Todd Akin is a nobody in American politics, or at least he was until he opened his mouth and revealed his stupidity a few weeks ago. Akin is the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Missouri. He earned that position by winning his party’s primary election, thereby earning the right to run against incumbent Claire McCaskill, the first-term Democrat who had been thought to be highly vulnerable until Akin won his primary.
Akin is one of those extremists on the right-to-life issue. They exist on both sides of the question of abortion. On the left, they take positions like opposing laws that would require a doctor to advise a child’s parents before performing an abortion on a 13-year old girl. They claim that such a law would threaten the absolute right of any pregnant female to terminate an abortion at will, even if those decisions are far too serious and potentially life-changing for most barely pubescent girls to make on their own.
On the right, the extremists like Akin claim that any cessation of a pregnancy, even of a newly formed eight-cell zygote (such as are formed in the first days of a potential pregnancy), is the destruction of a human being. Adherents of this perspective believe that a human being is created as soon as a sperm successfully unites with an egg, even if that impregnation occurs in a Petri dish through artificial insemination.
Akin got caught in the kind of argumentative trap extremists sometimes find themselves in when they are asked a perfectly reasonable hypothetical that tests their ideological resolve.
Being as opposed to all abortion as he claims to be, he was asked, would he deny an abortion to a woman who had been raped and had become pregnant as a result?
Instead of just saying yes, and then explaining that even in such instances, the woman’s circumstances must be subordinated to those of the “human being” she would otherwise “kill,” he came up with what is apparently a new understanding of how conception occurs.
“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” he said.
It was an amazingly stupid comment for two reasons. First of all, it suggested that he really thinks such a biological mechanism actually exists—one that somehow prevents impregnation when the woman has not consented to the intercourse. And secondly, it seemed to differentiate some rapes from others (like, perhaps, there are rapes where the victim somehow is complicit in the act?).
In short order Mr. Akin was the subject of scorn and ridicule, all of it coming from his own party, with cries for him to drop out of the Senate race, thereby giving the Republicans a renewed chance to beat McCaskill and gain a precious seat (one that may well swing the balance in that hitherto Democrat-controlled body).
The Democrats, of course, are all too happy to have Mr. Akin defy his party’s leaders. They love having him as the poster candidate for views on abortion that many Republican politicians, consistent with much of the party’s base, endorse. Not that any of them would openly claim what Akin claimed. (Days after Akin uttered his inane statement, he did acknowledge that he misspoke, although he really never specified what part of his claim was inaccurate.)
If, as now appears likely, he does remain in the race for Missouri’s Senate seat, he will probably lose, although McCaskill is still said to be highly unpopular (as is Obama) in the state. But his real value to the Democrats has already been realized, since his outlandish comment took whatever steam had built up behind the Romney-Ryan ticket in the days leading up to the Republican convention this week.
Poor Mitt Romney, who has shown all the ineptitude as a presidential candidate of some of history’s most infamous losers (Thomas Dewey comes to mind; Michael Dukakis would be another), can’t seem to gain traction, even when the calendar, if not the issues, says he should.
In the days leading up to a party’s presidential nominating convention, the opposition usually lays low, allowing the party’s candidates to make their case to the American people. That case, for Romney and Ryan, should be that Barack Obama has been a failure, his policies having done nothing to pull the economy back from the abyss it was in when he took office. (Never mind, for the moment, that this attack line is factually inaccurate; it sounds good.)
But instead of hitting hard on that single theme, Romney and Ryan have had to try to convince voters that they don’t agree with Akin about rape and abortion. It’s a tricky one for them, since Ryan (apart from the crazy idea about the biological protection from pregnancy in cases of “legitimate” rape) actually has views on abortion remarkably similar to Akin’s, to wit: no right to abortion should be allowed in instances of rape, incest or even when the health of the woman is threatened.
And so, Ryan had to “explain” to reporters, when he got caught in a Q and A on the subject, that Romney’s views would be the ones that would control the issue in a Romney-Ryan administration. Romney’s views, of course, have “evolved” from complete support for a woman’s right to choose when he was governor of Massachusetts to support only for a right to terminate a pregnancy in cases of rape, incest and the woman’s physical health.
And then, as if things weren’t bad enough, the convention itself had to be shortened by a day when tropical storm Isaac bore down on the Gulf Coast, where the last Republican president saw his popularity take a nose dive after he congratulated his FEMA director (“Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job”) while thousands in New Orleans were awaiting aid and hundreds had already died.
Even when things finally got rolling Romney’s way, there were hiccups that detracted from the impact the proceedings were intended to have. Paul Ryan gave a rousing speech that delighted those inside the hall. But it was so heavily laden with absolute falsehoods that even a Fox News reporter (Sally Kohn) derisively commented that it was “an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech.”
And then, on the night Mr. Romney would present himself to the American people during the prime-time coverage of the convention, the hour began with the bizarre and embarrasing remarks by Clint Eastwood, which immediately became a far bigger story than anything the candidate later had to say. Not exactly how the pros had it scripted, I’m sure.
Three months from now, Mitt Romney will be looking back at this period in the campaign as the reason he lost the election, unless, of course, he is laughing at how he managed to win in spite of it.
Who can understand the stupidity of Todd Akin? He is a decently educated man, so he must have had a couple biology courses at some point. Moreover, Missouri politicians are asked about abortion routinely, and it is a mystery how he could harbor such an opinion for years and not let it slip out. One can only look for a psychological explanation–if one cares to speculate. I don’t really. Like most Republicans, I just wish he would go away and give the Republicans some chance of NOT LOSING a senate seat that was already won.
As for Mitt Romney, I do not think he has shown the ineptitude of Tom Dewey–though I am scared that he might lose, and, given the state of the economy, I wonder that Romney is not polling 10 points ahead of Obama. Romney is a pretty boring guy, to be sure. In the present culture, boring borders on vice. And Paul Ryan seems to be helping–which prompts me to comment on your commentary. Sally Kohn is not a Fox “reporter,” but a “contributor.” “Contributors” offer commentary and are deliberately chosen to represent diverse political perspectives, and Ms. Kohn’s perspective is from the far left. She mentioned four alleged “lies”–which would hardly be a world record in any event–but these “lies” do not pass scrutiny. Indeed, only one even involves an empirical fact–i.e., whether a Janesville, Wisconsin GM plant closed under Obama’s administration or Bush’s. A fact check of the fact check revealed that during Bush’s term there were plans to close it, but it was not officcially closed until Obama’s administration because GM first wanted to get the details of a bailout. When a bailout was a fait accompli, Ryan asked that bailout funds be used to save the plant. Otherwise, Ryan’s lies consisted in (1) blaming Obama instead of the Republicans for the Moody’s downgrade [a matter of interpretation since Moody’s did not explicitly blame either party], (2) accusing Obama of wanting to credit the government for the success of private business [true, Obama has not said this expressly, but it is a plausible–at least–interpretation of his “you didn’t build that” speech, again a matter of interpretation rather than fact, since Ryan did not claim to be quoting Obama directly, and (3) accusing Obama of taking $716 billion out of Medicare, when the infamous “Ryan plan,” which Ryan voted for, would cut Medicare by the same amount [true, but the money would not fund a federal agancy to ration care, but rather fund an option for individuals to MAKE THEIR OWN CHOICES, including the choice to stay with the Medicare plan that presently exists].
In other words, Sally Kohn was engaging in significant misrepresentations of her own. I do wish you had not simply taken her remarks at face value and placed the burden on your readers to invesitigate. You are better than that, Ed. I hope you aren’t auditioning for MSNBC. They already have an “Ed Show.” Keep your version kinder and gentler–and truer.