Today is the last day that Rep. Todd Akin can withdraw from the Senate race in Missouri without court intervention. So far, despite pleas from Republicans far and wide including Sen. Kelly Ayotte, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and Rush Limbaugh, Akin is pledging to stay in. He is even said to view his run “providentially,” meaning he isn’t listening to Ayotte or Cornyn or Sen. Scott Brown or Crossroads GPS or anyone else. Or reason. He is reportedly buying ads to run over the next few days. He’ll probably go mea culpa and then pivot to hammering McCaskill.
Akin might be listening to the current polls. PPP posted a new poll today showing that Akin’s rape comments haven’t moved the race much yet. He still leads McCaskill by a point, 44-43.
It’s not that Missouri voters are ok with or supportive of Akin’s comments. 75% of voters, including even 64% of Republicans, say they were inappropriate to only 9% who consider them to have been appropriate. 79% of voters say they disagree with what Akin said, including 65% who express ‘strong’ disagreement with him. 51% of GOP voters say they strongly disagree with him.
All of that is taking a toll on Akin’s image. Only 24% of voters have a favorable opinion of him to 58% with a negative one. He’s pretty universally disliked by Democrats (3/85) and independents (21/61) and even with Republicans (43/34) he’s on only narrowly positive ground.
But for all of that the overall numbers in the race have moved very little. When we polled in May McCaskill was getting only 8% of the Republican vote, and even with the controversy around Akin she’s only pushed up to 10% of it. GOP voters dislike McCaskill so much they’re not going to vote for her no matter what their nominee does. Independent voters haven’t moved at all either. In May they supported Akin 45-41, and even though they don’t like him on tonight’s poll we still found him leading 45-41 with them.
Todd Akin is unpopular, but so is Claire McCaskill. Voters can vote against Akin for saying a very dumb thing, or they can vote against McCaskill for being Obama’s puppet. Voting for either one seems out of the question at this point. There may be a sampling problem with the PPP poll. The firm usually oversamples Democrats, but in this poll according to one of Ace’s bloggers, PPP went R +8 to give Akin that one-point edge.
So Akin may not have a lead at all, in fact he may already be behind.
In any case, the thorn here is that today’s poll is only a snapshot of a moving electorate that is coming to grips with the storm swirling around Akin. If the NRSC and GPS stay out of the race, the Democrats will shell Akin into the stone age with negative ads that will push his numbers down. If Akin stays in, the NRCS and GPS may work their way back in by shelling McCaskill without ever mentioning Akin at all. That will drive her numbers down.
Missouri will be all negative, all the time, and the likelihood of the Republicans picking up that very winnable seat dwindle by the day. The secondary effect of all of this is that while President Obama had another disastrous press conference yesterday, and there are serious things afoot that need more exposure, Akin’s “providential” stubbornness is sucking the air away from everything else. The sooner he goes, the sooner the heat gets turned back where it should be focused.
The clock is ticking.
Update: Sometimes you can’t fix stupid. This seems obvious in retrospect, but anyone dumb enough to say what Akin said is not smart enough to make a level-headed decision about the consequences of what he said.
Look, Akin should get out but let’s put the responsibility for this debacle on the shoulders of those who deserve them: Missouri Republicans.
Make no mistake, the Missouri Republicans could have taken Sarah Palin’s advice and nominated someone else. They could have looked for a candidate who modeled himself after the Tea Party. They did neither.
Missouri Republicans knew full well the vulnerability of Claire MacCaskill and they voted for this loser. Knowing how important the Senate is in repealing Obamacare.
If we are not able to own the US Senate and not able to defeat Obamacare because Akin does not get out, Missouri Republicans own this one. 100%.
Please don’t blame all of us!
My family and I all voted for Sarah Steelman, although I wish I’d known how much of a disaster Akin was (we’re on the other end of I-44/Route 66 from his district).
And there’s not much we can do now but to add our voices to those asking him to drop out….
Granted, for this election (need as many Senators as we can get), and as wretched as McCaskill is, we will vote for a yellow dog instead of her or nobody. Don’t know if he can win in Purple trending Red state, though….
Same thing can be said about Republicans nationwide giving us Romney as a candidate.
While the other candidates were out there looking for votes, Romney was working the usual Republican mucky-mucks for campaign cash. The establishment lined up behind him. Just see the distribution of the donation sizes of the primaries. Romney got mostly the big donations. Everyone else got the small stuff.
Eventually, it was the big money which got Romney the votes. It’s always the money. The voters fall for the same BS every single election.
Romney is a lousy candidate, because you just feel you cannot trust him. People are convincing themselves that perhaps they can, but deep inside, they know they cannot. They are projecting. They are so desperate to get rid of Obama, that they are just deluding themselves. The establishment Republicans win again.
We would be better off in this country just holding a lottery for President. We might get really lucky.
I don’t know what you’re talking about. What’s worse, I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.
It hasn’t even been 2 weeks since Romney picked Ryan for VP and is daily bashing Prince Obama and even so you still want to bash the guy with your wet noodle?
The fact that he really wants to win and seems to be doing a fairly good job of achieving that goal says little to nothing about how he will govern in office.
Ace broke down the internals of the PPP poll. They oversampled Republicans by a huge amount.
Akin is behind, and will stay behind. He’s a repeating train wreck with an ego the size of Texas. He doesn’t care if he completes the destruction of the country as long as he gets his shot at the Senate.
Well, the good news is that after he loses his Senate bid, Missouri will probably be well-rid of him.
He won his bid in a low turn-out primary that featured 3 candidates and didn’t poll a majority of Republicans. He’s toast whether he runs or doesn’t.
Unfortunately, his decision not to drop out, means America is toast.
Are there any other strong candidates ready to step in?
I’m not all that outraged about the “legitimate rape” statement, frankly I’m more upset that he’s against abortion for “legitimate rape” victims. That’s a pretty dumb position.
But there just aren’t a lot of very attractive candidates around, and I gather he’s considered not bad, overall. For better or worse I might stick with him. And I think Hannity and Rush lecturing him to step down, is entirely inappropriate.
Frankly, what bothers me about this jerk is his off-the-wall junk science. That’s what donkeys do. We don’t need that shiite.
I posted on another thread about this, but if I can guess what he meant, there actually is some amount of legit science, that first-time intercourse with a stranger is less likely to result in a pregnancy for immuno-histological reasons. But as he said himself in the original statement, nonetheless it CAN happen and it DOES happen. And thus, nonetheless, he should have kept his damn fool mouth shut, and should revise his position and support abortion in case of rape … which in any case is not going to prevail so I could probably vote for the fool along party lines anyway.
I posted on another thread about this, but if I can guess what he meant, there actually is some amount of legit science, that first-time intercourse with a stranger is less likely to result in a pregnancy for immuno-histological reasons.
There’s a looser correlation there than exists with AGW.
You SoCons need to stop spouting this bullshit. Pregnancy is a potential consequence of rape. Period. Your rationalizations in defense of this jackass just make you look like a moron. Which plays into the the republicans are anti-science retards meme; which really pisses me off.
Just STFU already.
He’s digging in deeper with his junk science. He still doesn’t get it and says he just “misspoke one word in one sentence”. What an absolute moron.
I think the reaction to the comment is overboard. If Democrats were on the scale, the remark would be dumb 4 on a scale of 10. But when everybody is lined up against him, including the heavyweights from every conceivable segment of republicans, you have to wonder about the guy’s processing capabilities. Who’s advising him and what can he possibly be thinking? He isn’t going to win without any support. And he won’t have his congressional seat either. He will be considered a villain for years, and if Missouri makes the difference, he will be ostracized from politics completely, and personally shamed for the rest of his life. His life will be ruined.
Hopefully, he is just angling for the best possible deal when he relents at 4:30 today.
If there was ever a time for Rush to get involved, it should be now. Rush should call him one-on-one when his show ends today.
Yes, there are strong candidates ready to step in. Sarah Palin recommended one.
However, if you think that Hannity and Rush were inappropriate to counsel this moron to step down, I don’t think anything the rest of us here might say can wiggle enough to find its way home, to put it bluntly.
No. Steelman finished third in a three candidate race for the nomination even with Palin’s endorsement.
I believe I read that there is a sore loser prohibition in MO law that says the runner up in the primary can’t run in the general election.
Would this same law cover the one who came in 3rd place?
If not, then get an “independent” campaign going for Steelman pronto.
I haven’t read the relevant Missouri law. However, as I understand them, such laws prevent all those who lost in a nominating contest from running as an independent in the general for the office in question.
Various newspapers are making the claim that Todd Akin was “Tea Party”. NO! Akin was never Tea Party. Akin beat the tea party candidate and the one endorsed by Sarah Palin, Sarah Steelman in the primaries.
It seems Claire McCaskill was hoping Akin would be her opponent, hoping he would implode. Sadly, he did — far too early for her, as the GOP seems to be taking measures to get another candidate in Akin’s place. I hope the GOP swiftly finds a replacement — the race and its important to the country is such a priority we need someone in there who knows how to handle the stress.
Axelrod couldn’t have scripted it any better.
Akin just handed the Proggies an Obama Landslide, AND both houses.
Oh, that’s going just a wee mite far—like, say, hysterically and ridiculously over the top.
Agreed. But it’s entirely possible that if this dildo stays in, it will make the difference between which party controls the senate.
That imbecile still hasn’t stepped down?
Tip O’Neill’s “rule” no longer applies, because these days all politics is NOT local.
So, it was an August Surprise.
I guess the guy has a nice bank account by now, offshore.
Akin can do the following:
1) stand up and apologize for the stupid comment.
2) claim how strange it is that he makes an inappropriate comment about rape and is pilloried by the left and the right. Bill Clinton is accused of rape and the left is silent. Roman Polanski flees to avoid prosecution and the same people who want to hang Akin believe that Polanski is an okay dude.
His only chance is to call out the hypocrisy of the left.
Agreed. If he hasn’t got the smarts to point out the mulligans handed out to “57 states”/”spread the wealth”/”you didn’t build that” Obama and the coverup of the mutiple gaffes of Biden, and refuses to bow to the hypocrisy of the Left, then he’s definitely going to be a liability.
How many times have I read that this election isn’t about social issues? Akin’s gaff was dumb to be sure. But was it any worse than some of the stuff dumb Joe Biden has said? Dems seldom fold unless they *DO* – not when the *SAY* – stupid stuff. Get the difference? You need to. They do.
It would appear Akin is staying in the race so lets deal with it for what it is. If Akin can swing the conversation back to McCaskill’s rubber stamping of Obama/Pelosi/Reid agenda he might be able to pull it off. Voters forgive – especially republican voters. How good is the second best candidate? Good enough in the short time left for any chance to beat McCaskill? You better hope so if you’re advocating Akin step aside – that or take the blame for possibly letting the dems keep the Senate. That would be a shame. Lets not hand the Senate to the dems on a silver platter. They wouldn’t reciprocate were the shoe on the other foot. This is the time to make a stand against the dems – not fold like a cheap tent in a light breeze. This guy is staying the course – lets not beat on him like a democrat.
By Nov. 6, if you’re a casual vote that’s part of the undecided/moderate group, you will think that Mitt Romney is running with two vice-presidential nominees — Paul Ryan and Todd Akin.
And it doesn’t matter if you don’t believe it or I don’t believe it — McCaskill won her seat in part because Michael J. Fox stopped taking his Parkinson’s medication and did a commercial in Missouri in 2006 blaming Rush Limbaugh for his severe shakes. What do you think the Democrats are going to do with Akin’s remarks over the next 85 days?
McCaskill will put out an ad featuring a woman who was raped and got pregnant because of it. Don’t think they won’t go to such lengths? The Fascist-Democrats have already essentially called Mittens a felon who gives people cancer, and how do you counter-program such an ad? Anything you say will be misconstrued as being against rape victims.
Can’t believe this guy is being this dumb.
He was dumb enough to say what he did – and it would appear he’s staying in the race. Like I said we need to make the best of it and hope he wins. Who knows – maybe the voters are sick of McCaskill.
Excellent point. The election is about the economy stupid. The Tea Party is about the economy stupid. Getting drawn into a political tar pit like this is proof that he’s too stupid to be a non-democrat.
I hope you holy rollers will f*cking be happy when Obama gets re-elected.
Oh, they will. They think that either Obama or Ahmadinejad are going to bring about the end times, so they want him to win, and want “the end” to come so they can be raptured within their lifetimes.
I am sure they will find some way to blame Ron Paul, too.
+1
Too bad the republicans don’t have professional word parsers such as the democrats have – you know – the ones seen on CNN CBS NBC etc that go on the news shows and ‘explain’ what (insert democrat name here) actually meant last night…that it wasn’t a gaff.
Oh! I thought those were democrat paid operatives – seems they are employees of CNN CBS NBC etc. Who knew?
– heading for the GOP Convention? What’s his intent?
He does not need to drop out of the race. Someone else with big backing, like Steelman, can run as an independent, and the Tea Party and the Republican Party can get together and campaign for her. In a 3-way race, she would win, I’d bet, especially with Akin and McCaskill going after each other.
Or maybe one of Akin’s friends could just beat some sense into him. There is still a couple hours left in which to do that.
As noted above, Steelman finished third in a three person nomination race among Republicans. The field of nominees was weak. Given McCaskill’s weakness, blame the Missouri Republican Party for not promoting a stronger field: Bear in mind that this is the same party that managed to screw-up it’s primary/caucus process this year.
Everyone always wants to blame state parties for not “promoting” the field. State parties tend not to select the candidates that run in most of their primaries. Candidates tend to be self-selecting. That also means that many of the same people who gripe about the quality of candidates refuse to get off their couches and run for office themselves.
Bryan, your points are good; particularly your last one. Two points in response: Missouri’s Republican party has been inept. They managed to foul-up their own presidential primary and caucus this past year. A more general second point is that while states’ parties have historically tended not to select for House races, the same is less true for Senate races. Before the 17th Amendment it was entirely a party matter, of course. Since, while diminished, it’s a foolish party that remains distant from the choice of Senate candidates as the case at hand ought to illustrate. Some may have thought that any Republican could beat McCaskill this year. We may get a test of that proposition.
Akin is an idiot and needs to step aside. I don’t care that the left has idiots who *say* and *do* stupid things and come up smelling like roses. We should at least have a higher standard for the people on our own side. And to those who want to play the This isn’t about “well they do it too” game – Grow the Hell up. This isn’t your playground this is a fight for the future of this country.
Texan here who went through the Clayton Williams episode. My bet?
Adios, Missouri. DEMs win. Next t*rd to float up: Obamacare.
I’m thinking maybe Todd Akin is a witch.
This is what happens when you don’t listen to Sarah Palin.
Bloody Missouri Republicans.
Claytie Williams has been on my mind a lot lately too. He handed Ann Richards the Texas governorship back in the day.
Claytie hasn’t changed — you should hear the end of the prayer he does at some of the oifield dedications right now (“…God Bless the United States of America, and piss on Obama!”). The difference here was Williams never was a politician and told me he was actually taking to some of his workers at the ranch and didn’t know the press was right behind him.
Still a dumb joke to say — it also got WABC weatherman Tex Antoine fired up in New York back in the early 1970s — but again Claytie was a political novice who screwed himself over, and Texas being Texas, the result ended up being a state constitutional amendment against an income tax, after Ann and the Democrats overreached in the 1991 legislative session and complete GOP control over the state by the late 1990s. Akin, on the other hand, is a U.S. Representative, and supposedly should be well-versed enough in Washington politics not to make a gaffe like this, and then compound it by saying he would go on, then backing out of Piers Morgan’s show.
Doing all this, and then trying to stay on knowing that the Republicans need not just the White House but also control of the Senate to repeal Obamacare is an example of an Obamaesque ego at work. It’s a train wreck followed up by having the ambulance run into the rear of the caboose.
Don’t forget, McCaskill supporters switched their registration to be able to vote for this guy in the primary, because they thought he’d be the easiest for her to beat.
I can only speak for my corner of Missouri far away from Aktin’s St. Louis, but here we have open primaries; you show up, get verified, then pick up a Republican or Democratic ballot.
Two choices for Republicans, I guess.
Keep your fingers crossed and hope this SOB wins, despite his patent stupidity.
Mount a write-in candidacy behind the only person who can unite all Republicans and conservatives against Akin, including the vital evangelical vote, and still scoop up a majority of independent voters: John Ashcroft.
This makes me want to die. How can somebody be so prideful and delusional to not see the writing on the wall? I have no problem with social conservatives. In fact I am one but this Pat Robertson, Falwell, Pat Boone, World Net Daily, contingent of social conservatives who basically cast themselves in the role of Ezekiel or Jeremiah as the lone prophet in Israel’s last days bearing witness to our evil. He is also so selfish. He actually believes that it is better for God to sanctify him and sharpen him through losing this Senate race than dropping out for the petty concerns of the country like Obamacare, Supreme Court Justices, 24 million unemployed and so on. He thinks it would be turning from his faith to drop out. He CANNOT be reasoned with. I’m at a complete loss here. How much you want to bet that THIS will be the one seat that prevent a Republican majority? It feels like it’s inevitable. Obamacare will be saved by Justice Roberts and Akin. I think I’ll lay down and take a nap.
– whatever happens, in future, what are some responses — or non-responses?
Well, we’ve had a while now to digest just how stupid, arrogant, and just plain ignorant some people on our side can be. I’ve offered my own thoughts and suggestions (not that anyone would listen, harumph!) to the conversation.
At this point, I have come to the conclusion that it really is left in Romney’s hands.
He wants to be president.
I want him to be president (he wasn’t my first choice, but dang look at the alternatives!).
He is going to have to deal with foreign policy issues dealing with leaders of other countries that he will not be able to tell what to do.
He will be dealing with political opposition in this country that will seek to undermine him deliberately at every turn who he cannot simply tell what to do.
Perhaps this is a decent test of Romney’s leadership abilities?
I believe the vast majority of anti-Obama/conservative/republicans have spoken, and the general consensus seems to be Akin is a fool who has no intention of listening and is willing to torpedo the conservative brand to get what he wants – but runs the very real risk of not only losing to an eminently beatable McCaskill, but also of undermining elections across the country as well as the national ticket in the bargain.
It’s up to Romney to show some presidential style leadership on the matter and give us all an indication of just how he will deal with domestic and foreign opposition by using the good Mr. Akin as an example.
Romney wants to be our nation’s leader, it’s time for him to lead.