It was déjà vu all over again as the Washington Post, who has endorsed his opponent in the Alabama Senate race, brought forth 40-year-old sexual molestation accusations against Judge Roy Moore. From Clarence Thomas, to the Duke lacrosse team, to the University of Virginia rape case, to Herman Cain, we have heard such charges before and the rush to judgment that follows.

Moore’s accusers issue the boilerplate caveat that if the charges are true, he should exit the public stage immediately in shame and certainly that is true. Then they quickly throw him under the guilty-as-charged bus that just ran over his presumption of innocence.

It matters not that Judge Roy Moore has been in Alabama politics for decades and his accusers were silent -- silent until he threatened the establishment by being a credible candidate for the U.S. Senate, having dispatched the establishment candidate, Luther Strange, in the Alabama primary. Had Moore lost the primary, it is doubtful these accusations would have surfaced. If he withdraws as his critics urge, his accusers will likely vanish into the woodwork as quickly as the accusers of Herman Cain did, their mission accomplished, after he abandoned his presidential run that was clearly gaining momentum.

In Moore’s case, as with others like his, it's sentence first, trial later.  Sen. John McCain, who opposes all things Trump, leading the charge of those grabbing some rope and heading to the nearest tree:

Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) called on Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore to "immediately step aside" on Thursday, faster than you can say “Anita Hill.” in the wake of a report that he initiated a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old when he was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney….

 "The allegations against Roy Moore are deeply disturbing and disqualifying," McCain wrote. "He should immediately step aside and allow the people of Alabama to elect a candidate they can be proud of."

Some, like Jion Street at the anti-Trump RedState, have taken to sliming those Moore supporters who believe in the presumption of innocence by comparing them to defenders of Bill Clinton:

For years, multiple women have accused former President Bill Clinton of sexually harassing them. Some have even accused him of rape. But, to date, none of those accusations have been tried in a court of law. Therefore, none have been formally proven…

My point in relitigating the Clinton scandals is to draw a correlation between these incidents and the Washington Post’s report on Thursday that Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore allegedly made sexual advances on a 14-year-old girl in the late 1970s, when he was 32-years-old.

Daresay that the allegations against Bill Clinton, the man who lied when said he never have sex with “that woman… Monica Lewinsky,” are more credible and documented than the decades-old charges against Judge Roy Moore. Maybe we should ask Juanita Broaddrick about that.

We have seen it all before. Accusations of being a sexual predator were leveled against President Trump during the campaign.  So-called feminist lawyer Gloria Allred, who showed up with a group of Herman Cain accusers in 2012 to similarly attempt to derail the presidential run of a powerful and successful Republican businessman:

It doesn’t matter if the charges are false. Accusations make page one while the truth later winds up at the bottom of the classifieds. Cain’s candidacy was derailed after repeated and unproven sexual harassment allegations by former employees. But like Harry Reid’s tax lies about Mitt Romney, it worked. That is the goal of Judge Roy Moore’s accusers. Why raise the charges now after being silent for decades?

Trump accuser Jessica Leeds' accusation was accepted as credible immediately. Smear first, prove later. Guilty until proven innocent. It worked with Romney and Cain, why not Judge Roy Moore? But the rush to believe the claims of Moore’s groping stand in contrast to the blind eye given to the claims of Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, Paula Jones, and others, claims backed up by contemporaneous witness testimony and a victorious lawsuit by and with a cash settlement to Jones.

As Investor’s Business Daily editorialized in 2011, righteous indignation and claims of victimhood are a one-way street for the liberal grievance industry:

The age of civility, like the era of post-racial politics, is a mirage created by liberals to mute criticism of their policies by committed conservatives. Otherwise, we wouldn't see the continued abuse heaped by liberals on women and minorities who dare to be conservative, members of the Tea Party or the GOP, or all of the above.

The latest example of leftist vitriol has Herman Cain, former CEO of Godfather's Pizza, current radio talk-show host and possible 2012 GOP presidential contender, as its -- dare we say? -- target…

Where are the Jesse Jacksons and the Al Sharptons and the rest of the racial, gender and ethnic grievance industry amid the chirping crickets? Maybe it's the self-made successful entrepreneur part that bothers them.

Cain challenges the liberal orthodoxy by saying people should find inspiration in "God, yourself and the greatest country in the world," not from the government. On that score, he says "stupid people are running this country."

We are burdened, he says, by "too much regulation, legislation and taxation," and the "only way to fix our messed-up tax code is to throw it out and put in a whole new system." He denounces a regulatory burden that places $10,000 in compliance costs on business for every worker hired as we wonder why businesses aren't hiring.

His is a government that allows wealth creation rather than redistribution and promises a better life for our children rather than an unconscionable burden of debt.

One does not try to drain the swamp without the swamp creatures turning on you. Herman Cain was a threat to their power. So was Mitt Romney. So too is Judge Roy Moore.  If the charges against Moore are true, he should get all that such a person deserves. But if they are not true, where, as Labor Secretary Roy Donovan said, where does he go to get his reputation and political future back?

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.