Al Franken's Senate Photo.
The current leftist rallying cry is that Republicans are all hypocrites for supporting Roy Moore while condemning Al Franken for their respective sex scandals. I would say that right away there is a large flaw in their argument. Many people on the right have condemned Roy Moore and Al Franken alike. Others think both accusations are false or not a big deal. Finally, there are even a few that support Franken and condemn Moore. I don't have numbers for each group but I have seen Republicans that fall into each group. There are also others who don't have an opinion either way or refuse to pass judgement on cases that have never been brought to trial. Some people really believe that "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law" is something worth defending and we shouldn't just get rid of it for political reasons.
I would say that the "neither side is wrong" camp is probably larger than people realize. There is a large group of people that are suspicious of all political sexual assault and harassment claims. After all, the attacks against Trump were widely seen as an obvious hit job and more than a few people remember all the recent scandals, like the Duke Lacrosse team, the "Rape on Campus" debacle and "Mattress Girl", all of which fell apart under proper scrutiny. These people see the accusations against both Franken and Moore to be not credible because the media has lost all credibility pushing scandals that turned out to be false or at least contested. And there all also others that believe the claims but don't think they actually did anything all that bad.
But what about those of us who do condemn Franken and not Moore? Are we hypocrites? There is certainly an argument to be made if the only reason for doing so was the respective parties of the candidates. Al Franken is of course a Democrat and Roy Moore is a Republican.
And it is certainly easier for the left to condemn Franken that it is for the right to do so with Moore. Franken is in a safe blue senate seat. If he were to resign, and he won't, he would just be replaced by another Democrat. His replacement might lose election, but so might Al Franken if and when he runs again. Moore, on the other hand, is in a critical red state and him losing would cost the GOP control of the senate. If his opponent were to win, we would be stuck with him for 6 years with no hope of him being removed.
That being said, there are non political reasons to support Moore over Franken. The first and most obvious is that Franken hasn't contested the claims. He does say that he never kissed his victim but there is photographic proof of him grabbing her breasts and, to his credit, he admits his behavior is wrong. There is little doubt in the facts of the case in the Franken situation. You can argue that he may have consent to kiss the victim and may not have been touching her actual breasts, but there is no doubt that something happened and that Franken shouldn't have done what he did.
The claims against Moore are contested, to say the least. He denies everything and there is very little evidence on either side. It really has been a "he said she said" situation, with no real eyewitness accounts or physical evidence.
The main physical evidence, a signature in a yearbook, has been hotly contested and widely denounced as fake. Gloria Allred won't let outsiders examine it to confirm it is real, which is evidence enough to disregard its value as evidence. And even if it is real, all it shows is that Moore knew one of the accusers, not that he did anything inappropriate with them. Other than that it's just Roy Moore's word against the words of the alleged victims, with only hearsay and innuendo to back up their claims.
There is also the fact that much of what Moore has been accused of was and is legal in the state of Alabama. Most of the accusations against him were of him dating teenage girls. Not rape or sexual assault, just dating, with only two cases saying he did something more. That's completely legal in the state of Alabama as long as the girls are 16 or older, especially considering that the alleged encounters were all consensual and mostly non-sexual in nature. One of the girls was even 18, which is legal everywhere! Sure, a lot of people think it is wrong for an older man to date someone who is under the age of 18, including myself, but we can't punish people for something that is legal. If people have a problem with it, they should change the law.
We also have to consider that the person that has been pushing the Roy Moore accusations, Gloria Allred, is a notorious leftist woman's rights lawyer. She has a long history of taking cases where the facts were in doubt and has targeted conservatives before. She was involved with accusations against Donald Trump (well her daughter, Lisa Bloom was), Herman Cain and Arnold Schwarzenegger, all Republicans, and has a long history of taking up controversial cases for the sake of publicity. Nobody on the right trusts her at all. If there was ever someone that people would think would make up facts of a case from thin air, it would be Gloria Allred.
I don't think it is hypocritical at all to believe the admitted wrongdoing of Al Franken while disbelieving the contested accusations against Roy Moore. If you do so just because of the (D) or (R) after their names, you can be. But if you look at the evidence and agree in one case and disagree in the other you shouldn't be considered a hypocritical. The two cases aren't that similar and even if they were, there is a world of difference when one essentially admits wrong doing and the other vehemently denies it.
As for myself, I tend to believe the accusations against Franken while dismissing the ones against Moore. One seems like a substantiated case and the other seems like an obvious political hit job. It's not a political thing either, I completely believe the accusations against George H.W. Bush, for example, while at least having an open mind about some of the Democrat's scandals. I just don't think the evidence is strong enough to condemn Moore while it is for Franken.
I'd also like to say that even if the accusations against both are true, I don't think either of them should be removed from office. I think that should be reserved for people who are convicted of crimes, not merely accused. If criminal convictions occur than by all means kick them out, but not until then. If all of the allegations are true, I would support the resignation of both, but only after any current elections. Otherwise, we still need to keep the standard of "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law" standard, even if there is evidence of wrong doing. We can still condemn bad behavior but we shouldn't punish people without giving them a day in court.
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