Kellyanne Conway: Trump won't dump Roy Moore because "we want the votes"

After the accusations surfaced from multiple women that Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore is a serial pedophile who was banned from a mall and the YMCA for stalking teenage girls, national Republican leadership has pulled their support, and Moore is sinking in polls against Democratic opponent Doug Jones.

But the one Republican who really matters — Donald Trump — has done his best to skirt the issue.

On Monday, however, counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway gave a peek at Trump’s current feelings on Moore when asked by “Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade:

CONWAY: Doug Jones in Alabama, folks, don’t be fooled. He will be a vote against tax cuts. He is weak on crime. Weak on borders. He is strong on raising your taxes. He is terrible for property owners—

KILMEADE: So, vote Roy Moore?

CONWAY: —Doug Jones is a doctrinaire liberal, which is why he is not saying anything and the media are trying to boost him.

KILMEADE: So, vote Roy Moore?

CONWAY: I’m telling you that we want the votes in the Senate to get this tax bill through.

Put aside the absurdity of Conway calling Jones — a former federal prosecutor who locked up Klansmen for a church bombing in the 1960s — “soft on crime.” Her underlying message is deeply disturbing. She is essentially saying it is OK to molest children as long as you vote for tax cuts for millionaires, a sentiment that has been echoed by Republicans in Alabama, including the state’s governor, Republican Kay Ivey, who said on Friday she’s rather elect a child molester than a Democrat.

Conway’s remarks are the most definitive yet that Trump still stands with Moore.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has refused to say Moore should drop out, minimized the severity of the scandal, and declined to say whether Trump would not vote for Moore if he could.

Marc Short, Trump’s congressional liaison, likewise spent six whole minutes on ABC’s “This Week” refusing to give his boss’s position on Moore.

It is a bitter irony that the tax scheme on which Trump, Conway, and other Republicans are willing to stake the election of a pedophile is not even popular with the American people.

Conway’s remarks have proved once again that for Republicans, appeasing a tiny circle of mega-wealthy benefactors beats anything else — from justice for abused children, to basic human decency.