According to an affidavit obtained by the Florida Center for Government Accountability, and reported by Lucian K. Truscott IV, the woman demurred, explaining “sorry, I was mostly in it for her.”She says Ziegler proceeded to take her by force. His lawyer told the Washington Post that when all the evidence comes out, Ziegler will be “totally exonerated.”

Criminally, perhaps. Politically, not a chance. You see, Ziegler told Sarasota police that the encounter was consensual, and offered as evidence a video he’d made. I expect that’s one selfie you won’t be seeing on Facebook. The cops have also taken possession of all Ziegler’s electronic devices. The accused also argues that he’s being persecuted for his political views.

Meanwhile, Ron DeSantis has said Ziegler should resign from the GOP chairmanship. The governor hasn’t said anything about Bridget’s position on the Sarasota County school board or the special taxing district he created to punish the Disney Corporation, in which capacity the fair Bridget has in the past accused the company of making cartoons corrupting children.

Almost needless to say, the Zieglers are also big Trump allies. Because nothing enhances one’s credibility with right-wing Christians like being strong with the old pussy-grabber.

Bridget Ziegler has also admitted a sexual encounter involving her, her husband, and his accuser, but says it only happened the one time. A cynic might suspect she knows that the woman can prove it. It would appear unlikely that there’s just the one video.

Politically, Moms for Liberty has done the Republicans more harm than good anyway. Banning books, attacking teachers and librarians, and picking on vulnerable LGBTQ students has turned out to be less popular among voters than many imagined it would. Recent school board and state legislative elections in Pennsylvania and Virginia in particular resulted in candidates associated with the group losing pretty much across the board. It appears that voters aren’t happy about being told their local schools are run by perverts and subversives.

Perhaps in consequence, pious frauds in general are a little more cautious about accusing everybody else of sexual libertinism of late. Erin Burnett had a fascinating segment on her CNN program last week about a book called The Revivalist Manifesto for which GOP House Speaker wrote a laudatory foreword in 2022.

Basically, it was one of those deals where a political crony back home in Shreveport produced an extreme-right screed that played very differently in the nation’s capital. The author, one Scott McKay, a Louisiana blogger, is all about the so-called Gay Agenda. He’s particularly exercised by Biden administration Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, variously described as “openly and obnoxiously gay,” and as displaying what the author calls “queer sanctimony,” whatever that is. He describes him as a complete nonentity with no qualifications for public office apart from his sexual identity.

Never mind that Buttigieg is a former Rhodes Scholar, an Afghanistan war veteran and former mayor of South Bend, Indiana. The insinuation is that no sanctimonious queer could possibly know anything about harbors, railroads, and trucks. In the real world, the secretary is widely credited with solving the post-Covid supply-chain problems that contributed so much to monetary inflation.

McKay also spends a lot of time on the QAnon-endorsed “Pizzagate” fantasy, accusing name-brand Democrats of child sexual abuse orgies conducted in the basement of a Washington pizza restaurant that has no basement.

But why go on? Speaker Johnson, who has an extensive history of denouncing the “homosexual agenda,” now says he never actually read the manifesto he promoted, and disagrees with its slurs.

I wonder who’s next.

Gene Lyons is a former columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, a winner of the National Magazine Award, and co-author of The Hunting of the President.