Five years ago, when a Republican Senate nominee said things about rape and pregnancy that were beyond the pale, party leaders from the presidential nominee on down threw him under the bus. Now they’re handing an even more marginal figure the keys.

Then-Rep. Todd Akin’s (R-MO) Senate campaign imploded when he declared that women couldn’t get pregnant from “legitimate rape,” and GOP leaders including then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and presidential nominee Mitt Romney demanded that he drop out of the race and apologize for his remarks. But former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore’s (R) Tuesday primary win elicited a very different result from many of the same people in spite of his long history of homophobic, Islamophobic and racially charged remarks: A full-out embrace.

“I called him this morning and told him I’m certainly supporting him and want to help him,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) told reporters Wednesday, the latest member of GOP leadership to fall in line and welcome Moore into the fold.

When asked by TPM how this was different than Akin’s campaign five years ago, Cornyn conceded Moore’s win was “similar in many ways.”

But Cornyn’s reaction hasn’t been the same — and he’s not the only one. The Texan chaired the National Republican Senatorial Committee when Akin made his comments, and responded by demanding the Missouri Republican drop out and pulling $5 million in funds that had been earmarked for his race (though the NRSC ended up spending a bit in the race’s closing days to help him out).

It’s not like Cornyn — or any of the rest of the GOP establishment — are fans of Moore. But things have changed dramatically in how scandal politics play, and how much GOP leaders have become willing to stomach candidates who would have been spit up in earlier years.

Moore is best known for twice being forced from the Alabama Supreme Court because he defied the rule of law with his religious conservative stances. The first time, he was kicked off for rejecting a higher court’s order to remove a Ten Commandments statue he’d erected in front of his courthouse. More recently, he’d ordered state officials to ignore the Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing gay marriage.

Cornyn warned reporters just days ago that Moore was too fringe — “Getting thrown off the Supreme Court of your state twice I don’t think is a credential that commends you for membership in the United States Senate,” he’d said.

But now that Moore is the nominee, Cornyn and others are pulling a swift about-face.

McConnell moved quickly to bury the hatchet after his allies spent close to $10 million to boost appointed Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL), who Moore crushed on Tuesday.

“I would like to congratulate Roy Moore on his victory in Alabama tonight,” McConnell said in a Tuesday statement. “He ran a spirited campaign centered around a dissatisfaction with the progress made in Washington. I share that frustration and believe that enacting the agenda the American people voted for last November requires us all to work together.”