Posted on 08/25/2012 12:09:20 PM PDT by kreitzer
Prediction: If the GOP establishment doesn’t follow Republican Rep. Todd Akin’s example with a big, fat apology – to Akin – the whole party goes down in flames come November.
I don’t mean every Republican will lose, but there is great political peril in not sealing the hole in Republican armor that has opened in Missouri and instead permitting it to remain a Democratic pressure point. Further, “for the good of the country” (the mantra accompanying the party-wide chorus of pleas to Akin to drop out of his U.S. Senate race), Republicans must resume funding Akin’s viable campaign ASAP, after cutting it off in a mad fit of political pique. Finally, every one of them – the party standard-bearer, party bosses, congressional delegations, allied pundits – should come together for a group smack on the head, as in, “What were we thinking?”
I can’t recall anything in public life more widely craven and uncalled for than the open panic and bullying set off across the Republican Party by the first replay of Akin’s perplexingly ignorant interview comments on rape and pregnancy. The veteran conservative lawmaker, former engineer, former businessman and grandfather of eight recanted these remarks. He apologized for them.
But as the left began to bay for blood over a Republican and, by preposterous extension, Republican Party it hopes to smear as “anti-woman,” Republicans across the board, incredibly, joined in. Rather than jouncing Democrats back into some semblance of decent behavior with a firm, party-wide reality check – comparing a dumb comment about rape from one among their ranks with, say, accusations of actual rape against Democrats’ two-term hero, Bill Clinton – Republicans obligingly cut off their own noses and handed them to their political opponents.
The headline in the New York Times this week said it all: “GOP is pressing candidate to quit over rape remark.” Funny how we never, ever saw anything similar in the 1990s, when bombshells about Bill Clinton’s serial sexual harassment and assault of women were a common occurrence. Something like: “Dems pressing president to quit over rape.”
Didn’t happen. In fact, far from “pressuring” the former president into a quiet post-presidency retirement, the Democrats are spotlighting the overexposed sexual reprobate with a center-stage role at their upcoming convention. There, Clinton will officially re-nominate Barack Obama for president.
What else can we expect from the party that still lionizes Ted Kennedy, the late Massachusetts politician who notoriously left a young female campaign worker to drown in a sinking car rather than get help? Just as serial sexual improprieties perpetrated by Bill Clinton don’t count in Democrat-land as “anti-woman,” neither does Kennedy’s unconscionable behavior at Chappaquiddick. Both men not only remained in office, they remain the Democrats’ ideal.
A muddled, recanted remark about reproductive biology, however, puts a Republican one or two steps away from Hitler. He must be shunned by “decent” society, his whole career destroyed, the primary votes he won nullified, to expiate his “sin.”
Worst of all is the Republican Party’s unified acquiescence to this illogical, unjust and amoral equivalence. In fact, without the GOP’s lockstep, take-me-to-your-leader obedience to the Democrats’ rigged rules, the pitch of this controversy would have died down already. Without the Republicans’ vigorous enforcement of the left’s double standards, Akin would probably still be facing favorable odds of winning the Missouri Senate seat.
But no, which is what deeply concerns me. Indulging ginned-up, hack hysterics is not the behavior of a leader or a winner. Worse, accommodating unjust attacks on a solid citizen in the name of practicality or the “greater good” is a very dangerous precedent, as totalitarian history tells us. That’s why the GOP needs to rethink Missouri and make amends with Akin before “moving on.” Otherwise, I fear that in its vital quest to prevent Barack Obama from winning a second term, it won’t be moving anywhere.
---
I put this down to timidity. Political courage means putting your neck on the line. And while some are willing to do this, being asked to do so again and again tends to erode their courage.
Add that to the Republican establishment, who, comfortable in their seats, want no more arguments with anyone. They become “go along to get along” types. Some, no doubt, have even convinced themselves of the “inevitability” of the liberal agenda. So ‘moderation’ or even when they call themselves ‘conservatives’, what they are saying is that they agree with the liberals—they just do not want the liberal agenda as fast as the liberals.
Make no mistake, Washington does severely punish those with core values, because it seeks compromise in all things, and those with core values tend to foul that machine.
There’s talk in the blogosphere that conservatives may try to persuade John Danforth to run for his old job as a write-in candidate. Another name mentioned is Kit Bond. Both should have widespread name recognition.
Todd Akin is Presidential Material. He is George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Ronald Reagan all wrapped into one.
How dare these phony RINOs like Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin and Sarah Palin criticize Akin. No more RINOs, we must all support Akin, and apologize to him.
Great article, and it needed saying.
As she points out, if Democrats truly want the topic of the day to be rape, let’s suit up and beat the tar out of them. They’ve certainly provided plenty of material over the years.
Thus far, this has been an opportunity wasted. Akin gave us a lemon, for sure, but the GOP should have made lemonade, instead of forming a circular firing squad, and one that Akin managed to duck at that.
If he does not withdraw, I will support a write-in candidate.
Yeah, you really care about getting that senate seat. LOL
It is as if GOPers are more neurotic than ultra feminists.
“Obama’s Democratic support in the state remains largely unchanged at 96%, and voters not affiliated with either major party still favor Romney by 20 points. But Republican support in Missouri for the party’s likely nominee has fallen from 94% in late July to 85% now,”
I am not here to bandy insults with you.
I have a vote in Missouri and I will vote as I see fit.
Love the picture. Which one is riding shotgun???
The magnitude of the Aikin problem is directly related to the hysterical conservative talk radio hyperventilating. Shoulda been talked about till the deadline passed; then dropped.
Insults? By all means waste your vote on a write-in because you can’t stand the thought of losing the seat.
Says a lot about FReepers.
>>I will not accept Akin when I know it will cost us the senate seat....If he does not withdraw, I will support a write-in candidate.<<
And if enough of you do that, it will cost us the senate seat, as you stated.
Don’t get me wrong. I understand completely voting on principle. There is no way in hell I will vote for that lying, liberal sack of crap Romney.
YEP -- it was the hysterical reaction out of all proportion to what was said.
If the GOP wants to win the seat it needs to suck it up and start running anti-McCaskill adds NOW.
Whoaaa—It hasn’t even been ARGUED, much less established, that anything Akin said was wrong. At worst, and I do mean at worst, his use of “legitimate” did indeed set off a fire storm. But who has defined that term, ANYwhere? Screams of “rape is rape” are no argument. Statutory rape certainly doesn’t qualify, and the “meanings” of date rape are wide enough to drive tankers through. His citings of doctors who believed that in cases where rape is actually rape biological resistance set in are at least as true and as available and academic as those that deny it. The fact that the GOP chose to “legitimize” the left’s findings on the matter is absolutely reprehensible.
If our rights are granted by Nature’s God, how can those who support that definition of “rights” so quickly succumb to arguments that so egregiously contradict it? The right to abort—under ANY circumstances—was granted by government and government alone. As such, there’s no such right. No one’s even made a case for the logic that prevailed prior to Roe: mitigating circumstances. Hard-liners aren’t going to accept even that, but surely secular types can agree that abortion WAS legal under certain, mitigating circumstances. But Roe waived all that, giving us an ersatz right to kill unborn children under any circumstances at all.
Haha, spare me the hyperbole. Even Rush defended Akin against the dog pile.
Mark Levin pretty much summed it up when the deadline passed and Akin hadn’t dropped out: he wished he had, but now he has to back him because we have no choice in the matter. We have to beat back the rising tide of the Democrat horde.
He was crucified for a valueless adjective and a dubious theory.
I’m deeply disappointed in the unwillingness to consider his position on the matter of abortion.
There’s been no shortage of verbal foolery on the Right over the last 4 years, not sure why the sudden outrage is necessary now.
>>I have been really surprised at how quickly a large number of FReepers turned on Akin...<<
I’m not. He certainly screwed up, and it was natural to hope that the campaign to replace him would work, especially when a lot of us wanted one of the other two candidates to win the primary in the first place.
However, if anyone believes that Akin is really down 10 points to McCaskill, I’ve got the proverbial bridge to sell them. His numbers held with Independents. It was the Republicans in the poll that deserted him. By the next poll, that will have been proven to be temporary, just part of the intense campaign to get him off the ballot.
To imagine that GOP voters are going to desert Akin for McCaskill is pure fantasy, and the likelihood of a write-in candidate emerging is very, very low, so Akin will get back 95-99% of those who deserted him in that one “heat-of-the-moment” poll.
And welcome to the FR.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.