Perhaps the best illustration of
the idiocy of current Missouri Republican Senate candidate and sitting
Representative Todd Akin would be to list the multitude of prominent
Republicans who have called for him to drop out of his race. Suffice it say Ann
Coulter and Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown have finally found something to
agree on this cycle.
Or maybe it would be to simply
remind readers that Akin clearly was a worse listener in high school biology
class than I was (which is pretty bad since by some miracle, I came away with a
B-).
But all jokes aside (because this
is no laughing matter), you have to be a complete know-nothing to actually say and
mean that in cases of “legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try and
shut that whole thing down.”
Akin’s
comments represent the perfect political storm.
Not only were they politically untenable, they also don’t pass the basic
human decency test.
Cue the
outrage from both sides of the political spectrum. For once, they’re both
right.
As many
have said, rape is rape, attempting to qualify the act’s legitimacy is
demeaning to victims, and everyone’s intelligence.
The loud
response to Akin’s comments from party elders has been a positive sign for
frustrated GOPers who view the Tea Party’s ascendency as negatively as Tea
Partiers view Bush 41’s tax-raising budget deal in 1990.
But don’t
take heart too early, because a constitutional amendment banning abortions and
not protecting the right in cases of rape and incest once again found it’s way
onto the Republican convention platform Tuesday.
And though most Republicans are
generally pro-life (I am admittedly of this position), according to a recent Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation
Poll, only twenty five percent say abortion should always be illegal—the
position espoused Akin.
Mainstream conservatives no longer
represent the heart of the Republican Party, and when people like Akin mouth
off, it’s none more than a sad reminder of this fact.
All of this was somewhat avoidable,
and it’s really due to the conservative movement’s inability to provide a coherent
governing vision throughout the 2000s that we sit in this sad Tea Party
infested space.
Instead of limited, efficient
government, Americans have a conservative party that wants government in many
of the wrong places and in none of the necessary ones.
Crass conservative political
observers will be upset by the fact that all of the sudden abortion is at the
center of the national conversation—a place Republicans interested in winning
(myself included) do not want any social issue.
But maybe these conservatives
should look inward and realize that it’s much easier to adopt reasonable
positions, like being pro-life with exemptions for rape, incest, and the health
of the mother, than to have to try and keep the fringe positions hidden in the
attic while they yell and scream about the unemployment rate.
This is good short-term tactical
politics, but its bad long-term political strategy. Because at some point, an Akin comes out of
the attic on accident, and independents (the people you need to actually win)
who don’t want to pay high taxes, but aren’t for all that other stuff will see
the party’s true colors and will not like what they see.
I’m not sitting here saying
conservatives should become liberals and categorically support a woman’s right
to get an abortion. I’m simply suggesting a softening of an unnecessarily hard
line position.
Republicans need to be thinking of
how to become more than the old rich white guy party. In a country that’s
changing demographically, this is their number one problem, and the Akin’s of
the world do nothing more than compound this great problem.
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