As the accusations against Judge Roy Moore trickled in over the past few days, I (David) found myself a bit conflicted on what to make of it all. In today’s political climate, it’s easy to assume that he’s the victim of an unfair attack by his political enemies. On the other hand, the accusations are serious enough that they can’t be taken lightly.

Yesterday, Steve Deace (a man I greatly respect) shared similar feelings on the matter and posted his thoughts on his Facebook account. I thought so much about what he said that I asked his permission to share it with my readers. He graciously granted it, and I now share it with you in its entirety. I hope you’ll read and consider every word.

I am being asked legit questions about where my endorsement stands. Since I believe in as much transparency as possible whenever I can, I want to explain why I have not pulled my endorsement yet. I want to share my heart, so I apologize in advance for the length of this post.

The issues I raised yesterday, and in fiery fashion, about the hypocrisy here are a separate issue from this post. And they will remain once the matter with Moore is settled. At some point we’re going to have to decide we’re going to fight for our people. Now, maybe this isn’t the right time, and I’ll get to that in a moment. However, one can think Moore is guilty or innocent, but see the total and complete fake horse puckey Kabuki Theater of the past few days. Make no mistake, anybody we try and get through the swamp/establishment/etc they will try and destroy if they can. My best sources believe it’s the Republicans/McConnell that have been feeding this story all this time — not the Democrats.

These people hate us more than the Left. They’re why I’m no longer a Republican, not Trump. I just don’t think Trump is the solution, or if he is then the disease is incurable and best to leave the dead to die and/or not play with downed power lines but run away. Frankly, I think the party deserves a cruel death for all the voters like myself its lied to and betrayed for so many years (and continues to). And if I had the power to drop the guillotine on it myself, I’d raise the black flag and do it proudly without the black mask. I’d be proud to claim that kill and call it justice.

This party is a syndicate that doesn’t deserve us, but I also recognize what many of you do who remain in it realize as well — right now there really isn’t another vehicle to even imperfectly confront the Left other than the GOP.

However, hatred for the system and its ills and evils does not justify abandoning virtue to confront it. We do not “do evil so that good may come.” Therefore, as much as my flesh is tempted to dig in my heels out of deserved spite for these people, I’m ultimately not accountable to them — but my Maker. So that is not why I haven’t pulled my endorsement.

Along the same lines, I also don’t support the notion that “Moore is/may be guilty, but we can’t abandon that seat to the Democrats who are worse.” My flesh sympathizes with that notion, too. We know what Doug Jones will do — be a pawn for every bad influence in the culture, while asking us to subsidize them all to boot. Plus, your anger at the clear double-standard that Bob Menendez is on trial and McConnell and company aren’t threatening to have him removed, but they are Moore who hasn’t been convicted of anything, is righteous indignation and justifiable. Yet my conscience returns to what I wrote in the previous paragraph. We cannot “do evil so that good may come” because if Moore is guilty of all the things being alleged here, he has done unrepentant evil by his own comments he continues to vehemently deny.

At some point, some of us have to be willing to do what we think is right without excuse or disclaimer, even as imperfect as we may be as the vessels for such a stand. Some of us have to be willing to buck the prevailing winds and spirit of the age and say “here I stand, I can do no more. May God have mercy on my soul.” Rise above this time of the Judges in which we live. And that is precisely why I haven’t pulled my endorsement yet.

Because I’m somewhat of a public figure, and one of the few with any platform of consequence in our movement who considers Moore both a friend and a champion, I know that if I were to pull my endorsement it would matter more than what a bunch of Republican elected officials currently think. Many of whom demanded Trump get out of the race, too, last year and he’s president now.

Rather, the question of my (and really any) Moore endorsement at this point is a stand-alone question — do you believe he is guilty or innocent? There is no middle ground. Moore himself, as I said from day one when the story broke, has left no middle ground, either.

I am trying to discern how, after knowing the man for years and watching stand in the gap when others ran, I could’ve missed all of this? The guy hasn’t even removed his mattress tags for decades he’s such a straight arrow. Because if I take the fact I know Moore out of the equation, I find both the Washington Post report, and the woman he came forward yesterday credible (even despite her association with the icky Allred). Now, that doesn’t mean I believe everything, because I don’t know what to believe, but credible enough to merit consideration at the very least.

And as I said on day one as well, it’s just as possible these women are coming forward for political reasons/timing, as it is they’re doing so because women everywhere have rightfully had enough in various walks of life and are speaking up. And as long as they’re telling the truth, I hope/pray they keep doing so. “Let justice roll down like a river, righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Still, I’ve been wrong about people before. Heck, I’ve been wrong about me before. I am the man Paul writes about in Romans 7, which is why Romans 8 is my favorite Scripture of them all, because it provides hope for a wretch like me. I am astonished how still, 14 years after God saved me, I can put the flesh on auto-pilot and embrace the darkness. What I’ve learned more in my walk than anything else is why we need to die daily to ourselves, for I daily see the difference between the days I do so and the days I do not.

Nevertheless, here are the lingering questions I have that if it’s true Moore really is whom he’s being alleged to be, I need to have satisfied before I justify piling on and playing a role in perhaps effectively ending a man’s life and destroying his family.

A man who served his nation in Vietnam when others, including a recent president and the current one, did everything they could to avoid their duty. A man with no other criminal or mischief record. A man who graduated from West Point, which only accepts and graduates the elite. That’s not to say West Point has a perfect record, but it’s got as good a record as there is in our culture. Heck, at this point I’d trust West Point to vet our young men before most seminaries.

So given those high stakes, I cannot see how anybody would not grant the leeway to have these questions answered before we deliver the proverbial lethal injection:

I avoided going after the judge for his response once the allegations broke because of our relationship, because I knew I couldn’t be objective. But he actually came to me, called me directly over the weekend, and without me asking vehemently and strongly denied everything right to me. Now, I’m a conservative who’s spent 10 years as a full-time activist in the GOP, so I’ve been lied to more times than I count — and often convincingly — by Republican politicians. If he was lying to me in that conversation, he’s the best one I’ve ever heard . So if he’s this good of a liar, and this much of a creep, shouldn’t there be other things in his life where this level of sociopath showed up? With Bill Clinton we saw systemic immorality, for example, that explained his predatory behavior. Systemic immorality that raged for decades well into his presidency. Not predatory behavior over here, and then perfect southern gentleman over there as with Moore. The narrative is essentially from the time he returned from his tour of duty until he got married, Moore was a sociopath and then it just stopped from that time forward forevermore. So why did it stop then? Who can control such urges for thirty years after acting on them so irresponsibility and wickedly for such a period of time? I have spoken to those who have known Moore longer and far better than me. All of them are standing behind him. I’ve even quizzed them. Cross-examined them. Offered alternative theories I thought were plausible. Nobody, at least so far, is budging. And if you’re a friend of Moore’s you’re not a typical Republican. In fact, you probably distrust to despise the typical Republican, because Moore has been at war with the party for more than a decade. These aren’t “roll Tide evangelicals” as we like to say. These are serious people, and so far none of them have jumped ship. Why? Why would Moore’s pastor put the credibility of his entire ministry on the line for Moore as he did yesterday? Gallant First Baptist church had less than 100 at last Sunday’s service. Its Facebook page has a whopping 34 likes. This isn’t a church known for grandstanding. Far from it, it’s a small congregation in the South — which means everyone knows almost everything about everybody, and probably shares things they shouldn’t while calling them “prayer requests.” “Well, Steve,” some of you have said, “all these same things were said and done for Denny Hastert for years before we found out he was a pedophile. He was married to the same woman all these years, too. He was supposedly a decent guy, too.” That is a good point, except we only found out about what Hastert had done decades ago when the Feds were investigating his financial irregularities. And then it came out he was paying out blackmail for his heinous crimes. We’re now being told that the people of Etowah County knew all this time about Moore, so it’s not the same right there. There’s now stories that people aren’t shocked at all because, unlike Hastert, they knew about it. So how is it possible McConnell spent $30 million to win this primary, and yet with all that money couldn’t uncover the sinister “open secret” apparently many in Etowah County knew for decades? When they wanted Moore removed from office, not once but twice, how is it they didn’t uncover that which was an “open secret” in Etowah County? If they had this ultimate kill shot all this time, why didn’t they use it? Speaking of Etowah County, this is apparently the last place in America you want to raise your daughters if this story is true. For here is how they have punished Moore for knowing all these years he was the local creeper:

Two months ago Moore won Etowah County decisively by 14 points, 57-43. What kind of people vote — IN A PRIMARY — for someone they’re now telling the media they knew was a creeper?

When Moore was DA of Etowah County, he was investigated by the state bar (and cleared). How could they have not uncovered he was the creeper at the local mall during that very time?

In 1994, Moore ran for circuit judge in Etowah County. He received 64% of the overall vote from people who now say they knew he was a creeper. Making him the first Republican since before Reconstruction to win anything there.

In the 2000 Alabama GOP primary, only George W. Bush received more votes statewide than Judge Roy Moore. This time nominating the local creeper for Chief Justice of the state.

In the 2012 election, Etowah County voted for locally-known creeper Roy Moore for Chief Justice — a second time after he was removed from office the first time around — by 10 points.

Etowah County pretty much sucks at life, folks. If this is true, this county ought to be ashamed of itself or worse. Give America a public show of repentance, complete with ash and sack cloth, for concealing this predator from us all these years by its own admission. And allowing him to falsely become a hero to people like me, when they knew all along who he really was.

Finally there is the wife, Kayla. I spoke to her at length on Sunday after church. She was defiant, and 110% behind her man. Point blank she asked me why her word doesn’t matter, when she met Moore as a single mom at a Bible study in the South at a time and place it wasn’t easy to be a single mom. He married her, adopted her daughter as his own, and has been her faithful husband (included more children together) for over 30 years ever since. What more can a woman entrust to another man than their own life, and the life of her own daughter?

There are other questions I have, but these are really the significant ones. There may be troubling answers to these questions I would prefer not to be true, but I will sadly accept them if they are and pull my endorsement and call for justice to be done.

But until then, I will accept whatever criticism I receive for not doing so at this point. I’m a grown man, making a grown up decision, and I understand others will disagree deeply with the judgment call I’m making here. I don’t begrudge you of that, nor do I condemn those whose conscience has already guided them to walk away. It is a disgusting matter either way. Either Judge Roy Moore has terrible unconfessed sin in his life God has chosen to bring forth now, before he takes a seat in an already amoral body like the U.S. Senate. Or, the devil is orchestrating one of the greatest takedowns we’ve ever witnessed. I see no middle option, nor has the Judge offered one. Nevertheless, if it’s true then I have to admit I helped many people believe in a fraud and own that myself. It means I jumped to conclusions to elevate Roy Moore as I did. Therefore, prudence calls for me to not be hasty in making the decision to cut bait, either, when my judgement is clearly in question.

As a disclaimer, I consulted with neither the Judge nor anyone in the campaign before writing this. My own staff didn’t know I was writing this until now, when I hit publish. I woke up more than an hour before my alarm went off, and felt convicted to share this. Thank you for reading it.

Steve Deace is a CRTV host, columnist, and author of A Nefarious Plot. The best book you’ve probably never read.

Husband to a great wife. Father to some awesome kids. Child of the one, true king.

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