The GOP reaps what it sowed

The GOP sold its soul to the extremist Christian right. So why do its leaders act surprised by the Todd Akins?

The GOP sold its soul to the extremist Christian right. So why do its leaders act surprised by the Todd Akins?

I almost feel sorry for Todd Akin. Almost. He and his crazy, ultra-right ilk have been cultivated and flattered and milked for votes by Republican elites for more than 30 years, and then, when it comes to actual policy implementation, mostly abandoned by presidents going back to Ronald Reagan. Republican primary candidates make big promises to the Christian ultra-right; Republican presidents mostly break them.

Now Mitt Romney is accelerating the process, disappointing his party’s far-right base before he’s even elected, by joining other establishment leaders in asking Akin to leave the Missouri senate race over his idiotic comment that women rarely get pregnant by way of rape, because “if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Romney and co. want Akin to shut his candidacy down, and he won’t do it.

I don’t blame him. On the far right – with the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, Ayatollah Bryan Fischer, former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and macho hate-talker Dana Loesch – Akin knows he’s a hero. And let’s be honest: Romney’s VP pick, Paul Ryan, has co-sponsored as much extremist anti-abortion legislation as Akin. Ryan is the Todd Akin of Wisconsin, just a little bit more buttoned down and polished, not given to public flights of fancy about the workings of our lady parts.

For some reason, the Republican elite didn’t expect their quadrennial culture war extremism to leak out of the GOP primary into the general election. Eric Fehrnstrom told us directly: Romney would shake his “Etch A Sketch” and erase his ultra-right pandering to the GOP base in time to be competitive with independents. The crazy battle over the contraception-coverage mandate made that difficult, but Romney and others on the right complained that those Mean, Mean Democrats made the whole issue up – they didn’t want to take away anyone’s birth control! (Except for the majority who support a personhood amendment to the constitution, which would ban many forms of birth control.)

more: http://www.salon.com/2012/08/22/the_gop_reaps_what_it_sowed/