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After his "forcible rape" remarks turned Missouri's Senate race upside down, Republican Todd Akin quickly lost the support of his party establishment. Perhaps most notably, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, hoping to persuade Akin to quit, cut him off and vowed to not spend a penny on his behalf.
In September, Rachel noted on the show that the NRSC started singing a different tune, at least rhetorically, by saying it wants Akin to win, but there's reason to believe the Republican campaign committee is going further, abandoning its earlier promises altogether.
Rep. Todd Akin and the Missouri Republican Party are launching a nearly $700,000 TV ad blitz in the closing days of his challenge to Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, but the source of the funds for the effort is unclear.
These are the first ads run by the Missouri GOP in conjunction with Akin's campaign. Of the total, $386,000 will come from the Missouri GOP to pay for the ad run, with the remaining supplied by Akin's committee.
Is there clear proof that the National Republican Senatorial Committee gave the Missouri GOP the money for this? No, but the circumstantial evidence is pretty compelling. For one thing, the Missouri Republican party, as of a couple of weeks ago, only had $375,000 in the bank, so it couldn't afford this kind of ad buy, even if it wanted to.
For another, when asked if the National Republican Senatorial Committee had anything to do with this, NRSC officials refused to talk about it. They weren't nearly so reluctant to speak freely in August when the party vowed not to support Akin's candidacy.
Maybe some far-right zillionaire intervened? Nope: "[O]nly national committees -- the NRSC or the Republican National Committee -- or individual campaign committees that raise money in compliance with federal limits are permitted to shift funds to a state party for a coordinated ad buy."
Given what we know, this looks like a dramatic reversal. Republican leaders, most notably NRSC Chairman John Cornyn, swore up and down that they were "done" with Akin and he wouldn't see a dime from D.C. But when given a choice between their promises and their fleeting hopes of a Senate majority, it certainly looks like Cornyn & Co. abandoned the former and prioritized the latter.
To reiterate a point from September, the Republican establishment was almost certainly bluffing. GOP leaders wanted Akin to quit, so they said they'd withhold any and all financial support for his campaign, but they simply didn't mean it.
Tactics aside, this once again puts the Republican Party on record in support of a Senate candidate who, among other things, opposes Medicare and Social Security, wants to abolish the minimum wage, considers student loans cancerous socialism, has a troubling criminal record, and seems to be waging a one-man war on women.
It was easier for the GOP to distance itself from such extremism when it was disavowing Akin. But if he's back in his party's good graces, it's probably time to renew questions about Republican support for his radical vision.
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I loooove the smell of Republican flop sweat in the morning - it smells like victory!
(with apologies to right wing nutbag John Milius, screenwriter of "Apocalypse Now")
Now will all the people who thought Claire was a sho-in please call your Missouri friends and neighbors and tell them to vote. In addition to having a radical vision on women's health and complete misunderstanding of female physiology, he opposes medicare, medicaid, social security and student aid. The guy is further right than just about anybody currently in the Senate and that is saying a lot. He is also dumb as box of rocks, but he has the evangelicals in his hip pocket, or maybe it is they have him in theirs.
My Republican friends in Missouri won't vote for Claire. I can only hope they don't vote period, because most of them think Aiken is a joke. That would at least be a small victory.
Back when Akin made his comments and the GOP bigwigs made a big show of supposedly disavowing his candidacy, several of us noted immediately that party funds would eventually start to flow again for him.
Of course we were right. It's like predicting that the sun will rise in the east, or that the tides will cause ocean levels to rise and fall.
To the Republicans, winning ALWAYS "trumps" ethics.
One Rethuglican motto is "Win if you can, lose if you must, but always cheat!"
This guy Akin has a boozer's face, all dried up. No surprise.
never go fishing with one Southern Baptist, or he'll drink all your beer. Take two along and they won't drink any. -- Garrison Keillor
Akin really is like he looks, a snarling condescending self righteous bigot. He is not very bright but extremely ambitious and would do anything to win or gain power over people. Here in Springfield Mo though the normal republican yard signs are missing up and down the blocks. About ten to one ratio on McCaskill-Akin yard signs...which I hope translates to the same voting ratio because it is really depressing to think this race could even be close because Akin is such a low life radical just a notch above child molester.
TC, I gotta remember that one!
What a surprise. Who didn't know this would be the case?
Mitt isn't a stand alone flip-flopper, by any means.
This is all about winning. They don't care who gets in office. If they can put an R in the Missouri senate column, they are willing to turn a blind eye to who fills the seat and his positions.
This is all about winning. They don't care who gets in office. If they can put an R in the Missouri senate column, they are willing to turn a blind eye to who fills the seat and his positions.
In their attempt to appeal to the tea-potty madness wing the GOP has gone on the side of crazy! The tea-potty know nothings have put up more wing-nut candidates whose beliefs flies in the face of common sense, decency and respect for "other", period! Fact is Akin, Mourdock, Bachmann et.al shouldn't be candidates for "dog catcher", they need some real mental health counselling! These people really are the Christian Taliban - the only thing that's missing are the burquas! Please keep these people out of office - forever!
What about Paul Ryan's RAPE = "METHOD OF CONCEPTION."
Paul Ryan gave an interview in which, defending his position that there should be no excuses for abortion, he referred to rape as a "method of conception."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cat5SyMBSpk
Why is this not BIGGER News?
I live in rural Missouri. I certainly do not see many McCaskill signs but Akin signs are plentiful. You begin to see signs for Claire if you drive near larger communities like Columbia and Jefferson City. I remain hopeful that Claire will defeat him.
National Republicans never had a problem with any of these things (most of them ar in the party platform!), they just had a problem with Akin embarrassing them by talking about them out loud.
Standard GOP, say one thing, do another
If the people elect him despite what he said, they deserve him
Unfortunately, since he is running for the U.S. Senate, his election would affect all of us, not just the citizens of Missouri.
Re: I have something to say and I am going to spell this out to the Republicans on these threads. I DO NOT have to provide any links to you. I am not going to provide links for you. You do not believe in fact check and in the past when I did provide links in the past, I took them from independent sources, you would still question their validity and reliability, persisting them still to be lies. You have nothing to offer so why be here? I refuse to debate any Republican on any thread on any post over the net because you are incapable of debate. Partisan conservative social philosophies hold no sway over me. I reject negitive post-modern Nietzscheism which has at its core horribly damaged central assessments provided by lunatic Ayn Rand assertions. You have no foundation to stand on. How do I know that? Simply. . . you are incapable of telling the truth:-- therefore I will not waste my time in near- territorial, raging, sterile debates which always ends up going nowhere, which in turn, lets me to question your sanity. Pease don't ask me to provide something you already know and refuse to believe. One does not have to prove to anyone that you are an idiot. Thank you and have a great day.
I dunno, Lupe. That may have been too subtle for those Tea-Partyin' Republicans. Plus you used some big words.
How about: "To the angry Republicans on this thread -- f**k off."
:-)
The phrase that Akin used when the big controversy exploded was "legitimate rape" -- not "forcible rape." He has used the term "forcible rape" when crafting legislation, of course, but the first sentence of this blog post should probably be changed to reflect the phrase he actually used.
I reacted to that, too, Gerard. "Forcible rape" just sounds redundant. "Legitimate rape", the term Akin used, sounds scary; it's too close to "legal".
Rape is RAPE
Talk about benign euphemisms. Rape -- RAPE! -- and according to Paul Ryan is a "method of conception" or any of the other irrational quotes about a brutal act as "god's will" for a unplanned pregnancy.
Wow, right?
You know, like love-making, just without the love to make a baby.
I wonder how one of this pro-life individuals react if, for instance, one of their daughters gets raped by an extreme Islamic "terrorist" and she gets pregnant.
Would the pro-life people have some kind of exception for that?
I also wonder why no member of the media even tried to pose that question to Mr. Akin or any other radicalize pro-life individual.
WASHINGTON -- A pro-life, family-values congressman who worked as a doctor before winning election as a Tea Party-backed Republican had an affair with a patient and later pressured her to get an abortion, according to a phone call transcript obtained by The Huffington Post.
The congressman, Rep. Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee, was trying to save his marriage at the time, according to his remarks on the call, made in September of 2000. And, according to three independent sources familiar with the call and the recording, he made the tape himself.
DesJarlais, who was provided a copy of the transcript by HuffPost, did not deny its contents, but in a statement released through his campaign characterized it as just another sordid detail dredged up by the opposition. "Desperate personal attacks do not solve our nation's problems, yet it appears my opponents are choosing to once again engage in the same gutter politics that CBS news called the dirtiest in the nation just 2 years ago."
That race featured charges culled from DesJarlais' divorce from Susan DesJarlais, which was finalized in 2001. The filing included allegations that he held a gun in his own mouth for hours in one instance and that he "dry fired" a gun outside his wife's bedroom in another.
DesJarlais' campaign vigorously denied those charges in his 2010 race against Democratic Rep. Lincoln Davis, saying they were hauled out of history for political purposes and had not been deemed credible at the time.
But the new transcript and other revelations from court documents paint a more damning picture of a man who was a serial philanderer willing to push one of his lovers -- whom he met as a patient with a foot problem -- to terminate a pregnancy, even when he suspected he was the father.
"You told me you'd have an abortion, and now we're getting too far along without one," DesJarlais tells the woman at one point in the call while negotiating with her over whether he'll reveal her identity to his wife. They then discuss whether he will accompany her to a procedure to end the sort of life the congressman now describes as "sacred."
"You told me you would have time to go with me and everything," the woman complains.
"I said, if I could, I would, didn't I? And I will try," DesJarlais says. "If I can [find] time, you're saying you still will?"
"Yeah," the woman answers.
The two bicker over when they can meet to hash out a solution, and they make clear the nature of their relationship when DesJarlais says delaying a resolution isn't fair to his wife.
"This is not fair to me. I don't want you in my life," the woman says.
"Well, I didn't want to be in your life either, but you lied to me about something that caused us to be in this situation, and that's not my fault, that's yours," the doctor responds.
"Well, it's [your] fault for sleeping with your patient," the woman fires back.
After arguing for a bit about who came on to whom -- with the woman seeming incredulous at DesJarlais' interpretation that she made the first move -- he gets back to the abortion.
"If we need to go to Atlanta, or whatever, to get this solved and get it over with so we can get on with our lives, then let's do it," DesJarlais says.
"Well, we've got to do something soon. And you've even got to admit that because the clock is ticking right?" he says at another point.
He talks repeatedly of getting the problem "solved" or "fixed" and eventually explains he's desperate to patch things up with his wife, who had filed for divorce two years before, in late 1998, alleging improper marital conduct. She had relented, however, and according to court documents, they were trying to reconcile.
The marriage appeared to fall apart for good at about the time DesJarlais made his recorded phone call, and he eventually admitted in court papers to at least four affairs. Court records indicate that at one point in the marriage, they had a "written agreement to date other people."
When DesJarlais was recording the call, though, he appeared to be trying for a last-ditch reprieve.
"Well, I've been going crazy. I mean, if Susan could talk to you, she'd tell you that I've been psychotic for months over this," DesJarlais says. "I don't sleep at night. I mean, it's like I'm trying to build my family back together just waiting for it to fall apart, and it's been eating me apart."
The family did fall apart. The recording appears to have been made in mid-September of 2000, shortly before the birthday of a friend whom DesJarlais mentioned in the call.
Less than a month later, Susan DesJarlais renewed the divorce proceedings, sparking a protracted, bitter battle that lasted another nine months.
The judge on the case ultimately found fault on both sides, declaring that neither was living up to the model they'd like to set for their toddler-aged child. But he also stipulated about Scott DesJarlais: "I have to look back at the fact that relative fault -- that actually this divorce began, was filed based upon his first indiscretions."
DesJarlais wound up beating incumbent Davis in the Tea Party wave.
Davis confirmed to The Huffington Post that his campaign was anonymously sent a transcript of the call in the waning days of the contest, but with just a few days left, did not use it, lacking the time to verify it. Davis said that he never actually saw the document until long after the contest was over.
Two other sources with independent knowledge of the transcript confirmed its contents, but requested anonymity due to their close relationship with the people involved.
HuffPost obtained the transcript and court documents through still other sources, and has identified the woman in the conversation.
Davis said he ultimately confirmed the authenticity of the transcript himself last spring, almost by accident, when he met with Susan DesJarlais.
Davis had been purged from his local voter rolls in a crackdown on voter fraud by the local GOP. He said that DesJarlais had heard about the purge, and wanted to talk to Davis, suspecting her ex-husband was behind it.
"He had nothing to do with that -- it was just some local pols," Davis told The Huffington Post. But when he met with Susan, it gave him the opportunity to discuss the transcript and the phone call, which the doctor apparently thought would help repair the marriage.
"She said he did it himself. She said the doctor did. She said, 'He recorded it and let me listen to it,'" Davis said. "She confirmed to me that Scott DesJarlais is the one who actually did the recording, and let her listen to it."
DesJarlais is currently leading Democratic state Sen. Eric Stewart in the polls.
Four Americans dead in Libya.
"four dead in Ohio"
Kent State
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