I'm getting a little tired of the Todd Akin auto-da-fe. It's annoying to hear "reasonable" Republicans like Joe Scarborough and Mark McKinnon fret that a Republican candidate for US Senate would blurt out such offensive craziness.
Where have these guys been for the past 20 years?
Akin isn't the problem at all -- it's the entire party.
Take a look around key committees of the House and you’ll find a governing body stocked with crackpots whose views on major issues are as removed from reality as Missouri’s Representative Todd Akin’s take on the sperm-killing powers of a woman who’s been raped.
[...]
We’re currently experiencing the worst drought in 60 years, a siege of wildfires, and the hottest temperatures since records were kept. But to Republicans in Congress, it’s all a big hoax. The chairman of a subcommittee that oversees issues related to climate change, Representative John Shimkus of Illinois is — you guessed it — a climate-change denier.
At a 2009 hearing, Shimkus said not to worry about a fatally dyspeptic planet: the biblical signs have yet to properly align. “The earth will end only when God declares it to be over,” he said, and then he went on to quote Genesis at some length. It’s worth repeating: This guy is the chairman.
And,
On the same committee is an oil-company tool and 27-year veteran of Congress, Representative Joe L. Barton of Texas. [...] Barton cited the Almighty in questioning energy from wind turbines. Careful, he warned, “wind is God’s way of balancing heat.” Clean energy, he said, “would slow the winds down” and thus could make it hotter. You never know.
“You can’t regulate God!” Barton barked at the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, in the midst of discussion on measures to curb global warming.
And,
Jack Kingston of Georgia, a 20-year veteran of the House, is an evolution denier, apparently because he can’t see the indent where his ancestors’ monkey tail used to be. “Where’s the missing link?” he said in 2011. “I just want to know what it is.” He serves on a committee that oversees education.
And,
Another Georgia congressman, Paul Broun, introduced the so-called personhood legislation in the House — backed by Akin and Representative Paul Ryan — that would have given a fertilized egg the same constitutional protections as a fully developed human being.
Broun is on the same science, space and technology committee that Akin is. Yes, science is part of their purview.
Paul Broun is the raving loon who, shortly after Barack Obama won a higher percentage of the popular vote than Ronald Reagan in 1980, warned of the looming fascist dictatorship and compared him to Hitler (audio above).
And did these congressmen face any consequences for their inflammatory rhetoric? Not at all, they're all members -- and leaders -- in good standing.
So when Republicans start kicking out members like Broun, Kingston, Bachmann, Shimkus, Barton, Gohmert and Allen West -- just to name a few -- I'll know they're serious about cleaning up their party.
Until then, they should stop picking on Todd Akin. He's just playing by their rules. And they're only making noise about it because he may cost them the Senate.
