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
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
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.
RNC spokesperson: It’s up to Todd Akin to decide whether to withdraw from the Missouri Senate race.
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.
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.
As a pivotal battleground state, Ohio this year is ground zero — or near to it — of voter suppression efforts. Republican election officials are pulling out all the stops limiting opportunities to vote on every front possible. These efforts have been concentrated on urban precincts with large concentrations of African-Americans and more permissive standards in suburban areas with fewer of them. We’ll be bringing you a lot more information on this in the coming days.
But over the weekend, we finally had the GOP chair of one of the key counties come out and say he didn’t see why they should go out of their way to make it easy for African-Americans to vote.
Shorter Cornyn: Carefully consider your future, Todd, and then decide to resign.
Family Research Council: We “enthusiastically” back Todd Akin.
Never heard of Todd Akin before now? Oh, the things you’ve missed.
Even as Rep. Todd Akin’s political career appears to be swirling down the toilet, pro-life groups are fiercely defending him and his “legitimate rape” comments.