From all across the nation, fellow Republicans had been pressuring Congressman Todd Akin (R-Missouri) to drop out of his state's senatorial race. However, the state-mandated deadline has come and gone; he appears to have resisted their pleas.
Had Mr. Akin been more co-operative, Republican state officials would have been able to appoint a replacement candidate in time to assure a spot on the ballot. Now that his promised financial support is being withdrawn, one of the Democrats' most vulnerable incumbent senators, Claire McCaskill, appears to stand a much greater chance of surviving a challenge.
Congressman Akin seems to have created widespread unease among his party's compatriots with his forehead-slapping, eyeballs-cast-heavenward commentary about rape and pregnancy. During a Sunday television interview, he stated that the trauma caused by a "legitimate" rape (huh???) would release hormones that would make it difficult for the woman to conceive. (Hmm! So evidently, the 32,000-plus women per year in the US, who become pregnant after being raped are all outliers).
It looks as if the blowback from this outrageous observation is so severe that the Republican poobahs all the way up the pyramid to Mitt Romney are collectively wetting their pants.
Yet despite all the official fear and indignation, the Republicans have incorporated into their party's convention platform a plank that would forbid abortions with no explicit exceptions for rape or incest.
Theoretically, is there any reason to believe that any Republican stand-in for Akin would vote any differently on this issue, or any other for that matter, than would Akin himself? I doubt it.
Congressional Republicans have recently advanced other draconian anti-choice legislation, although they knew that it wouldn't pass. So I guess that these mostly older white guys were just availing themselves of an opportunity to vent. I dunno, maybe they're being henpecked at home. But one thing seems abundantly clear. They sure do hate women!
So what was so special about Congressman Akin? Nothing really. Just a bi-i-i-ig mouth!
The "brains" on the Obama re-election campaign should run ads showing the GOP platform which denies abortion under any circumstances.
ReplyDeleteBut will they? Their current efforts (those I'm aware of) aren't homing in on the priorities
(desperate millions suffering in this economy)
NEARLY enough.