Like most Americans, I have to admit I was duped about Todd Akin by left-wing activists, the major media and the Republican establishment in August 2012 following the famous "legitimate rape" interview on a local television station in St. Louis.
As framed, it seemed the six-term Missouri congressman and Senate candidate had really stepped in it.
But, after 18 months of careful study of what he actually said and the way it was deliberately and purposely mangled by people with a political ax to grind – and continues to be today – I now realize who is most responsible for the manipulation and character assassination.
It was none other than Barack Obama.
What do I mean?
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Todd Akin will be a guest Monday night on Megyn Kelly's "The Kelly File," which airs at 9 p.m. Eastern on the Fox News Channel.
Well, I conducted what you might call a forensic study of Todd Akin August 2012 political crisis. I wanted to determine what was the actual "tipping point" in the firestorm of controversy that made it one of the most memorable media stories of the presidential election year.
Using search-engine histories to track how Akin's comments spiraled into the biggest political story three months before the election, my investigation revealed it was Obama's statement at the "surprise" presidential press conference the day after that sent the controversy viral, causing the Republican leadership to throw Akin overboard, yanking his funding and calling for him to quit the race.
At the time, Akin was within the polling margin of error in his bid to replace incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill, who went on to win – as did every other Democratic Party senatorial candidate that year.
Obama's most memorable line from that press conference was "Rape means rape." It was a complete non sequitur, as is often the case with Obama.
Here's his complete statement: "Let me first of all say the views expressed were offensive. Rape is rape and the idea that we should be parsing, qualifying and slicing what types of rape we're talking about doesn't make sense to the American people and certainly doesn't make sense to me. So, what I think these comments do underscore is why we shouldn't have a bunch of politicians, a majority of whom are men, making healthcare decisions on behalf of women. And so although these particular comments have led Gov. Romney and other Republicans to distance themselves, I think the underlying notion that we should be making decisions on behalf of women for their health-care decisions or qualifying forcible rape versus nonforcible rape. I think those are broader issues and that is a significant difference in approach between me and the other party. But I don't think that they would agree with the senator from Missouri in terms of his statement, which was way out there. He was nominated by the Republicans in Missouri; I'll let them sort that out."
Let's try to diagram this statement and determine who is "parsing, qualifying and slicing," as Obama likes to say:
- The views were offensive: Strong views are often offensive. Most of Obama's views offend me. So what?
- "Rape is rape": Todd Akin and everyone else in the world agrees "rape is rape." he didn't suggest anything different. What he suggested is that "accusations of rape" are not always rape. Is there some rational human being who would dispute that?
- "[W]e shouldn't have a bunch of politicians, a majority of whom are men, making health-care decisions on behalf of women." Now who is it that wants "a bunch of politicians, a majority of whom are men, making health-care decisions on behalf of women"? Is it Todd Akin? Or is it Barack Obama and Claire McCaskill and the entire Democratic Party? Here, Obama uses the Saul Alinsky tactic of accusing your opponent of doing what you yourself are doing. And he got away with it. He always gets away with it.
I suspect many Republicans don't realize how they were manipulated, by the left and Obama himself, into throwing Todd Akin overboard. As a former leftist myself, I know how this works. It's a tactic that can never be beaten through capitulation and surrender. But that's just what Republicans, including many conservatives, did in 2012 – and are still doing today.
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