Liz Cheney GOP Challenger says he impregnated 14-year-old when he was 18

1. Gross, 18 year olds shouldn't be having sex with 14 year olds. I really don't know how anyone can defend that. And if she was pregnant at 14, perhaps it was going on earlier when she was 13. Is anyone teaching teen boys NOT to molest or manipulate much younger teen girls ?

2. Romeo and juliet ends with both of them committing suicide.

He sounds like he might fit right in with Taylor Greene, Boebert, sexual abuse shielder Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, and the rest of the radical Republican wing.

Democratic progressives have been called 'the squad.'

Shall we call the new radicals the Miscreants? The Reprobates? I'm open to suggestions.

TLK Valentine said:

On a possibly related note, do you suppose that her rape, her marriage, and/or her divorce three years later may have contributed to her suicide?

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I don’t see how we can really know. I can say that her suicide was her decision.

Elliewaves said:

1. Gross, 18 year olds shouldn't be having sex with 14 year olds. I really don't know how anyone can defend that.

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Nobody should be having sex with 14 year old girls. However, doing something you shouldn’t have done when you were 18 isn’t a disqualification for political office.

SoldierOfTheKing said:

I don’t see how we can really know. I can say that her suicide was her decision.

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Pregnant at 14, married at 15, divorced at 18, dead at 20.

Agreed, we'll never know for certain, but I doubt it was that Satanic Heavy Metal music the kids listen to...

Nobody should be having sex with 14 year old girls. However, doing something you shouldn’t have done when you were 18 isn’t a disqualification for political office.

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Not if you're a Republican, anyway. Raising the bar would only get in the way of power.

SoldierOfTheKing said:

I don’t see how we can really know. I can say that her suicide was her decision.



Nobody should be having sex with 14 year old girls. However, doing something you shouldn’t have done when you were 18 isn’t a disqualification for political office.

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If it was a lewd sexual crime against a child, then yes it should. The single letter people that the GOP have embraced want to "save the children" from situations such as these, but have no problem voting for those that actually do sexually abuse children and use children for their own desires and purposes. They should find and run somebody better and someone should have told this self professed child rapist that it doesn't help his image or his party's to have someone that ,as a legal adult, did have sex with a 14 year old, run for office. I don't think it should be that hard to find a candidate without a past of child rape.

Elliewaves said:

If it was a lewd sexual crime against a child, then yes it should. The single letter people that the GOP have embraced want to "save the children" from situations such as these, but have no problem voting for those that actually do sexually abuse children and use children for their own desires and purposes.

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Always interesting to see how much forgiveness one can buy with thirty pieces.

ThatRobGuy said:

You'd think so, but if the Roy Moore situation told us anything, it's that many (not all, but many) in the GOP will rationalize a lot of bad behavior in order to keep a narrative in tact.

When it was uncovered that it was very likely that Moore engaged in sexual behavior with someone who was well under the legal age, prominent GOP officials in his state still came to his defense

David Hall said that the encounter was irrelevant because it happened "40 years ago".

Jerry Pow said that he'd support Roy Moore "even if the candidate had committed a sex crime" because he "wouldn't want to vote for Doug (Jones)."

William Blocker stated that he would still consider voting for Moore even if "hard proof of sexual abuse emerged".

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Moore lost a lot GOP support though.

Sketcher said:

Moore lost a lot GOP support though.

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Not nearly enough -- and the support he did lose was toothless. Remember, Donald continued to endorse Moore... and when it comes to defying Donald, backbones were in short supply at the time.

I recall some GOP senators talking about refusing to admit him had he won the election... apparently unaware that SOCUS ruled in Powell v. McCormack (1969) that they had no authority to do that... or perhaps they were aware... and simply hoped the voters weren't.

Had Moore won his election, the most the Senate could have done is open its own investigation, and based on the results of that investigation, vote to expel him... and that hasn't happened since the Civil War.

Considering that at the time, The Senate was ruled by the GOP (who desperately needed Moore to keep their majority), who in turn were ruled by Mitch McConnell, who in turn was ruled by Donald, I'd say that had he not (narrowly) lost his special election, Roy Moore was statistically more likely to grow wings and fly out of the Senate than be kicked out of it.

TLK Valentine said:

Not nearly enough -- and the support he did lose was toothless. Remember, Donald continued to endorse Moore... and when it comes to defying Donald, backbones were in short supply at the time.

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Trump said he was right the whole time endorsing the candidate Moore ran against in the primaries.

Alabama is a deep red state. The only reason Jones won was so many GOP voters stayed home or voted against Moore.

Sketcher said:

Trump said he was right the whole time endorsing the candidate Moore ran against in the primaries.

Alabama is a deep red state. The only reason Jones won was so many GOP voters stayed home or voted against Moore.

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Agreed, Moore narrowly lost a state that he should have been able to phone in a victory. There is comfort to be taken in that... but I still believe the race was far closer than it should have been.

The coach who replaced Jones needs some intensive coaching on representing his state asa senator.

Sketcher said:

Moore lost a lot GOP support though.

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He did, but that race was much closer than it should've been



The sort of damning information that came out about more should've been slam dunk...

Especially considering that Doug Jones wasn't all that liberal of a democrat, and was pretty much a moderate (and was even right-of-center on the issue of gun rights)

It'd be one thing if they were asking republicans in the state to choose between Roy Moore and someone who could be considered to be on the "Radical Left" (I don't think it would be fair to have the expectation that people should have to vote against all of their interests just because something bad came out about a candidate's past)

For instance, if there was a democrat facing off against Jim Jordan for Ohio's 4th district, and it had been uncovered the democrat engaged in some sort of behavior similar to Moore...I wouldn't expect every democrat to vote for Jim Jordan...that would be an unfair expectation.

But if the same occurred in Maryland, and a democrat had bad things like that surface from the past and they were challenging a moderate republican like Larry Hogan, then I would expect them to "cross the fence" so to speak and vote for Hogan.

ThatRobGuy said:

For instance, if there was a democrat facing off against Jim Jordan for Ohio's 4th district, and it had been uncovered the democrat engaged in some sort of behavior similar to Moore...I wouldn't expect every democrat to vote for Jim Jordan...that would be an unfair expectation.

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You mean like looking the other way when a doctor is sexually abusing student athletes on the team you coach?

But if the same occurred in Maryland, and a democrat had bad things like that surface from the past and they were challenging a moderate republican like Larry Hogan, then I would expect them to "cross the fence" so to speak and vote for Hogan.

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Dems with those sorts of histories don't run for governor in MD; they run for office in Baltimore. They often win.

iluvatar5150 said:

You mean like looking the other way when a doctor is sexually abusing student athletes on the team you coach?

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I don't know that'd be a perfect comparison, as replacing a predator doctor wouldn't be an either/or comparison, and they choices for replacements would be endless.

I was more referring to environment of having a two party system, and having to pick between one of the two "teams"

In that scenario, if the politician for your own party had something like that was uncovered, your choices are

1) Big picture - vote for the policies and not the person
2) Don't vote at all
3) Vote for the other party (even if their policies are abhorrent to you)

When the opposing team is running a moderate, the decision is easy, vote for the moderate to keep the predator out, take the loss with dignity, and then pick a better vetted person the next time around.

If it's a person who's on the far-ends of the opposing side of the spectrum, that decision can be a lot more difficult for people.

For the republicans who still opted to vote for Moore over Jones, I'd seriously question their thought process on that one.

If someone was a far-left progressive living in TX, I wouldn't expect them to vote for Ted Cruz or John Cornyn if the democratic challenger had some dirt revealed. However, if either of those guys were moderates, and they still opted to vote for a pedo over them (with the same weak rhetoric the Alabama GOP used for defending Moore), then I would question their judgement.

iluvatar5150 said:

Dems with those sorts of histories don't run for governor in MD; they run for office in Baltimore. They often win.

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That must be an inside joke of some sort that I'm not getting the reference to lol.

ThatRobGuy said:

I don't know that'd be a perfect comparison, as replacing a predator doctor wouldn't be an either/or comparison, and they choices for replacements would be endless.

<snip>

That must be an inside joke of some sort that I'm not getting the reference to lol.

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They were both references to past/ongoing scandals: When Jim Jordan coached college wrestling, one of the team doctors liked to get a bit handsy IYKWIM. People have since alleged that Jordan knew about it but ignored it.

Regarding Maryland democrats with seedy personal histories: I live in Baltimore. and our city government is something of a clown show of corruption. Two of our last five mayors have been convicted of crimes. The first plead down to a misdemeanor and got really close to getting re-elected in a comeback several years later. The second is currently doing 3 years in federal prison. A third got caught in some low-level tax avoidance thing that I don't think anything ever came of.

Our current state's attorney and her husband the city council president are under investigation by the feds for <something>. Her office was raided recently by the feds and they had to issue a statement saying that the raid was targeting a different employee in her office for something unrelated to the matter for which she and her husband are being investigated.

Our police commissioner job has been something of a revolving door the last few years. One of the recent office-holders (home grown in the BPD, appointed by the mayor now in federal prison) served in the role for 5 months before quitting after it came out that he hadn't filed his taxes for a few years. He was sentences to 10 months in jail for tax fraud.

Then there was the Gun Trace Task Force, which was so special that it's spawned two successful books and an upcoming HBO series.

ThatRobGuy said:

I don't know that'd be a perfect comparison, as replacing a predator doctor wouldn't be an either/or comparison, and they choices for replacements would be endless.

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FYI, that was a reference to Jim Jordan and his alleged cover-up of sex abuse by the team doctor when he coached wrestling at Ohio State.

https://usports.org/rep-jim-jordan-accused-again-of-covering-up-sexual-abuse-allegations/

Were his actions actually illegal? I am not sure what the laws were regarding consent in his state at the time.

TLK Valentine said:

Pregnant at 14, married at 15, divorced at 18, dead at 20.

Agreed, we'll never know for certain, but I doubt it was that Satanic Heavy Metal music the kids listen to...

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Most teen pregnancies don't result in the suicide of the girl, and divorces after three years are hardly uncommon these days, especially among couples who marry young.

Considered this, by killing herself this girl abandoned her child. Bouchard went on to raise the child without her. Who showed greater strength of character here? Does this give any hint as to who might have initiated the divorce?

Elliewaves said:

If it was a lewd sexual crime against a child, then yes it should. The single letter people that the GOP have embraced want to "save the children" from situations such as these, but have no problem voting for those that actually do sexually abuse children and use children for their own desires and purposes. They should find and run somebody better and someone should have told this self professed child rapist that it doesn't help his image or his party's to have someone that ,as a legal adult, did have sex with a 14 year old, run for office. I don't think it should be that hard to find a candidate without a past of child rape.

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It seems that the law as it stood at the time was ambiguous. Assuming that it was illegal, that would mean that the girl or her parents could have pressed criminal charges against Bouchard. If that had occurred, and he had been convicted, he would never have become a state senator, and consequently wouldn't be in the running to replace Cheney in Congress. But they didn't, so he is. Where there is no accusation, there can be no crime.

Also, since you want to stress that Bouchard was a legal adult and the girl was a legal minor, it is only fair to note that since Bouchard was not convicted of anything, he is legally innocent.

SoldierOfTheKing said:

Most teen pregnancies don't result in the suicide of the girl,

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Small comfort, as this one did.

and divorces after three years are hardly uncommon these days, especially among couples who marry young.

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Which is why marrying young is generally not advised.

Considered this, by killing herself this girl abandoned her child. Bouchard went on to raise the child without her. Who showed greater strength of character here? Does this give any hint as to who might have initiated the divorce?

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If you're suggesting Bouchard is a better person than his dead child bride, well... it's a shame we don't have her around to make the comparison.

But I can see how this is just the sort of "greater strength of character" that the GOP is looking for...I'm certain he'll fit right in.

It seems that the law as it stood at the time was ambiguous. Assuming that it was illegal, that would mean that the girl or her parents could have pressed criminal charges against Bouchard. If that had occurred, and he had been convicted, he would never have become a state senator, and consequently wouldn't be in the running to replace Cheney in Congress. But they didn't, so he is. Where there is no accusation, there can be no crime.

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And in the eyes of Conservatives, where there is no crime, there is no wrong.

Again, he'll fit right in.

Also, since you want to stress that Bouchard was a legal adult and the girl was a legal minor, it is only fair to note that since Bouchard was not convicted of anything, he is legally innocent.

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And legal is all that a Christian needs to show their support. I'll remember that in the next abortion or SSM debate.

I still don't know how anyone can defend what he did and be okay with voting for him for anything, sorry. Arguing that it's really okay because her mother gave her a permission slip is gross. Normalizing child rape as okay because it was love and parents gave permission is just disturbing and doesn't make it any less of a crime. As to his moral character and strength? Um he was an adult having sex with a minor child; I don't think he wins in the moral department over the 14 year old mother. Surely there are better people to run that don't half brag about raping a child and then getting away with it? The son that resulted from this adult man raping a 14 year old girl is currently in jail for his own sexual assault so there's that to attest to his parenting skills. I wonder if trumpy endorses him , if people will vote for this guy especially the ones that have "save the children" as their battlecry.......save the children- from them or for them? I don't really care if people want someone else besides Cheney, but you know, find someone that didn't rape a child.