The GOP's New Fireable Offense: Talking About the Party's Platform
Posted: 08/23/2012 11:31 am
At the rate prominent Republicans are turning on Todd Akin this week, you'd think he actually said something to offend them.
When Akin told an interviewer that rape victims don't need abortion rights because victims of "legitimate rape" don't get pregnant, he wasn't going rogue. Instead, he was simply repeating the GOP's official position on reproductive rights in a really, really tasteless way. If Akin's example is any guide, straying from right-wing orthodoxy in today's Republican party is less of a crime than simply calling attention to it.
It's true that Akin's bizarre belief that rape victims have ways to "shut that whole thing down" is common only among the fringe of the fringe Right. But the anti-abortion orthodoxy that is now part of the official Republican platform is a direct result of that sort of magical thinking. It helps, when denying reproductive choice to all women, to imagine it only benefits a certain type of abortion-craving bogey-woman who brought this on herself. Sometimes that requires some helpful mythology and weird science to smooth over the reality of women's lives.
It's the reality of real people that Republican leaders are desperately trying to avoid. As soon as Akin's comments hit the national news,prominent Republicans starting calling for him to step out of the Senate race in Missouri. Par for the course, once it became clear that that was the thing to do, Mitt Romney eventually joined the onslaught.
more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-b-keegan/the-gops-new-fireable-off_b_1824949.html?utm_hp_ref=tw