Todd Akin, for now the Republicans’ U.S. Senate candidate in Missouri, came up with a new tack last night, arguing that the “liberal media is trying to make me drop out” of the race. He apparently wasn’t kidding.
Putting aside the fact that the left doesn’t want him to quit, what’s especially amusing about Akin’s sense of victimization is that he seems to think the “liberal media” includes the Republican Party, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and Sean Hannity. Even among Akin backers, this one’s going to be a tough sell.
The larger issue now, however, is appreciating the scope of the damage Akin is causing. All of a sudden, women’s health, reproductive rights, and the Republican “war on women” are at the center of the political world’s focus, and people are starting to notice that Akin’s right-wing views on abortion are “largely indistinguishable” from most of his GOP colleagues.
That agenda — largely eclipsed for two years by a protracted fiscal crisis and the fight over how to manage the federal deficit — has wedged its way, for now at least, to the center of the 2012 campaign. It is focusing attention on an issue that helped earn Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, a reputation as a flip-flopper, threatening the Republican quest for control of the Senate, and leaving Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, Mr. Romney’s vice-presidential pick, in the uncomfortable position of distinguishing himself from Mr. Akin, with whom he has often concurred.









