Former Congressman Todd Akin, the Missouri Republican who died late Sunday, sparked one of the biggest political firestorms in the country during the 2012 election year, when he claimed that “legitimate rape” doesn’t cause pregnancy — thus implying that women who seek abortions claiming to have been impregnated by rape are lying. That medically absurd claim sunk Akin’s U.S. Senate candidacy.
In hindsight, Akin’s fall is a measure of just how far the Republican Party has sunk now. He became a pariah in the party with his remark, to the point that Republicans ceded the Senate seat rather than defend him. All indications are that, today, a power-obsessed and ethically rudderless GOP would rally around an Akin-like figure no matter what he’d said.
Akin, 74, died late Sunday after battling cancer for years, according to a statement from his family. In 2012, he was a conservative Christian congressman representing suburban St. Louis and an apparent shoo-in to unseat struggling Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill.
That changed when Akin was asked during an Aug. 19 St. Louis television interview about his opposition to abortion rights even for rape victims. He responded: “From what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
That ludicrous claim lit the national political landscape with justifiable fury, and not just from Democrats.
Mitt Romney, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee, led other top Republicans in demanding that Akin exit. When Akin refused, the party yanked his funding. Republican voters ultimately abandoned a winnable race rather than countenance Akin’s extremism.
The anti-abortion movement today has largely ditched from its once-common caveat of acknowledging abortion rights for rape victims — a caveat not found in an oppressive new Texas law that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority recently upheld. More broadly, the kind of uninformed radicalism displayed by Akin has been transformed from a liability to an asset among Republican candidates today.
Majorities of Republicans still support ex-President Donald Trump despite (or because of) his attempt to overthrow last year’s valid election.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who played a key supporting role in that un-American endeavor, is enjoying presidential buzz from the right. Missouri’s disgraced ex-governor, Eric Greitens, credibly accused of sexually abusing his mistress, is a serious contender for the GOP’s 2022 Senate nomination.
Meanwhile, red-state politicians everywhere score points with the base by prohibiting mask mandates and vaccination rules in defiance of medical science, endangering their own constituents to pander to the anti-science crowd.
Functioning political parties purge corrosive radicalism from their midst, as 2012’s Republicans did with Akin. Dysfunctional parties embrace an anything-to-win ethos, unencumbered by norms, principles or even their own stated beliefs — as today’s GOP now does routinely.
Pity Akin that he wasn’t running under this Republican Party.
He’d have been a star.