Republican officials must be feeling a sense of déjà vu: An insurgent candidate beloved by the right-wing base and distrusted by the party elite is accused in a bombshell Washington Post report of past sexual misconduct, just as the campaign is in the home stretch. Should the GOP disavow the candidate, even at the risk of losing, or make a moral compromise to hold the party together?

As with Donald Trump after the release of the Access Hollywood tape in 2016, so with Roy Moore, the Senate candidate from Alabama, after allegations that he dated teenage girls as an adult. And once again, some leading Republicans are proving more mealy-mouthed than others.

Arizona Senator John McCain was among the most forthright, saying that Moore “should immediately step aside and allow the people of Alabama to elect a candidate they can be proud of.” But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s response was more typical: “If these allegations are true, he must step aside.” Variations of this formulation were used by countless other Republican officials. “There’s no Senate seat more important than the notion of child pedophilia, I mean, that’s reality,” Marc Short, Trump’s legislative director, said Sunday on Meet the Press. “But having said that, he has not been proven guilty. We have to afford him the chance to defend himself.” Another approach was silence: When asked about Moore, a group of Republican senators just nervously grinned and said nothing.

But there was no such equivocation on the far-right, where several prominent figures have defended Moore by claiming that he’s the victim of a media conspiracy or, more unbelievably, by arguing that Democrats are worse than child abusers. There is perhaps no starker illustration of negative partisanship today, and how it disproportionately afflicts the Republican Party. The Moore case also suggests the problem will only get worse as the Trump era marches on.

The allegations against Moore are thoroughly documented by the Post. Based on more than 30 sources, the report states that Moore was in his thirties when he pursued at least four teenagers, ranging in age from 14 to 18, and molested the 14-year-old. But even though Moore has sunk in polls—some show his Democratic rival Doug Jones in the lead—there is every reason to think that the scandal is energizing his political base. “This is Republican town, man,” a supporter in Moore’s hometown told NBC News. “He could have killed Obama, and we wouldn’t care.” According to a JCM Analytics poll, 37 percent of Alabama evangelicals were more likely to vote for Moore as a result of these allegations. Right-wing firebrand Dinesh D’Souza is responding similarly: