A Grey-Faced Man with a $2 Haircut Talks About Rape

Tina Fey is surely not the only person losing their mind over the latest catastrophic remarks on rape by a Republican Senate candidate. With roughly two weeks left of this election season, Mitt Romney and other Republican Senate candidates do not want to see a focus on the perceived anti-women agenda of the Republican party. There was no mention of abortion in the presidential debates and that perhaps goes some way to explain the gains that Romney has been making in the polls with women in the last few weeks. In the debates, neither candidate succeeded in distinguishing themselves from one another on "women's issues". The fact that Democrats were left clutching at the "binders full of women" comment to spearhead their weak attack on Romney is telling of how successful Romney was at presenting himself to women voters.

Todd Akin screwed up earlier this season with his severely deficient, to say the least, understanding of human biology. But that was August. That was before the debates where Romney first stood on the national stage alongside the President in front of millions of viewers and effectively changed the race completely by appearing as sane, reasonable and likable, and by shellacking the President who gave one of the worst debate performances ever. Todd Akin was until a few days ago irrelevant to the presidential contest. This Tuesday, his comments became relevant again when Richard Mourdock stepped in it when he attempted to describe his philosophy on abortion:

"I struggled with it myself for a long time but I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape that it is something that God intended to happen."

A good lesson for any pro-life politician who opposes exceptions in cases of rape or incest is to never ever give a thorough explanation behind the thinking process. The words will never come out right and you're bound to sound as if you support rape or that you don't care about rape. Todd Akin couldn't do it. Steve King couldn't do it. Joe Walsh couldn't do it. Rick Santorum couldn't do it. Paul Ryan couldn't do it. Akin, King and Walsh gave awful explanations for why there should be no exceptions. Their remarks were shockingly ignorant and contemptuous of rape victims. Rick Santorum, Paul Ryan and yes, Richard Mourdock, however, did not give awful explanations for their beliefs. All of these comments were misconstrued as being supportive of rape, when they were no such thing.

The basic philosophy behind Mourdock's position is that the fetus is a person and has a right to life, and therefore a woman should not be allowed to terminate her pregnancy regardless of how the pregnancy came to be. Mourdock shares a common evangelical Christian view that God is an interventionist God, and that this god is responsible for the good things in life and especially, the creation of each life. Mourdock is not of the view that God intended the rape to happen but merely the life that was created. Ricahard Mourdock is of course wrong on the issue of abortion but he's not a supporter of rape ("a rape-enthusiast") and he's not at all out of line with many Republicans on the issue. He just happened to share his beliefs, beliefs that have become acceptable in mainstream politics, in a clumsily-worded and easily-misconstrued way.

What Mourdock's comments have done is to drag the issue of abortion up on the national stage during the last two weeks of the election cycle and to rub his extreme views off on every Republican running for office on November 6th. His comments allow a lazy and sensationalist media to engage with an issue that they would usually ignore: the ever more common view among Republicans that there should be no exception for rape and incest. These comments have dominated the media in the last few days and will do so for the next few days as well. The comments are close enough to the election to stick in people's minds and for the offended parties to remain offended by election day. With the national media latching on to this, the comments will tar every Republican candidate to some degree and the issue of abortion and Republican extremism will take up precious time in the home-stretch of a campaign that Republicans want to be about Democrats' failure to revitalize the economy.