By Tim Dunkin
By
now, pretty much everybody who is politically engaged to any extent has heard
about Todd Akin’s recent gaffe. While
speaking about abortion, the Missouri Representative, who is now running for the
Senate, essentially said that unwanted pregnancies caused by rape are not an
issue, since a woman’s body “has ways to shut that whole thing down.” In other words, when a woman is raped, her
body throws up some sort of magic shield to prevent pregnancy from ever
happening. Even though this was not
likely his intention, the remark came across as grossly insensitive to those
women who have had to endure the terrible trauma of “legitimate” rape, as
downplaying the horror of what these women suffer. Medically, the statement is inane, as both
experience and basic biology show it not to be true. Politically, however, the comment was
centrifugally-refined weapons grade stupidity – one which Akin should have had
enough sense to know would be played over and over and over again until it was
burned into the eternal consciousness of the nation.
Naturally,
the Democrats – who never let a crisis go to waste, remember – have jumped at
the chance to further advance their nonsensical “war on women” theme that they
have adopted for this campaign, with a willingly complicity mainstream media in
the vanguard. They are also,
unsurprisingly, trying to prevent the very thing most Republicans and
conservatives want right now, which is for Akin to do something else besides continue
his Senate candidacy. As you might
expect, the calls for Akin to drop out and allow the state GOP to appoint
someone else to the candidacy (which is how this works in Missouri) have been
loud and long. The state and national
GOP have called on him to leave. The Tea
Partiers want him gone. The right side
of the blogosphere wants him to pack it in and call it a day. Rush today softly and gently suggested that
it’s for the best for Akin to yield the field to another candidate. Even a reliably stalwart Republican hack such
as Sean Hannity has decided that obstinately standing by the GOPer through
thick and thin isn’t such a good idea in this case.
I
agree with these calls, and for much the same reasons as those held by
others. While I am not a fan of
Republicans and conservatives bending whichever way the Left and the Democrats
push them in their apoplectic fits of outrage, nevertheless in this case, Akin
must go. For the good of the nation. The upcoming election will see a tight race
for control of the Senate. Several
Democrat incumbents are seen as very vulnerable – including Akin’s opponent
Claire McCaskill, a far-Left radical who was almost certain to lose prior to
this latest flap. Her seat could make
the difference between whether Harry Reid gets to keep his place as the Senate
majority leader or not – and Akin staying in the race makes that all the more
likely to happen. So yes, for the good
of the nation, for the good of the people of this country, we need Akin to
gracefully bow out and to have somebody else with a better grasp of biology
take his place and beat McCaskill. While
I typically am not sympathetic to attacks on conservatives who “embarrass” the
Party leadership, in this case, the stakes are just too high, and Akin himself
has demonstrated that he doesn’t have much more sense than Joe Biden when it
comes to guarding his tongue. We’re all
better off if he would just retire to the private sector.
However,
all of this brings to my mind a question.
Since
we’re all so hot to void the results of a primary election, and install a
candidate who is more amenable to what we would like to see, then why don’t
Republicans and conservatives get serious about doing this at the presidential level as well?
After
all, nobody in their right mind really thinks that Mitt Romney is the best
candidate the GOP could field against Obama and the Democrats. Despite his reputation as a “fighter” (like
many RINOs, he only seems to fight against conservative primary opponents),
he’s a milquetoast who is handing Obama issue after issue, while falling for
traps like the “issue” of his tax returns.
Any decent Republican candidate would be mauling Obama in the polls
right now – but Romney is struggling to keep his head above the breakeven
point. Romney is like wet ashes on a
campfire to the conservative base: they don’t really like him, he doesn’t
really motivate them, and in many cases he seems like he’s trying to antagonize
them. While most conservatives have
resigned themselves to voting for him for “Anybody but Obama” reasons, there
are very few out there who genuinely like Romney or are excited about his
nomination. He divides the Party, rather
than uniting it.
And
don’t bother trying to argue that Romney won the majority of the
primaries. Todd Akin won his primary
fair and square, too. Further – and
let’s be bluntly honest here – Romney didn’t really “win” most of the primaries,
or at least his early ones. He just
ended up being the last man standing while the numerous conservatives in the
race ate each other alive, destroying themselves one by one. In the early primaries, Romney was squeaking
through with, what, 25-30% in most of his early “wins”? Even later, when even Ron Paul had packed it
in, Romney was still only getting 60-70% in states where he had no effective
opposition at all. This is not the
formula of a Party uniter who is going to run a strong race and send Obama
packing.
And that’s what we’re seeing now. Romney mouths the right words, but
conservatives can see that there’s not a whole lot of conviction behind
them. People know he’s a phony. It’s not just that he’s no Reagan – he’s not
even a passable copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of Reagan. More than one Republican has mused to me that
they are convinced that the wrong guy is at the top of the ticket, that Ryan or
someone like him should have been the choice.
Hindsight is always 20-20.
So why can’t Republicans simply work to
convince Romney to drop out and hand his campaign financing over to a more worthy
candidate?
After all, if Todd Akin should be out on
his ear because of an insanely stupid comment, why shouldn’t Romney be out
because of an insanely liberal political career? If Akin can be replaced with another
candidate who won’t make comments that look like he’s downplaying the
seriousness of rape, why can’t Romney be replaced by someone who isn’t
pro-abortion, pro-gay agenda, anti-gun, a tax-raiser, and the spiritual
grandfather of ObamaCare?
Sure, it most likely won’t happen, and
Romney will most likely trundle along to a narrow defeat to Obama in November,
while conservatives look wistfully back on what could have been. But I think it’s at least worth floating the
idea for consideration. I’d be ecstatic
if Paul Ryan ended up with the top spot through some of that cigar-smokin’,
back-slappin’ backroom wheelin’-and-dealin’ at the convention, were the GOP
powers that be decide that they’d have a better chance with a fighter like Ryan
who unites and energizes the base than with a guy like Romney who demoralizes
and annoys them. Sure, I’m probably not
going to see this happen, but a guy can dream, can’t he?
