THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

It didn't start as a rumor as most scandals do. It burst forth fully grown in a very well sourced article in the Washington Post. Some prosecutors have said they have won convictions on less evidence than the Post revealed. And now the national Republican establishment is desperately wiggling and weaseling to dump Roy Moore.

Senate Republicans scrambled on Friday to find a way to block Roy S. Moore’s path to the Senate, exploring extraordinary measures to rid themselves of their own nominee in Alabama after accusations emerged that he had made sexual advances on four teenage girls when he was in his 30s.

Mr. Moore, meanwhile, remained defiant, insisting in a radio interview with Sean Hannity that he would stay in the race. He told Mr. Hannity, the Fox News host, who has endorsed Mr. Moore’s candidacy, that he “never had any contact” with Leigh Corfman, the woman who told The Washington Post that Mr. Moore touched her sexually when she was 14, though he did not deny dating some teenagers.

“I have never known this woman, or anything,” said Mr. Moore, who described the accusations as “politically motivated.”

Republican senators and their advisers, in a flurry of phone calls, emails and text messages, discussed fielding a write-in candidate, pushing Alabama’s governor to delay the Dec. 12 special election or even not seating Mr. Moore at all should he be elected. In an interview, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, declined to say whether he would agree to seat Mr. Moore should he win. Mr. McConnell deferred a question about a possible write-in campaign by Senator Luther Strange, the current occupant of the seat, to Mr. Strange.

The Senate Republican campaign arm, which Mr. McConnell effectively oversees, withdrew Friday from a joint fund-raising agreement with Mr. Moore’s campaign. And Senators Mike Lee of Utah and Steve Daines of Montana rescinded their endorsements of the candidate.

The frenzy reflected not just the worry over the Senate seat once held by Jeff Sessions, now the attorney general, but also the broader danger of the Republican Party’s being associated with Mr. Moore.

If Doug Jones, the Democratic nominee, wins next month, Mr. McConnell’s majority will shrink to one, possibly imperiling the Republican push to overhaul the tax code and most everything else that lawmakers are aiming to do to reverse their spiral before the midterm elections. It could also raise at least the potential that Democrats could seize control of the Senate in 2018, by holding all of their endangered seats and winning Republican seats in Nevada and Arizona.

But if Mr. Moore wins, the party faces a potentially more untenable prospect: welcoming a child-molesting suspect into their ranks, a move that every Republican candidate would have to answer for. That raised memories of Todd Akin, the Republican Senate candidate who in 2012 said victims of “legitimate rape” rarely got pregnant, an assertion that Democrats hung around every candidate that year.

And Mr. Moore’s interview within the sympathetic confines of Mr. Hannity’s show, which was also an initial safe harbor for Mr. Akin in 2012, made Republicans in the capital only more determined that he had to step aside.

“I don’t remember ever dating any girl without the permission of her mother,” Mr. Moore told Mr. Hannity. Asked by Mr. Hannity if he ever dated teenagers when he was in his 30s, Mr. Moore equivocated, replying, “Not generally, no.”

Crazy Roy Moore was never the ideal candidate, even for Alabama, but few have been so wanting that they screw up a Sean Hannity tongue bath. The timing of all this however, makes any changes impossible so the GOP is left to choose, Rock or Hard Place?