Former Obama aide: Roy Moore is test for the GOP ‘moral compass’

Former White House communications director Jen Psaki said Saturday that the Republican Party faces a test of its “moral compass” over the allegations leveled at Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore (R).

In an op-ed for CNN, the former Obama aide writes that Republicans can’t hide behind statements that question the truthfulness of the accusations against Moore.

The former Alabama chief justice is accused of initiating unwanted sexual contact with a 14-year-old girl when he was an assistant district attorney in 1979, something he denies.

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“The response from the majority of elected Republican leaders in Washington was a series of mealy-mouthed statements, from President Donald Trump down to both male and female senators condemning the alleged actions but leaving a huge carve-out ‘if they are proven true,’ ” Psaki writes.

“Reporters unearthed the allegations in the process of earlier reporting on Moore’s Senate campaign and based the new article ‘on interviews with more than 30 people who said they knew Moore between 1977 and 1982,’ the paper said. What more exactly is needed to prove the accusations are true?” she adds.

Psaki specifically named former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon, an early Moore supporter, as the driving force that Republican elected officials are too afraid of to renounce their support for the candidate.

“Moore is a test for the moral compass of the Republican Party,” she writes. “Is it going to push him out of the race and applaud the bravery of four women in Alabama, following the lead of Mitt Romney and [Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)], or is it going to hide behind carefully worded statements out of fear of Steve Bannon and the Trump movement?”

Moore is set to face Democrat Doug Jones in a special election for an Alabama Senate seat in December. The seat is currently held by Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.), who was appointed to the seat in February by former Gov. Robert Bentley (R). Moore defeated Strange in a GOP primary runoff in September.