While carrying water for rascals can work, up to a point, you eventually develop a reputation for carrying water for rascals. When you’re forced to defend what no one wants to defend—Trump’s Access Hollywood monologue, Roy Moore’s 17th-century view on the age of consent—you’re hemorrhaging your team’s capital: morale, self-respect, and credibility. People in the club drop out. Recruitment to the cause becomes harder.

Has America’s Culture War Always Been This Dumb? | Vanity Fair