With all due respect to Cindy McCain, "rape is rape" is not enough.
Todd Akin didn't mis-speak, he mis-believes. He didn't mis-state, he mis-thinks, and he uses untruths as a basis for his politics. His claim that womens' bodies have a magical ability to prevent pregnancy after a "legitimate" rape wasnt a gaffe, it was an honest characterization of the willfully erroneous thinking behind personhood laws and attempts to ban abortion even in cases of rape or incest.
Think about it: "If You Get Pregnant, It Wasn't Really Rape" is just the natural next single on a Republican Hit Parade that also includes "Put A Bayer Aspirin Between Your Knees," "Just Close Your Eyes," and "That Cluster of Cells Has the Same Rights As You." It's the sexual politics of either a 14-year-old boy or my octogenarian Dad.
But what else can we really expect from a party whose members of Congress traveled to the Holy Land and went around drunk and naked like it was Senior Week in North Wildwood?
But WAIT, one "rational Republican" said to me -- it's not really about the misogyny, its about the direction this country is going in! And with that I couldn't agree more, because Akin is a walking illustration of exactly where our country is going. And that's what scares the hell out of me.
So I don't want to hear the "rational Republicans" in my life (and there are some) disavow Akin's words. I want them to disavow the lies, and the laws that are the end result of Akin's way of thinking. I want them to turn away from political stances that come from fanciful mischaracterization of female biology and a distrust of women to make reproductive decisions without government intervention.
Tom Morello called Paul Ryan the embodiment of the machine his band's been raging against all these years. I say Ryan is the avatar of the Republican war on women. He and Mitt Romney are now the figureheads of a party which has at its core an utter ignorance of 7th grade science coupled with a fear of women and a deep desire to control us.
The frightening thing about Akin isn't what he said. It's that if he said it, it means there are other people who must believe it. This is the same mentality that says if you give a girl a cancer vaccination it'll turn her into the town tramp.
The national GOP is pulling the $5 million it was going to spend on the Akin race, though he'll likely raise more than that in "grassroots" money from people whose knowledge of basic biology is as good as his. Sounds like that $5 million would be better spent sending Congressional Republicans to an 11th grade sex-Ed class.
