"It's shocking," Scarborough said. "But Republicans keep doing this. Republicans had Delaware two years ago and they decided to go with a candidate who was clearly going to lose. They had a clean shot at Nevada, and they clearly went with the most unelectable person, we had been warned by leading press reports that Todd Akin was the only candidate that would give Claire McCaskill an opportunity at winning and here we are. Here we are."

"This is a Republican party that does not want to win the majority. They do not want to win the majority. They want to keep shooting themselves in the foot," Scarborough observed on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

"I actually have moderate Republicans that are big spenders, have driven me crazy. And If I can get a conservative in there, that is a small-government type, I'm happy. But there is a rule that we conservatives have followed for a long time. It's the Bill Buckley rule. You elect the most electable conservative," Scarborough said. "The person who is the most conservative and who is electable, is the one you put on the ticket. That's the part of the equation that we're losing over the last three years and it's killing -- it's making Harry Reid the Majority Leader."

"That is a gift that will have reverberations beyond that single race, although that's an important Senate race. Republicans probably can't get the majority if they can't get that seat," Mark Halperin said about Akin's statement.