Sweet Jesus. What has happened to this party?

Virtually everything said here is either factually wrong or morally repellent. They both natter on about “lynch mobs” but Senate Democrats didn’t move against Franken until seven accusers had spoken up about him. Democratic women in particular bit their lips for weeks before apparently deciding that any more accusations would require them to pull the trapdoor. “Lynch mob” analogies are especially gross given how few real consequences most of the men swept up in the Pervnado are likely to face for their behavior. Weinstein will hopefully be indicted for something but Lauer, Charlie Rose, Mark Halperin, etc are all headed off to luxe retirements. Franken will return to a cushy career in book-writing and the talk-show circuit after a brief exile — assuming he resigns at all. The alleged “lynch mob” in this case isn’t even threatening him, remember, just asking him to quit. If Ingraham and Gingrich want to cry for someone, let them go cry for Blake Farenthold’s former comms director, who’s apparently been reduced to babysitting to earn money after she complained about harassment and ended up blackballed on the Hill.

“Drain the swamp” was supposed to be about holding time-serving D.C. politicians accountable instead of letting them enjoy their lifetime sinecures. Well, Franken’s colleagues have weighed the accusations against him and decided to hold him accountable. Ingraham’s right that Democrats are operating expediently in purging him, to try to gain the moral high ground before Alabama votes, but so what? A zero-tolerance policy for harassers in Congress is a good outcome however cynical the reasons for it. And Ingraham is behaving just as expediently in going to the mat for Franken. She’s surprisingly candid about it in her opening statement too: If protecting Trump and Roy Moore means protecting the Democrats’ abusers, that’s a compromise she’s prepared to make. Gingrich, meanwhile, can’t stop congratulating himself for being “politically incorrect” when actually he’s being extremely politically correct by Republican standards. The first rule of GOP political correctness is to cover for Trump at all costs, even if it means stupidly spinning multiple accusations of Franken grabbing women’s asses as just one of those “weird things” comedians do sometimes.

Franken 1,053,205 Minnesotans picked him for senate in 2014
30 self appointed 'pure'senators want him out
What happened to popular vote

— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) December 7, 2017

For fark’s sake. At least if Moore wins the GOP can claim that the voters rendered their own verdict on the allegations against him. Minnesotans never had that chance with Franken. What does the popular vote have to do with anything under the circumstances?

I half-joked yesterday that Franken’s way out of this mess is simply to switch parties, knowing that newly amoral Republicans will rally around him in the name of keeping his vote. But it’s not really a joke. Watch this and tell me that wouldn’t happen. Noah Rothman writes, “Democrats are readying an attack on the GOP meant to brand it; no longer will it be just ‘the party of the rich,’ but the party of sexual abusers and ephebophiles. Is that really what conservatives in Congress signed up for?” Well … yes. We settled that last fall, didn’t we? Once again, see rule one of the Republican political-correctness handbook. Ingraham and Gingrich are just following the idea to its logical conclusion. Namely, if their bad guys have to get a pass in the name of our bad guys getting a pass, hey.