Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Romney, Ryan and Rape: A Todd Akin Special Delivery

William Rivers Pitt

Ah, yes, a Tea Party mask, in the person of one Paul Ryan from Wisconsin. An amiable sociopath if ever there was one, Mr. Ryan brings to the campaign fourteen years of far-right baggage, which is just what a Republican candidate desperate to secure his leery base needs right now. "Nail down the 'Baggers and figure out the rest later" appears to be the newest GOP campaign battle plan...
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Who the what the where the when the why the how the what the hell?

Yeah, that happened. In the odd, demented, windy spaces that pass for the mind of Mr. Akin, if you are raped and become pregnant, you weren't really raped, because "the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." That sound you hear is the heads of a million OBGYN's exploding simultaneously. Before the sun came up on Monday, Akin's campaign had rushed out a he-misspoke-we-hate-rape retraction, but the horse was already out of the barn. Akin's words were not a mistake, but a closely-held belief within the Anti-Choice-at-all-costs crowd, and now the Romney/Ryan campaign has a whole new problem to contend with.

The crux of the biscuit: it's not what Akin said, it's what him and Ryan and the 'bagger base believe. Akin committed a gaffe by letting the cat out of the bag. The Repugs are doing this little bit by little bit on all sorts of issues, most notably voter suppression.

Mitt Romney chose Paul Ryan as his running mate to shore up his standing with the GOP base. Fine and good, but now that he has donned the Tea Party mask, he owns everything Ryan brings with him, including Ryan's appalling partnership with Todd Akin, and their despicable attempt to legislate a new definition of rape as something other than rape.

Keep talking, Repugs, and stay in the race, Akin. Please. As far as I'm concerned it's the gift that keeps on giving to the nation's future well-being. Unless there are more of them and less of us who vote. If the reverse is true, or even if it's not but the Repugs have re-honed their vote suppression/stealing tactics, we're screwed and let the chips fall where they will. This ain't yer grandfather's America which never was anyway but which they want a return to.

Oh, and rape is rape. It's a sexual and/or power trip over women against their will through violence or other means by sexually repressed criminals. Repug "men" are the only ones who don't believe or refuse to accept that. Rapists and their Repug enablers should be nutted so they won't do that again. Period.

1 comment:

Madeleine Begun Kane said...

Indeed, there's no worse gaffe that speaking an accidental truth.