Candidate's rape talk may affect other races

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August 22, 2012

Candidate's rape talk may affect other races

Anonymous Daily Star The Daily Star Sat Sep 22, 2012, 03:30 PM EDT

Three really scary things about this statement by Todd Akin about pregnancies from rape.

"If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let's assume that maybe that didn't work or something. You know, I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child."

Scary thing No. 1: Mr. Akin, a Tea Party member of Congress from Missouri, recently won the Republican primary to be the state's next U.S. senator.

Scary thing No. 2: This incredibly ignorant gentleman is a member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

Scary thing No. 3: Despite the colossally offensive and inappropriate nature of his remarks ... he could still win.

Missouri is trending more and more Republican, and with general dissatisfaction with incumbent Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, it's just possible that even as he is abandoned by the GOP establishment amid calls by even the Tea Party for him to quit, Akin might still prevail.

Additionally scary for Republicans is the possibility that the congressman's asinine statement could have severe repercussions all the way up to the efforts of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan to capture the White House.

Ryan was a co-sponsor along with Akin and others of a bill in the House just last year that would have limited Medicaid funding to pay for abortions for women who are victims of "forcible rape."

The words "forcible rape" don't sound all that different than Akin's ill-spoken "legitimate rape." Every Republican in the House, including local representatives Richard Hanna and Chris Gibson, voted for the bill, along with 16 Democrats.

The legislation, thankfully, never reached the Senate, but what if it had become law? Well, if, heaven forbid, your 18-year-old daughter is drugged at a party and taken advantage of, that's not considered "forcible rape." Neither would "forcible rape" apply if she has a mental disability.

On Tuesday, less than a week before the Republican convention that will nominate Romney and Ryan, the party's policy platform committee ratified a statement calling for a constitutional ban on abortion that makes no exceptions for rape or incest.

Is it fair to equate what is a moral imperative on the abortion question for many conservatives with the ravings of one idiot in Missouri? Probably not, but those Republicans who sow the wind that is the Tea Party are reaping the whirlwind.

Tea Party extremists Sharron Angle in Nevada, Ken Buck in Colorado and Christine O'Donnell in Delaware lost very winnable races in 2010 that cost the Republicans parity in the Senate. Akin could well cost them the presidency.