OK.

Can you substantiate that? I recalled the girls he approached were older, and there were allegations of him chatting up teenagers above the age of consent at the time, and there was a single allegation of inappropriate touching but not rape. His Wiki bears this out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Moore. And he won a defamation lawsuit about last year.

In the south in the late 1970s it was probably not at all uncommon for men in their 30s to date older teenage girls. Moore did and married one of them and is still married to her today.

I recall their being a dispute re the facts. I’ll look into it.

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