New York Times Columnist, David Brooks — “And so, to me, the big test of this is that, sure, if he [Roy Moore] wins, the Republicans will have one more vote for a couple of years, but they will have a generation who find the Republican Party something they can’t relate to.”
Transcript
David Brooks:
Yes, but what I hear is a lot of Republicans looking at the Roy Moore case and it seems to have just flipped a switch, a lot of Republicans disgusted by Trump, not liking Trump, conservatives, and then, suddenly, Roy Moore, you enter a whole new realm of depravity, to be honest.
How are people not nauseated with a guy hitting on 14-year-old girls, and then, suddenly, that guy becomes a U.S. senator, and people are not minding this?
And so how many Republicans have I talked to who have said, I guess I’m not a Republican anymore? And these are lifelong Republicans. Evangelicals saying, hey, I’m a Christian, but I’m not an evangelical. If that is what being an evangelical is, that I don’t have to care about character, that’s not what I believe.
And so, to me, the big test of this is that, sure, if he wins, the Republicans will have one more vote for a couple of years, but they will have a generation who find the Republican Party something they can’t relate to. And they will find the pro-life movement as something that’s a movement of epic hypocrisy.
So they may get a short-term gain if he wins, but I think there will be a long-term generational setback for the Republican Party, for evangelical Christianity, for the pro-life movement, for all of the things that Donald Trump and Roy Moore purport to be for.
Click to listen to this segment of the PBS News Hour, Dec 8, 2017.