Todd Akin didn't "misspeak"

Anyone who's been paying attention the last couple days has by now heard senatorial candidate Rep. Todd Akin's (R-Mo.) remarks on local TV about how an abortion ban shouldn't have an exception for victims of rape or incest, because in cases of "legitimate rape", "the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." (Is there any better summary of the patriarchal right's simultaneous fascination with and contempt for women's bodies than describing conception as "that whole thing"?) Since then, Akin, who was eight points ahead of his incumbent opponent Sen. Claire McCaskill the day of the interview, has been receiving a well-deserved, bipartisan excoriation. His critics on the right have included Mitt Romney, Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown (although one wonders if he would have bothered if he weren't facing a popular opponent in a blue state) and National Review hack Ramesh Ponnuru, and the Republican National Senatorial Committee has pulled their support from his race. Even Sean Hannity, who has whined that covering Viagra is totally different from covering contraception because erectile dysfunction is "a medical problem", tried to get Akin to withdraw* from the race. Akin still has his defenders, of course; they include red-faced blowhard Erick Erickson, who thinks what Akin said is totally okay because NOBAMA kills babies and Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, who assures us that, in the words of Ron Burgundy, "it's science" (Fischer, it should be noted, also does not believe that HIV causes AIDS).

Inexplicably, Akin doesn't seem to find the support of such towering intellects heartening; he's been doing frantic damage control, insisting that he "misspoke" and cutting an ad in which he simultaneously apologizes and vows to stay in the race. In the ad, Akin insists that "the mistake I made was in the words I said, not in the heart I hold." Well, golly, Todd Akin, that seems legit; if only you had some manner of record in Congress to draw on, so that we could determine whether or not this kind of thing is, in fact, in the "heart you hold".

Oh, whoa, check it out, guys: turns out he does! I KNOW, right? So apparently, Akin and some guy named Paul Ryan co-sponsored the "Sanctity of Human Life Act of 2009", which would give fertilized eggs the same rights as non-gummi people, presumably even if they were the product of "legitimate rape". Weird. Oh, and Akin and Ryan, the Mulder and Scully of protecting you from your own whore-slit, were also behind the 2011 "“No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act". If you missed this dandy, it took the existing prohibition on federal funding of abortion except in cases of rape and incest and narrowed it to "forcible rape". And he proudly touts the endorsement of America's mean, judgy grandmother Phyllis Schlafly, who does not believe it's possible for a man to rape his wife. I know what you're thinking: "Hey, wow, it's starting to sound like maybe Akin implying that there are less heinous forms of rape is, in fact, a well-established part of his ideology rather than a momentary poor choice of words!" The reason you think that is because you kill babies and are probably a lesbian.

(Akin has since clarified that by "legitimate rape" he meant- you guessed it- "forcible rape". Tough shit, Amanda Palmer.)

In the first poll taken since Akin's meltdown, his eight-point lead over McCaskill, widely considered to have been the most vulnerable Democrat in the Senate, has dwindled to a single-point lead. It remains to be seen if his slide will continue, but either way, the cat's out of the bag. Akin said something he didn't mean to say, all right, but it's not that he didn't believe it, it's that he's just too insulated (and let's face it, kind of stupid- I mean, what else can you call a guy who thinks rape makes women excrete spermicide?) to realize that he believes a lot of stuff that non-crazy people find horrifying.

*giggity