4) Moore wins, and the Senate GOP tries to expel him. “If he were to be sworn in, he would immediately be in a process before the Senate Ethics Committee,” Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday. That process would involve hearings, witnesses, evidence — a long and excruciating ordeal during which Moore could defend himself, and attack his accusers, at length. How long? The Ethics Committee’s investigation of Sen. Bob Packwood began in December 1992 and ended with a recommendation to expel Packwood in September 1995. (Packwood resigned before the Senate could act.) Moore’s case, with the Republican leadership pushing to expel him, would take place while the Senate GOP tries to pass legislation with a thin 52-vote majority, meaning the GOP leadership would be working with one hand to expel Moore and with the other to win his vote. It would likely be a long and ugly process. And a precedent-breaking one: The Senate has never expelled a member for conduct that occurred before the member joined the Senate. If McConnell and his colleagues tried to expel Moore on the basis of accusations of conduct dating to 30 to 40 years before the campaign, they would set a new and potentially dangerous precedent. And if they want to speed things and up and just vote to expel Moore — there’s nothing in the Constitution that requires they give Moore due process — they would set an even worse precedent. In any event, it will very likely be ugly.