A lot of people are writing about the politics of abortion today. Mitt Romney came out yesterday and pledged that his administration would allow women whose pregnancies were caused by rape to get an abortion. That position is contrary to the Republican Party’s platform. It’s deeply contrary to Paul Ryan’s record in Congress. And it is at least implicitly contrary to some of Mitt Romney’s prior statements. The issue broke into the news when Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin suggested that women have some kind of magic power to prevent non-consensual conception. But that’s a bit of a distraction. The real issue is what should and should not be legal.
It seems evident from the way the whole GOP, from top to bottom, raced to distance themselves from Todd Akin’s remarks that the Republican strategists don’t think forcing women to have their rapists’ babies is a viable political position. But why, then, does the Republican Party take exactly that position in their platform? Is Akin being singled out just because he made a biological error?
Remember that Rick Santorum said that women should consider their rape babies to be gifts.
“I believe and I think that the right approach is to accept this horribly created, in the sense of rape, but nevertheless, in a very broken way, a gift of human life, and accept what God is giving to you.”
Santorum made that statement in January during Piers Morgan’s show on CNN. Many people responded with shock, but there was no outcry from Republicans that Santorum drop out of the race. In fact, Santorum went on to win several primaries and wound up finishing in second place.
Some people are arguing that Akin is getting rough treatment from his own party because his outlandish comments reflect badly on Paul Ryan who has co-sponsored several extreme anti-choice bills with Akin. Perhaps there is something to that, but I suspect the real issue is that Akin is unpopular in the Missouri GOP and he isn’t seen as a strong candidate by the national party. They want to replace him because Claire McCaskill is the most vulnerable Democrat running for reelection and they don’t want her to wriggle off the hook.
In any case, the offensive and toxic part of Akin’s remarks was not his false theory of natural spermicide but his position that women should be forced to bear their rapist’s children. And that’s the position of the Republican Party. So, what’s the big deal?
The big deal is that for as defiantly toxic as the GOP’s public outreach and agenda are already, their less publicized legislative record is even worse. And that’s why they never actually run on their full record.
Which, of course, you know already…
is the reason he is being singled out. Because it shined a huge spotlight on the very real Republican idea that many a rape reported wasn’t really a rape. That idea is offensive to a lot of people.
And even more than the abortion part of his comments I think that idea is offensive to a lot of the American public. As Obama said rape is rape.
As for why team R is trying to force him out, it isn’t about Missouri as much as it is about their concern that Akin will be an anvil around Ryan’s neck.
I agree. The problem is his use of the phrase “legitimate rape,” which draws attention to the bill he co-sponsored with Ryan.
What I don’t get, or haven’t seen, is how the Republicans are squaring their calls for his head with the desires of the voters who have already voted for Akin in the primary. A quick perusal of Twitter shows they’re none too happy with the Repub leadership making decisions for them.
Akin framed his speech with clumsy language about rape and included ridiculous ideas about women’s bodies shutting down the rapist’s sperm so they usually don’t get pregnant as a result of “legitimate” rape. Sure, it’s been said before, but the point is, Akin revived a lot of stupid thinking that touched a lot of nerves.
The fact that his comments pissed off the Republican campaign leaders doesn’t surprise me, nor does the fact that currently most of his constituents are fine with what he said, keeping him close to his Democratic opponent McCaskill in the polls.
File under Some People Are Stupid, and STILL Get Away With It.
They are not picking on Akin for his record or his position, since those are identical to many Republicans, including the vice-presidential nominee.
They are picking on Akin because he horrendously misspoke. Akin doesn’t believe, I’m sure, that some rapes are legitimate, but the phrase “legitimate rape” came out of his mouth, and that’s the end of his political career.
They are picking on him because they don’t want a repeat of Ken Buck, Sharron Angle or Christine O’Donnell. Seats the GOP should have won, but didn’t because they nominated bat guano insane candidates.
I don’t think Akin is insane. The position that he takes is one that is held by many right-to-lifers, and it is a position that follows logically from the belief that abortion is a form of infanticide.
He does indulge in a bit of pseudoscience, but that would never have made national news. It’s all because he misspoke.
So they are getting picked on because those candidates forgot rule # 1 of GOP candidates. Keep your mouth shut at all times.
No. Akin, and many other Republicans, believe there are legitimate claims of rape. And, by extension, and far more common, illegitimate ones.
They can’t exactly say that abortion for rape is OK, but only after a court has determined that rape actually occurred. So they need a shorthand to determine which alleged victims (i.e., their wives and daughters) are telling the truth, and which are simply sinful sluts. Hence the whole spermicidal idiocy. It’s like every other Republican pseudo-fact (e.g., sunspots cause global warming). It’s there because it helps them reconcile reality with ideological purity.
Akin’s paying a price because this time a Republican pseudo-fact is not just wrong, but viscerally offensive. Pity that even more preposterous beliefs about global conspiracies of climate scientists don’t provoke that sort of response, too.
Like flogging suspected witches. Those that don’t drown are the “legitimate” witches.
Yeah, not buying it. The point about legitimate or not is irrelevant. The point is, he said when rapes happens the female body is traumatized to a degree that preganancy becomes highly unlikely. He thought he could just drop some medical K-nowledge like Bill Frist. At best we can say this man has pitifully ignorant and extreme ideas about female physiology.
Perhaps there is something to that, but I suspect the real issue is that Akin is unpopular in the Missouri GOP and he isn’t seen as a strong candidate by the national party.
Even Versailles judged him to be the weakest candidate for the GOP, before he won the primary. The only reason he’d be unpopular would be because he could cost the GOP a seat they should, at least of now, win. The Turtle is getting pissed his dreams of being Senate Majority Leader could be going up in smoke.
It’s the stupid. Tacking off their own members’ responses yesterday from Mitt “It’s just wrong” to Steele’s “It’s just stupid” where the R’s were freaked at stupid wording, based on stupid non science that told people the R platform reflects stupid choices the Dem talkers this morning are calling Akins words stupid but more powerful that the platform of the Party on Rape, women and abortion is STUPID.
Akin’s party just spent the last 2 years in Congress beating the rape, incest, personhood, abortion drum at every chance. And Akin’s just pointed out that they were misinformed.
I’m betting that he withdraws at 5 PM Eastern, 4 Central – there’s no coming back from this one. “Legitimate rape”? He might as well have said, “You get my kid to call you dad, I ** your wife” and then saturate the market with the video of said deed.
Because he forgot the rules of GOP “dog whistles.” Or maybe after seeing Santorum get a pass on doing the same with his “a child of rape is a blessing from god,” he thought the rules had changed and he was free to speak the GOP misogynist, religious whacko crap.
What’s discouraging is that some portion of the majority in this country that doesn’t support all the various forms of bigotry espoused by the GOP always acts shocked when some impolitic Republican drops the “n” word, etc. and yet never seems to get that without the bigot votes, Republicans would never capture more than 20% of the vote.
Paul Ryan is a GENERAL in the GOP War on Women.
He was a SPONSOR of the following:
HR3 – which tried to ‘REDEFINE RAPE’
The NATIONAL – Personhood Amendment
THE NATIONAL – invade a woman with a FORCED ULTRASOUND
He voted to DEFUND PLANNED PARENTHOOD
He is against abortion in terms of RAPE AND INCEST
there is not a sliver of light between Akin and Ryan.