“The allegations against Roy Moore are deeply disturbing and disqualifying,” announced Senator John McCain (right), in response to the accusation made that Judge Moore, the Republican nominee for Senate in Alabama, had a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old girl (although not sexual intercourse) almost 40 years ago, when Moore was a single, 32-year-old man.
“He should immediately step aside and allow the people of Alabama to elect a candidate they can be proud of,” McCain opined.
Note that Moore has denied the allegations that he had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a minor female. Yet, to McCain, the mere fact that an allegation has been made on the eve of the election in Alabama (to replace former Senator Jeff Sessions, who is now the attorney general) is sufficient to disqualify Moore and that he should “immediately step aside.”
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Whatever happened to the presumption of innocence? To carry McCain’s standard to its logical conclusion, then if a woman in Arizona simply accused him of rape 40 years ago, then he should immediately step aside. After all, such an allegation — even if he denied it, and even if it were a false accusation — would be sufficient to end McCain’s long career in Congress. (Ironically, McCain has been accused of far worse things, such as collaborating with the enemy when he was a prisoner in Vietnam, making propaganda messages for them, and also for spiking a U.S. investigation into the likelihood of live POWs in Vietnam after the war ended — leaving the POWs to die — POWs that Soviet records, released when that country collapsed, indicated existed.)
What is particularly amazing, besides McCain’s possible personal traitorousness, is that one of McCain’s fellow senators — the late Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts — was not only accused of leaving a young woman, not his wife, to die in his car in the water of Poucha Pond on Chappaquiddick Island, he did, as a matter of fact, leave her for almost 10 hours to either suffocate or drown on July 18, 1969.
To be blunt, Mary Jo Kopechne died as a result of the actions of Edward Kennedy.
Yet McCain never called for Kennedy’s ouster or resignation. On the contrary, McCain was a close friend of Kennedy for years before Kennedy’s death in 2009, even working together on liberal legislation. Beyond that, he publicly praised Kennedy for his “passionate advocacy,” his “gregarious and friendly” demeanor, and his “congeniality.”
McCain even praised Kennedy for his commitment to government healthcare, which helps explain McCain’s vote against ending ObamaCare (despite his having promised during his last senate campaign to end ObamaCare).
“I feel a personal responsibility to try to conduct myself in many respects the way that Ted Kennedy did on a broad variety of issues,” McCain said a few years ago.
The man who defeated McCain for president in 2008, Barack Obama, had similar comments about Kennedy. “What if we carried ourselves more like Ted Kennedy? What if we worked to follow his example a little bit harder?” Obama opined after Kennedy’s death from brain cancer in 2009.
So, just how did Ted Kennedy “carry” himself back in 1969?
It was the summer after his brother Robert had run for president, his campaign and life ended by an assassin’s bullet in June of 1968. Edward Kennedy arranged for what he called a “cook-out” for six “Boiler Room Girls,” who had worked in Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign on Chappaquiddick Island. The six women were all single. Also at the July 18, 1969 “cook-out” were five married men, including Kennedy, and one single man. None of their wives, including Kennedy’s was present.
Sometime before midnight, Kennedy and one of the young women, Mary Jo Kopechne, left the “cook-out,” with Kennedy driving his Oldsmobile. Kennedy later explained that Kopechne had wanted to return to her hotel across from the island in Edgartown, Massachusetts. According to Kennedy, he made a wrong turn off the paved road onto a dirt road, which would have eventually have taken them to a secluded beach on the Atlantic Ocean.
Instead, he drove off Dike Bridge into the water. Kennedy later said that he dove repeatedly into the water to save Mary Jo, but was unable to locate her. He then returned to the party and got some friends to help him try to rescue her, but they were likewise unsuccessful. He said that he then swam 500 yards across the ocean to Edgartown, and went to sleep in his hotel room, not reporting the incident to the police until the next day, after her body was discovered — about 10 hours later.
Kennedy was not forced to resign, and received only a two-month suspended jail sentence for leaving the woman in the water for 10 hours. Kennedy was reelected to the Senate in 1970.
The district attorney, Edmund Dinis, never sought an indictment for manslaughter. No autopsy was performed. Some have alleged that Kennedy murdered the 28-year-old Kopechne to cover up a pregnancy, but without any proof, that is only an allegation.
Yet, it was not an allegation serious enough for McCain nor any of his fellow senators to call for Kennedy’s ouster from the Senate. Can one imagine the reaction of Democrats or their fellow liberals such as McCain if Moore had left an unmarried woman alone to die in his car submerged in water?
Can one imagine the reaction if a conservative Republican senator committed the same act as that of Kennedy? There is little doubt that the media, liberal Democrats — and Senator John McCain — would call for their immediate ouster. But McCain appears to have a more forgiving spirit when it comes to a fellow liberal, like himself.
Photo of John McCain: Senate.gov
