Think of the pre-civil rights era South. Lynchings were basically how Vincent Vega described drugs in Amsterdam in Pulp Fiction. Legal, but not 100% legal. If an African-American did something frowned upon by the local white population, like, you know, try to vote, have a conversation with a white woman (if male) or otherwise presume to be human, they'd risk a brutal murder at the hands of the klan. And the local law wouldn't do jack shit. Why? If they weren't participating in the lynchings themselves, it was their drinking buddies doing it. Legally speaking, the cops, prosecutors, etc., had full discretion to decide whom to investigate and prosecute, so if they decided to do nothing, the klansmen who committed the act got away scot-free. So, lynching was de facto legal.
The reason we now have federal "hate crime" laws is that you can't trust the local cops to prosecute the klan if the local cops are the fuckin' klan. Now, whenever there is a suspected "hate crime," the feds are supposed to look into it, and decide whether or not to take things away from the local cops based on the concern that the local cops will just protect their own.
So now, nobody gets away with murdering unarmed black people for no reason, right? Right? Um...
Uh...
'Cuz... the law enforcement system... wouldn't stand for that sort... of... thing... and... they...
Fuck.
Getting back to my point, think of the pre-civil rights era South, when lynchings were common, and an African-American trying to vote, or accused of some other act of basic citizenship/humanity risked death at the hands of the lowest scum of the earth. Imagine you are living in that time and place. Let's say, Alabama. You have an election coming up. One candidate promises, credibly, to push for anti-lynching policies. The other candidate is... a subhuman piece of fucking shit carrying water for the klan. However, the anti-lynching candidate, as a 32-year-old, molested a 14-year-old girl.
Now, do you vote for the klansman, or the anti-lynching child molester?
Did I just hurt your head? Good. That's the feeling that a lot of social conservatives in Alabama might have right now if they actually face facts.
Roy Moore is an unusual candidate for a variety of reasons, even among social conservatives. He has wrapped himself up in idiotic symbols, like the ten-commandments monument he put up at his courthouse. It violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, so he faced a court order to remove it. He didn't, so he was removed from the Alabama Supreme Court. Symbol-minded jackass (thank you, George Carlin). He also cares far more about gay marriage than the real motivating issue for most social conservatives: abortion.
Abortion has been the central motivating issue for social conservatives for going on four decades. It took a few years after Roe v. Wade, but once the movement coalesced around abortion, that was it. Why?
Suppose you begin with the premise that human life begins at conception, or some other specific point. Why? That's when the soul, or katra, or chi, or whatever, gets put into the cluster of cells. Doesn't matter. If you believe that, then killing that cluster of cells is killing a human life. That would be murder. A legal system that permits the killing of those human lives is a legal system that permits murder. On a massive scale.
If you are reading a political scientist's blog-- particularly one that rants as much as I do about Trump and his bullshit-- there is a high likelihood that you don't believe this. I'm not asking you to believe it. That's not the point. The point is to begin with the premise that human life begins at conception, which is the premise with which social conservatives begin. It follows from that premise that legalized abortion is legalized murder on a massive scale.
What would you tolerate, among politician's personally horrendous actions, in order to end murder on a massive scale, if you believed it to be occurring? If voting for the anti-lynching child molester over the pro-lynching non-molester is at least conceivable, then you can at least understand how a social conservative, who begins with the premise that legalized abortion is mass murder, would consider voting for Roy Moore. Yes, he's a child molester, but he is one more vote in the Senate to confirm judges to the federal court who will uphold restrictions on abortion, and eventually strike down Roe v. Wade and criminalize abortion at the federal level.
You could even tolerate the fact that he is batshit fucking crazy, and a total moron, as long as he votes the right way, because at the end of the day, or week, or whatever, Ruth Bader Ginsberg is a stupid person who decided not to retire when Obama could have named a replacement. Donald Trump will name her replacement when that fuckin' moron croaks. He will name someone who will vote to strike down Roe v. Wade, and Roy Moore will be one more vote to confirm Trump's choice. Roy Moore will be one more vote to confirm any socially conservative nominee, and one more vote against anyone who isn't conservative. Whatever else he does, you can count on Roy Moore to do that. If abortion is your central, motivating issue, then can you bring yourself to vote for Doug Jones, who isn't even Saru?
Would you vote for a pro-lynching candidate because the anti-lynching candidate molested a 14-year old? Would you really?
That psychological pain you feel at the concept, when you think about it, is called "cognitive dissonance." Voting for the anti-lynching candidate is good, but he's a piece of shit child molester, so that's bad. Voting for a candidate can't be both good and bad at the same time. Cognitive dissonance is the pain of trying to hold two inconsistent ideas in your head at the same time. The idea comes from Leon Festinger, and was originally proposed in a book I like to assign-- When Prophesy Fails. A bunch of apocalypse cultists had to figure out how to deal with the fact that their apocalypse didn't happen. Rather than face reality (their cult was a bunch of fucking bullshit), they strengthened their beliefs. It was easier that way.
There are a lot of ways to deal with cognitive dissonance, and the way that a lot of social conservatives are dealing with the cognitive dissonance regarding Moore is the way they have been dealing with cognitive dissonance for... a couple of decades now. Putting their fingers in their ears and yelling "LA LA LA LA LA, FAKE NEWS FAKE NEWS FAKE NEWS." As I have written before, this predates Donald Trump. Moore is denying everything, Fox News, talk radio and the conservative/Republican-aligned media aren't going to treat the story the same way that they would with, say, a Democrat, and social conservatives will tell themselves that one of their own would never do it because that is the easiest way to resolve the cognitive dissonance, particularly with none of their information sources telling them directly that Moore is guilty.
And from their perspective, they aren't even necessarily making the wrong choice. Remember the plight of the anti-lynching voter in the pre-civil rights South.
There is, of course, the question of the analogy to Trump. Trump is not much different from Roy Moore, except that we have him on tape bragging about his ability to get away with this shit, and we have a dozen or so allegations of women accusing him of assault. He's just as stupid as Moore, so...
This brings up a question. I have repeatedly argued that there could be no such justification for voting for Trump. I, in fact, wrote a long series after the election arguing that Trump's victory was essentially a failure of democracy. What's the deal?
The deal is the distinction between positional preferences and valence preferences. The argument for social conservatives to vote for Moore, despite his reprehensibleness and stupidity, is abortion. Abortion is what we call a "positional" issue, going back to the work of Donald Stokes from "Spatial Models of Party Competition." Voters fundamentally disagree on the outcomes they wish to achieve. This is different from valence preferences. A valence issue is an issue over which voters agree on the outcome they want, but disagree on who can provide it. Game theorists (like me) have transformed this over time into a valence "dimension," which is basically a score representing candidates' traits, which voters supposedly intrinsically value, like competence and honesty.
A legislator's primary job is to cast votes. Do traits like competence and honesty matter? Sure, but less than for an executive. (I wrote a conference paper addressing this years ago "The V-Term: Unpacking the Dimensions of Valence"-- someday I'll do something with that...). Trump has control of the nuclear arsenal. Roy Moore won't. From a social conservative's perspective, giving him a vote over judicial confirmations doesn't carry with it the attendant risks of putting Trump in the White House. Is it a good idea? Fuck no. Roy Moore is stupid, crazy, vile, and he molests children. Before the news broke last week, his own party knew that he had no business holding a Senate seat. McConnell was scared shitless of the idea that Moore might wind up in the Senate. But, the danger of Moore being in the Senate is nowhere near as bad as the danger of Trump in the White House.
From a social conservative's perspective, though, one can understand the psychological process of weighing what looks like mass murder against the fact that they guy is just personally a piece of shit. You don't even need to get into psychological defense mechanisms to understand why a social conservative would feel compelled to vote for Moore over Jones.
Unless you can tell me that you would vote for a klansman over an anti-lynching child molester... because that's how a social conservative looks at the contest between Jones and Moore, even if our hypothetical social conservative accepts the validity of the charges in the face of psychological pressure to do otherwise.