Justin's Political Corner

ST. LOUIS (KSDK) - Could Todd Akin be the new comeback kid? 

The 65-year-old former congressman says don’t rule him out. Nearly six months after losing the Senate race he continues to be attacked from all sides of the political spectrum. But the greatest barbs are thrown by fellow Republicans. 

In an exclusive interview with KSDK-TV, the former Missouri congressman said, “I’m not going to try to get even with anybody. If you start to blame everyone else for something that happened you didn’t like, it will destroy you. It will eat you alive.” 

After 12 years representing Missouri’s 2nd Congressional District, this infamous quote, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” derailed his campaign and his reputation. 

Would he take those six seconds back? 

Akin said, “Oh, of course I would! I’ve relived them too many times. But that is not reality.” 

In the past, Akin said he regrets those remarks but does he believe they are true? Does he believe in his heart that the female body can stop a pregnancy in the case of a rape? 

Akin said, “No, no and I apologized for that. All of us are fallible, we make mistakes, and we say things the wrong way. I really lived that moment many, many times.” 

KSDK asked, “Do you regret it?” 

“Of course. You think what would it have been like if I hadn’t done that.” 

Within a few days, after the “legitimate rape” quote went viral, mainstream Republican Party bosses lobbied hard for him to get of the race. The behind-the-scenes back room pressure was immense according to one Akin insider. 

he former congressman reflected, “Republican leadership was strong that you have to step down. But there was a very strong grass roots element saying don’t you give in to those party bosses. You stay in there and you keep fighting.” 

That divide between the Republican establishment and Akin’s grassroots supporters percolates today on a national level. 

Akin explained, “Really what it goes back to is whether the Republican Party is going to be run by the insiders, or run by the grassroots organization. That’s a question still to be determined.” 

Republican strategist Karl Rove recently started a new Pac aimed at opposing candidates like Akin. 

Rove argued, “Some people think the best we can do is Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock - they’re wrong. We need to do better if we hope to take over the United States Senate. We need to get better conservative candidates and win.” 

Critics on the far right say they won’t allow Rove or anyone else on the “inside” to exclude them. 

Akin does think the Republican Party is at dangerous crossroads. 

“I believe the party will either stand on principled positions or its going to be replaced by some other party,” he said. 

As for the next chapter, Akin says he’s ready for a comeback, but isn’t sure what form that comeback will take. He’s considering academia, public speaking, and even politics. 

We asked, “Would you ever consider putting your hat back in the political ring again?” 

“It’s one of those things that depends on the circumstances really.  I don’t rule anything out,” he said. “ I consider it a bright new future and I’m interested to see what the possibilities are.”

h/t: KSDK

Whether or not film star and progressive activist Ashley Judd decides to challenge Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for his seat in 2014, conservatives seem to be gearing up for a fight. On Tuesday morning, right-wing website The Daily Caller compared Judd’s unabashed feminism and environmentalism to former Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), whose campaign failed after he claimed women couldn’t get pregnant from“legitimate rape.” Akin’s comment was not only medically wrong, but also insulted and dismissed rape victims. Judd’s “most stunning comments,” according to the Daily Caller, range from harsh rhetoric against mountaintop removal to criticism of patriarchal institutions:

She has spoken out against having kids, saying it is “unconscionable to breed” while there are so many starving children in the world.

She has criticized the tradition of fathers “giving away” their daughters at weddings, calling that practice “a common vestige of male dominion over a woman’s reproductive status.”

She has even compared mountaintop removal mining to the Rwandan genocide, and has criticized Christianity as a religion that “legitimizes and seals male power.”

By getting in the race with this sort of baggage, Judd runs the risk of being portrayed as a Todd Akin-esque candidate – meaning voters simply decide she’s unqualified to serve as a senator, because her comments are so outrageous and extreme that people can’t bring themselves to vote for her.

The Daily Caller equates Judd’s and Akin’s comments as gaffes. But Akin’s “legitimate rape” comment cost him the election not because it was “outrageous” but because it shed light on his radical anti-choice voting record. 

h/t: Aviva Shen at Think Progress

There’s this new hashtag #LiberalTips2AvoidRape that’s now on its second day of trending on Twitter.

For the uninitiated, this isn’t an example of right-wingers deciding out-of-the-blue to be insensitive to rape victims. They have their reason, and his name is Joe Salazar, a first-term Democratic state representative in Colorado. On Friday, Salazar spoke on the state House floor in support of House Bill 13-1226, which would eliminate “the authority of a concealed handgun permit holder to possess a concealed handgun on the campus of an institution of high education.” In other words, Salazar’s bill would ban concealed firearms on college campuses in Colorado. Opponents of the proposed legislation maintain that banning concealed carry on campuses would make it harder for students to protect themselves against mass shooters and rapists on school grounds.

Salazar came down on the side of those who believe that more loaded guns on college campuses is a terrible idea. (This isn’t such a radical opinion if you look at the data.) Hedelivered the following rebuttal on the state House floor:

It’s why we have call boxes, it’s why we have safe zones, that’s why we have the whistles. Because you just don’t know who you’re gonna be shooting at. And you don’t know if you feel like you’re gonna be raped, or if you feel like someone’s been following you around, or if you feel like you’re in trouble and when you may actually not be, that you pop out that gun and you pop… pop a round at somebody.

There’s footage of the speech here.

It’s pretty clear what Salazar was trying to say: Frightened college kids carrying handguns might result in unintended casualties. You could argue that it was clumsily phrased, but there isn’t anything nefarious. The statement was so blah that the Colorado House Republican minority didn’t bother to issue a press release about Salazar’s statement. At least not until after conservative bloggers, seeking to brand somebody the Democratic Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin, commenced their social-media freak-out during the long President’s Day weekend.

Salazar was labeled the new poster boy for the “real war on women,” and painted as someone who denies women the right to protect themselves against sexual assault. He was portrayed as an out-of-touch, gun-stealing lefty who promoted blowing a whistle over actually fighting off an attack. Many also latched onto Salazar’s “you don’t know if you feel like you’re gonna be raped,” upgraded the meaning to something around the lines of, “women can’t ever tell when they’re about to get raped/getting raped,” and voilà! New Todd Akin.

“It’s not ‘rape-rape’ until a male Dem gives his stamp of approval, you dumb broads,” an anonymous staff writer wrote at this website founded by conservative pundit Michelle Malkin. Her site has been at the forefront of the Salazar-related uproar. Dana Loesch, Glenn Beck, Herman Cain’s CainTV, folks at Fox News, and many others piled on accordingly.

Another reason why Mother Jones rocks!

h/t: Asawin Suebsaeng at Mother Jones

Former Senate candidates Todd Akin (R-Mo.) and Richard Mourdock (R-Ind.) may have lost their respective elections over their controversial comments about rape and abortion, but Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) made the point clear on Thursday that they are not alone in their beliefs.

Gingrey, a former OBGYN and co-chair of the House GOP Doctors Caucus, defended the two men at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast in Georgia on Thursday morning. He said he believes that they are at least “partly right” in what they said about pregnancy and rape, the Marietta Daily Journal reported:

In Missouri, Todd Akin … was asked by a local news source about rape and he said, “Look, in a legitimate rape situation” — what he meant by legitimate rape was just look, someone can say I was raped: a scared-to-death 15-year-old that becomes impregnated by her boyfriend and then has to tell her parents, that’s pretty tough and might on some occasion say, “Hey, I was raped.” That’s what he meant when he said legitimate rape versus non-legitimate rape. I don’t find anything so horrible about that. But then he went on and said that in a situation of rape, of a legitimate rape, a woman’s body has a way of shutting down so the pregnancy would not occur. He’s partly right on that. …

And I’ve delivered lots of babies, and I know about these things. It is true. We tell infertile couples all the time that are having trouble conceiving because of the woman not ovulating, “Just relax. Drink a glass of wine. And don’t be so tense and uptight because all that adrenaline can cause you not to ovulate.” So he was partially right wasn’t he? But the fact that a woman may have already ovulated 12 hours before she is raped, you’re not going to prevent a pregnancy there by a woman’s body shutting anything down because the horse has already left the barn, so to speak. And yet the media took that and tore it apart.

Akin said in August that victims of “legitimate rape” rarely get pregnant, because “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” He later apologized and acknowledged that his comment was factually wrong. Recent studies have shownthat rape and consensual sex have the same pregnancy rate.

Gingrey also defended Mourdock, who said in October that he opposes legal abortion without an exception for rape victims because if a woman conceives from rape, “it is something God intended to happen.”

h/t: Huffington Post

Jim DeMint has been among the most extreme members of the Senate since first getting elected in 2004, drawing a hard-right line on issues from unions to LGBT rights to abortion and beyond.

Here’s a look back at some of DeMint’s Senate highlights:

1. Stood with Akin after “legitimate rape” remarks. Following Rep. Todd Akin’s (R-MO) infamous statement that victims of “legitimate rape” can’t become pregnant, DeMint was one of the first major conservatives to stand with the Missouri congressman. DeMint even used his political action committee to donate $90,000 to Akin’s campaign and used its network to raise hundreds of thousands more. “We support Todd Akin and hope freedom-loving Americans in Missouri and around the country will join us,” DeMint’s group said.

2. Led the opposition against Obamacare. In 2009, during the height of the GOP’s opposition to health care reform, DeMint told a conference call of conservative activists that, “If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” Ironically, DeMint once supported Mitt Romney’s health care reform in Massachusetts, the law on which Obamacare is based.

3. Wants to prevent gay or unmarried teachers from teaching in public schools. In 2010, DeMint “said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn’t be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who’s sleeping with her boyfriend — she shouldn’t be in the classroom.” During his first Senate campaign in 2004, DeMint agreed with the state party’s platform barring gay teachers from public schools, claiming that the government shouldn’t endorse certain behaviors.

4. Pushed a bill outlawing the discussion of abortion over the Internet. Last year, DeMint proposed an amendment to an unrelated bill that would have barred a woman and her doctor from discussing abortion over the internet, even if her health was at risk and tele-conferencing was the most feasible option to receive care.

5. Wants to strip all federal employees of collective bargaining rights. Though most federal employees don’t enjoy the rights and benefits of unionization, DeMint wants to take away even the few bargaining rights they currently enjoy. “I don’t believe collective bargaining has any place in government,” DeMint told ThinkProgress last year.

6. Blocked creation of the National Women’s History Museum. Along with fellow arch-conservative Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), DeMint placed a hold on a 2010 bill to sell land near the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC in order to create the National Women’s History Museum. Coburn justified their move to block the museum by noting that there already exist museums for “quilters” and “cowgirls”.

7. Likened striking Chicago teachers to “thugs” in the Middle East. Speaking at the Values Voters Summit in September 2012, DeMint blasted Chicago teachers who were on strike for a brief period earlier this year. “On my way over, I was reading another story about a distant place where thugs had put 400,000 children out in the streets,” DeMint said. “And then I realized that was a story about the Chicago teachers strike.”

8. Threatened to single-handedly shut down the Senate. In September 2010, DeMint warned his colleagues that he would place a unilateral hold on every single piece of legislation in the Senate, bringing the entire lawmaking process to a grinding halt. Despite being in the minority, DeMint threatened to only allow bills to proceed that his office had personally approved.

9. Used a failed terrorist plot to attack unions. Following the failed “underwear bomber” plot in December 2009, DeMint went on Fox News and used the episode as an opportunity to bash unions. “I am concerned, because it’s related to another issue that we’re dealing with now in the Senate,” DeMint said. “The administration is intent on unionizing and submitting our airport security to union bosses’ collective bargaining.”

10. Argued that people with pre-existing conditions got better care before Obamacare. Speaking with ThinkProgress at a Tea Party rally this year, DeMint argued that Obamacare actually hurt people with pre-existing conditions, despite that fact that it bars insurance companies from denying them care. “I can guarantee you people with pre-exisitng conditions are going to get less health care—lower quality health care—under Obamacare,” DeMint said.

11. “Willing” to cause “serious disruptions” in the economy in order to secure draconian cuts. During last year’s debt ceiling showdown, DeMint appeared on Fox Business and said that, despite the fact that not raising the debt ceiling would cause “serious disruptions,” he was “willing to do that” in order to get major cuts to social programs like Medicare and Social Security.

h/t: Scott Keyes at Think Progress

When election returns began pouring in on Tuesday, progressives were quick to declare the election a resounding victory for President Obama, Democratic candidates, and progressive ideals such as marriage equality and the DREAM Act. A deeper look at Tuesday’s results reveals that the 2012 election season was also a resounding defeat for the political engine that has long catapulted the GOP to power: The Religious Right.

Here five ways the Religious Right imploded during the 2012 election:

1) Evangelicals failed to produce a viable candidate. While Rick Perry looked to be the evangelical darling in the early days of the Republican primary, his various “oops” moments forced evangelical Protestants to flock to Rick Santorum, a conservative Catholic. But while Santorum won the support of many evangelicals, his passionate embrace of evangelical positions on abortion and contraception made him unappealing to many women voters. In the end, the machinery of the Religious Right failed to produce a candidate that fired up conservative Protestants, forcing the Romney campaign to work twice as hard to excite the GOP’s evangelical base.

2) Conservative efforts to shift the Catholic vote flopped. After the Obama administration announced the HHS contraceptive coverage requirement earlier this year, the United States Council of Catholic Bishops launched a “Fortnight for Freedom” campaign criticizing the Obama administration and urging Catholics to cast their votes in support of “religious freedom.” The effort failed miserably: Not only did Obama win the Catholic vote overall in 2012 (50% of Catholics voted for Obama while 48% supported Romney), but Pew Research found that the vast majority of American Catholics (78%) knew little to nothing about the bishop’s expensive campaign. Instead, Catholic voters appeared more supportive of the efforts of Sister Simone Campbell and the Nuns on the Bus who spoke out against Paul Ryan’s budget.

3) Evangelical voter turnout efforts fell short. Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition targeted Ohio this year in an effort to increase evangelical turnout, promising to go “all in” by sending voter guides to churches and launching a “major push” to get evangelicals to the polls through a robust get-out-the-vote effort. But when the results came in on Tuesday, Obama had actually performed better among white evangelicals in Ohio than he did in 2008: White evangelicals in Ohio favored John McCain by a 71%-27% margin in 2008, but favored Romney by a smaller margin – 69%-30% – in 2012. Despite all the energy expended by the Religious Right, their turnout efforts failed to have any marked impact on the most crucial state of the general election.

4) Traditionally evangelical candidates lost en masse because of radical views and bad theology. Conservative Christian and then-Missouri Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin caused a stir within the Republican Party when he spoke about “legitimate rape,” but evangelical leaders were quick to come to his aid. But when Indiana GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, who attends an evangelical church, referred to women impregnated through rape as having been given “a gift from God,” voters across the country – including many evangelicals – began asking questions about this new breed of politician. Ultimately, voters decided that Akin and Mourdock’s radical theology was simply too extreme: They and several like-minded candidates suffered a series of staggering defeats all across the country on Tuesday.

5) The efforts of anti-gay religious leaders didn’t stop voters from supporting marriage equality. When marriage equality amendments were put on the ballot in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington this year, conservative Christian groups moved quickly to try and dissuade people from supporting the freedom to marry. Famed evangelist Billy Graham even launched a massive “Vote Biblical Values” ad campaign, which, among other things, urged voters to oppose candidates who supported marriage equality. Undaunted, pro-marriage equality activists capitalized on groundswells of support among religious groups and ran ads featuring pastors and other religious leaders passionately endorsing same-sex marriage. In the end, Americans voted in favor of marriage equality in three (and probably four) states, dealing a resounding defeat to the anti-gay bastions of the Religious Right.

The 2012 election season appears to have been an ominous one for the Religious Right, and – if the trend continues – may very well signal the end of their traditional dominance of Republican politics. 

h/t: Jack Jenkins at Think Progress Election

Missouri Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill is closing with a big lead, according to a new poll from SurveyUSA and commissioned by four in-state TV stations. McCaskill gets 51 percent of the total, GOP Rep. Todd Akin gets 36 percent, and Libertarian candidate Jonathan Dine sees 8 percent. The same poll shows Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney winning by 7 points, 50 percent to President Obama’s 43 percent.

h/t: TPM

Missouri GOP Senate candidate Todd Akin not only wrote a letter praising a right-wing paramilitary group in the 1990s, but he defended the militia movement to the media and “checked out” the local group, a newly unearthed news report shows. And he did all this the month after the Oklahoma City bombing,  perpetrated by militia movement sympathizer Timothy McVeigh.

In the wake of the April, 19 1995, bombing that left 168 people dead, the Springfield (Missouri) News-Leader published a front page article on the militia movement and then-Democratic Gov. Mel Carnahan’s concern that the paramilitary activists could be a threat. The story, which has gone unnoticed in the years since, quotes then-state Rep. Todd Akin defending the movement and saying that he met with its leader and “checked out the unit.” 

People for the American Way, a progressive activist group that broke the news about Akin’s arrests, dug up the News-Leader article at the Library of Congress. The St. Louis alt weekly Riverfront Times posted the full story here. Akin’s letter praising the militia group has become a campaign issue several times in the past decade, and every time Akin pleaded ignorance. “I did not want to speak there … I didn’t want to have any part of it,” Akin told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2000. “I didn’t know who they were, I didn’t want to have anything to do with them,” he told radio host Laura Ingraham in August of this year.

As we reported last week, there’s plenty of evidence that Akin knew members of the militia group – Akin donated $200 to the political campaign of the militia’s chaplain, Tim Dreste, a radical pro-life activist — but the News-Leader story confirms that Akin was familiar enough with them to defend them at their lowest hour.

So what was the 1st Missouri Volunteer militia? Well, while Akin said that a Jewish group OKed his meeting with the militia, a March 1993 report from the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks radical right-wing groups, noted that literature offered at the meeting Akin was supposed to speak at included “extracts from hate publications like the Liberty Lobby’s The Spotlight, The Truth at Last, published by anti-Jewish agitator Ed  Fields  of Georgia, and The Jubilee, a journal  that espouses the anti-Semitic pseudo-theology of the ‘Identity Church’ movement.”

Lawmakers meeting with constituents is ordinary, publicly defending a violent anti-government movement after a fatal attack is not ordinary.

H/T: Alex Seitz-Wald at Salon

Missouri Republican Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin was arrested at least eight times in the 1980s at anti-abortion protests, according to newly obtained records.

That is four arrests in addition to four the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported last month based on a review of its contemporaneous coverage of protests. The four additional arrests each appear to have occurred outside a women’s health clinic in Ballwin, Missouri in St. Louis County between 1985 and 1987.

“Right Wing Watch,” a project of People For the American Way, a nonprofit group critical of Akin’s ties to what it calls radical elements of the pro-life movement, obtained incident reports on the arrests Friday from the St. Louis Country Police Department under Missouri’s sunshine law, and provided them to National Journal.

Akin was arrested on October 26, 1985, April 19, 1986 and February 28, 1987 for trespassing. A December, 27 1986 arrest was for “trespassing and peace disturbance.” The arrests reported by thePost-Dispatch came in the same period, between March 1985 and May 1987, but occurred at other clinics. Three were in St. Louis and one in Granite City, Illinois. The paper said protesters tried to block access to the clinics and refused to leave. In one case, Akin was carried out by police. The last known arrest came shortly before Akin’s 1988 election to the Missouri State House, where he served for 12 years before he joined the House.

Akin campaign spokesperson Rick Tyler declined to comment on the new arrest records. Tyler has dismissed past Akin arrests as “something that happened a quarter century ago,” and said they are less relevant to the Senate race than charges by the Akin campaign and conservative media outlets about business practices of Joseph Shepard, the husband of Akin’s opponent, Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, including suggestions McCaskill personally benefited from millions of dollars in federal grants won by Shepard’s firms.

A few days before Tuesday’s election, news of additional arrests may not much affect views of Akin. His staunch pro-life stance is a big part of his political pitch. His arrest record emerged in part because he boasted of it to supporters. Akin’s statement that “legitimate rape” rarely causes pregnancy and his opposition to emergency contraception for rape victims, along with other statements, have been hammered in ads aired by McCaskill. They have already generated pitched opposition to his candidacy from many voters and helped McCaskill open a large lead among likely female voters, and a solid lead in most polling.

But critics hope Akin’s record bolsters Democrats’ contention that his actions and beliefs, in addition to his statements, make him unacceptably extreme for most Missouri voters. While Akin noted he was arrested in a “peaceful protest,” People for the American Way has worked to document Akin’s ties to people in the anti-abortion movement who advocated violence against doctors who perform abortions.

Akin was arrested with members of an anti-abortion group later taken over by Tim Dreste, who pushed aggressive action against abortion clinics and was arrested hundreds of times at anti-abortion protests. In one case Dreste held a sign referencing a doctor in Florida who was murdered by protestors. In 1993 Akin contributed to Dreste’s longshot state house campaign. After Dreste started a militia group, Akin was listed as a speaker at a 1995 rally held not long before the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City, though he apparently did not address the rally.

h/t: National Journal

In late September, a month after his remarks about “legitimate rape” sent shock waves through the country, Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin addressed a St. Louis conference convened by Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly, one of Akin’s most ardent defenders. In his speech, Akin wasn’t at all apologetic about his claim that women are unable to become pregnant in cases of “legitimate rape.” Instead, he argued that “political correctness” had caused him to face greater backlash than Bill Clinton, “who was accused of doing something wrong, as opposed to saying something wrong.”

“It surprised me that the saying it wrong almost seems like it’s worse than the doing it wrong,” he said. Clinton, of course, was impeached. And Akin’s comments on abortion and rape are indeed reflected in his actions, such as his attempt to redefine rape and participation in militant anti-abortion rights activism.

He went on to compare criticism of his remarks to decapitation by Islamic extremists: “We see that all the time with [what] the Islamists pull out on us: we’re offended so we’re going to cut your head off.”

h/t: Brian Tashman at RWW

On March 11, 1993, Dr. David Gunn was shot three times in the back and killed outside his Pensacola, Florida clinic by an assassin who stepped out of a group of anti-abortion protesters. Days later, longtime Todd Akin associate Tim Dreste delivered a chilling message to St. Louis-area doctor Yogendra Shah. Dreste stood in front of his clinic with a sign that read “Dr. Shah, are you feeling under the Gunn?” – referring to the slain Florida doctor. We’ve obtained a short video recording of this infamous incident, which you can watch below. 

Dreste would later be convicted of extortion on the basis of this incident and others that followed. U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones ruled in 1999 that Dreste “acted with malice…and with specific intent in threatening plaintiffs.”

 

Yet Todd Akin donated to Dreste’s long-shot campaign for the state house in October 1993, just months after Dreste threatened Dr. Shah. Very few others did so – Akin’s $200 contribution was Dreste’s 2^nd largest individual contribution and made up 9% of his total donations.

Akin had known Dreste for the better part of a decade by then and would have known what he was supporting when he cut that check – the St. Louis Post-Dispatch later wrote:

Wearing a hat adorned with shotgun shells, Tim Dreste is a familiar sight among the anti-abortion protesters who regularly picket the Hope Clinic for Women in Granite City.

 

Dreste was the talk of the anti-abortion and abortion-rights camps when, after the murder in 1993 of Dr. David Gunn in Florida, he carried a sign asking, “Do You Feel Under the Gunn?”

Akin and Dreste were both involved in the Pro-Life Direct Action League in the late 80s. Dreste – under orders from Operation Rescue’s Randall Terry – broke away in September 1988 and formed a more radical group, Whole Life Ministries. The following month, Akin appeared at one of the group’s events and described Dreste’s foot soldiers as “freedom fighters.” Days later, Akin was elected for the first time to public office.

 

In 1989, Akin intervened on behalf of one of Dreste’s protesters who had been convicted of assaulting a clinic worker. When Dreste launched the Life Chain of St. Louis in 1990, Akin signed on as an endorser and attended the event through the 90s and beyond. And when Dreste helped form a new militia group in 1995 – the 1^st Missouri Volunteers – Akin signed on to support them as well.

Given what happened in 1993 and 1994, it’s both deeply revealing and disturbing that Akin continued to work with and support Dreste. In April 1994, Dreste co-founded a radical new anti-abortion group – the American Coalition of Life Activists – and met with Paul Hill. On July 30th, Paul Hill murdered Dr. John Bayard Britton, who replaced Dr. Gunn in Pensacola, as well as Britton’s bodyguard.

 

Days later, Dreste appeared outside a St. Louis-area clinic with a sign reading “Abortionists 50 million, Babies 3.” He also contributed to Hill’s legal fund, told a clinic worker, “I’m John Hill, you know my brother Paul,” and tried to terrorize doctors by passing out “wanted” posters outside their homes and clinics (similar posters were distributed before Gunn and Britton were murdered). Through all of this, Akin remained loyal to Dreste.

To recap, Akin stuck with Dreste after he publicly threatened a doctor and condoned murder in 1993. And he stuck by his old protest buddy in 1995 even though the year before, Dreste:

• co-founded a pro-violence anti-abortion group
• met with a domestic terrorist who murdered two people three months later
• condoned those murders and contributed to the killer’s legal fund
• threatened doctors and clinic staff during his frequent protest appearances.

Akin sure is loyal! To be sure, Akin has tried his best to cover up his long ties to and support for Dreste. He’s openly lied about his history with the 1^st Missouri Volunteers, and his campaign just wants to change the subject. But the truth is slowly coming out, including hisnumerous arrests (four at last count!) and name switcheroo to conceal them. But if you judge a man by his actions, not his press releases, Akin has remained loyal to the bitter end.

 

He reunited early last year with the people he protested (and was arrested) with in the 80s. He’s attended virtually every Life Chain event up until this year. And as we’ll show, he’s apparently still on good terms with convicted extortionist Tim Dreste.

Tea Party standard-bearer Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) today refused to state her position on legal abortion access for rape victims, repeatedly dodging questions from the debate moderator during a radio debate with challenger Jim Graves.

Bachmann has been a longtime supporter of the so-called “Personhood Amendment,” a measure that would outlaw all abortions, some types of birth control, and potentially in-vitro fertilizations. But in today’s debate, Bachmann would not clarify whether she would support abortion access for rape victims, repeatedly saying, “I agree with the Catholic Church,” and vaguely suggesting that there could be “waivers” for certain unnamed conditions:

BACHMANN: And it isn’t just these very rare cases that we deal with, it’s the big overall issue of abortion and the legality of abortion. And 52 million lives is a lot. And again, my position is in line with the Catholic Church, that’s been my position for 40 years, it hasn’t changed.

MODERATOR: Representative, just at the end there though, there, you heard what Richard Mourdock said and you know that has been controversial: ‘God intended this to happen’ if a fetus results as a consequence of that rape. And I want to know if you agree with that.

BACHMANN: Well what I agree with is that I’m 100 percent pro-life and I agree with the Catholic Church on that issue.[…]

MODERATOR: Just to be clear here though, we are talking about an amendment to the U.S. Constitution here. Declaring personhood, right? From the moment of conception.

BACHMANN: If– what — From the moment of conception declaring the personhood of an individual would again be in line with saying that I am 100 percent pro-life and I believe in the protection of human life from conception to natural death.

Bachmann likely refused to clarify her position because she feared a backlash similar to what Senate candidates Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin faced after they stated their opposition to providing access to legal abortion for women who conceived through rape. 

h/t: Annie-Rose Strasser at Think Progress Health