George Will: Doug Jones deserves to beat Roy Moore

Washington Post columnist George Will on Monday said Roy Moore should go down to defeat in next month’s Alabama special Senate election in a column headlined: “Roy Moore is an embarrassment. Doug Jones deserves to win.”

In the column, the conservative pundit writes that Moore deserves to lose, concluding that perhaps a win in the SEC championship football game on Dec. 2 will lead Alabama to back a candidate “worthy of its football team.”

“If so, Roll Tide,” Will writes.

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Will also criticizes evangelical Christians supporting Moore, arguing their “pose as uniquely moral Americans” is revealed to be “ridiculous” by backing a candidate accused of having a sexual contact at the age of 32 with a 14-year-old girl.

“Evangelical Christians who embrace Moore are serving the public good by making ridiculous their pose as uniquely moral Americans, and by revealing their leaders to be especially grotesque specimens of the vanity — vanity about virtue — that is curdling politics,” he writes.

Will also criticizes Republicans across the country who helped elect Trump but are similarly unhappy with the possibility that Moore could be elected to the United States Senate.

“This scofflaw,” Will writes of Moore, “is a suitable sidekick for the president who pardoned Joe Arpaio, Arizona’s criminal former sheriff.”

Will’s column adds to the fallout in the days since The Washington Post published a story detailing an allegation from a 53-year-old woman who said in 1979 she had a sexual encounter with Moore when she was 14 years old. Moore, who would have been 32 at the time, has denied this allegation.

The Post story also included accounts from three other women who claimed Moore tried to court them during the same time period, when they were between 16 and 18 years old.

However, Moore, in an interview on Sean Hannity’s radio show last week, acknowledged he may have dated girls in their late teens at this point in his life, though he said he doesn’t “remember anything like that.”

Multiple senators have pulled their endorsements from Moore since the allegations were revealed and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Monday that Moore should “step aside” from the race.

Moore is slated to face off against Democrat Doug Jones in the Dec. 12 special election to fill the seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.