Republicans have pounced on the allegation that Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota groped and forcibly kissed a colleague in 2006 during rehearsal for a comedy sketch. Within a couple hours of the news breaking, GOP Leader Mitch McConnell immediately called for an investigation by the Congressional Ethics Committee. His hour-long deliberation stood in stark contrast to the four days that languished between him saying Roy Moore should step aside only "if these allegations are true" and his declaration that he believed the women.
Republicans are now anxious to paint the Franken assault as an apples-to-apples comparison with Moore’s pedophilia. To be sure, their behavior is completely inexcusable and, in both cases, their female victims have tragically and silently borne the scars of those inappropriate advances for years.
But as a matter of politics, Democrats can, should, and already are demonstrating a response that sets them apart from Republican cowardice.
Indeed, Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer as well as Franken himself were quick to call for an ethics investigation into the issue.
"I hope and expect the Ethics Committee will fully investigate this troubling incident, as they should with any credible allegation of sexual harrassment," Schumer said.
In some ways, the move is relatively unusual since the Ethics Committee usually investigates incidents that take place while someone is a sitting member of Congress.
But not only should Democrats go above and beyond to do the right thing here from a moral standpoint, but doing so will benefit them politically, too. If Democrats respond with rigor to sexual misconduct within their midst, they will absolutely set themselves and their candidates apart in 2018, which is already shaping up to be another historic year of the woman.
For one, most Democratic base voters, generally speaking, both should want their own party held to account and do want their own party held to account. I believe those voters will reward their party for an earnest inquiry. We are already seeing progressive pundits and writers move in this direction, with a number of them in this post-Weinstein era rethinking the party's defense of Bill Clinton's actions.
Republican base voters by contrast, generally speaking, have not yet demonstrated a widespread appetite for the truth even in this new political environment. Many white evangelicals, in particular, have gone out of their way to make excuses for Moore, as have the state party's elected officials. From their assurances that, "I know Judge Moore" to their fixation on the "suspicious" timing of the revelations to their assertions that "it was 40 years ago," many of Alabama's GOP base voters have demonstrated that they don't want an honest inquiry into the facts.
What this means is that Washington Republicans will likely pay a much higher price for demanding that Roy Moore be held accountable than Democrats will for demanding that Sen. Franken be held accountable. To some extent, the dynamic is simply emblematic of the identity crisis within the Republican Party and the unbridgeable divide between its base and its representatives in Washington.
So go ahead and let Republicans execute an inquiry into Franken. If that's the standard they're setting, they are already setting themselves up for disaster in a midterm election where Donald Trump—the GOP’s chief sexual predator—will undoubtedly be a centerpiece of every Democratic candidacy. For all the Republicans who are now calling on Democrats to return money donated to them by Sen. Franken, here's the response.
In the meantime, let's make sure Democrats get this right—because an honest inquiry into any sort of sexual misconduct is simply the right thing to do.