Pro-Life groups offering encouragement and defense for Todd Akin.
Akin is also scheduled to appear on Mike Huckabee’s show at the top of the hour, presumably the key part of a push to lock down his evangelical and pro-life base.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) calls for Rep. Todd Akin to “step aside today”:
Todd Akin’s statements are reprehensible and inexcusable. He should step aside today for the good of the nation.
— Ron Johnson (@Ron4Senate) August 20, 2012
I believe that’s the first sitting U.S. senator not running this year to call for Akin to step aside.
RNC spokesperson: It’s up to Todd Akin to decide whether to withdraw from the Missouri Senate race.
TPM Reader PP on how Akin’s remarks were a double whammy of misogyny:
The Akin comment is obviously offensive, but I’m a bit surprised that what seems to be generating the most offense is the cartoonishly ignorant belief that a woman’s body can somehow differentiate between a rapist and a loving companion and choose to let itself get pregnant or not. It’s certainly bizarre and easy to report on, but personally the greater outrage should be at the casual, and seemingly commonly held belief that there are categories of rape.
The dynamic emerging this morning is Republicans becoming more full-throated in their condemnation of Rep. Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” remarks while Democrats hold some of their fire for fear of driving Akin from the race.
In the former category, you have Mitt Romney getting his bearings and taking a new stronger swipe at Akin: “insulting, inexcusable, and, frankly, wrong.” Sen. Scott Brown is calling for Akin to drop out of the Missouri Senate race. In the latter category, Akin’s opponent, Claire McCaskill (D-MO) would really rather Akin not go anywhere. Read More
Thanks so much to Josh and the TPM crew for the opportunity to guest blog this week about my new book, The Voting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown.
The book explains how and why the battles over election rules and ballot counting have become much so worse since the 2000 Florida debacle.
As TPM readers well know, election time brings out inevitable accusations by political partisans of voter fraud and voter suppression.
But that’s only part of the story. Read More
Shorter McCaskill: Trying to take Akin off the ticket would be almost as outrageous as his comments!!
TPM Reader SR on “legitimate rape” and Akin’s commonplace reasoning …
Growing up, my political affiliations were tied to the political views of my parents, as they are for most people. My dad was apolitical, while my mom was a single-issue voter: Pro-Life. St. Louis is a very Catholic, very Pro-Life town, or at least it was in the 80s and 90s, when we lived there and participated in all of the marches and pickets. So, I grew up awash in the Pro-Life reasoning, and this idea of “real rape” (typically defined as the stranger assaulting the victim in a violent manner) preventing pregnancy was the standard response to the Pro-Choice argument about making exceptions for rape and incest.
Two quick things I want to let you know about coming up soon at TPM.
This week we’re going to be joined in the Editors’ Blog by Rick Hasen, the guy who knows more about the on-going voter fraud / voter ID / voter suppression story than anyone I know. Rick’s a law professor at UC Irvine and he’ll be discussing his new book The Voting Wars as well as how these issues are now playing out in the 2012 cycle.
Next week we’ll be joined by Mike Grunwald who will be discussing his new book The New New Deal, his account of the 2009 ‘Stimulus Bill’ which set the stage on which so much of President Obama’s presidency has played out.
The Romney campaign has now issued what sounds like a relatively tepid statement saying the team ‘disagrees’ with Akin and would note oppose abortion in cases of rape.