Craziest Republican of the Day: Todd Akin, Missouri GOP Senate candidate

By Richard K. Barry

No, you can't fix stupid. But you really don't
have to vote him in. 

If you are like me and you do a lot of casual scanning of websites and blog aggregators, it sometimes happens that you are sure you read something wrong, that what you thought you saw couldn't possibly be what was said. But there it was, a TPM headline that read: "Republican Senate Nominee: Victims of 'Legitimate Rape' Don't Get Pregnant": 

Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for Senate in Missouri who is running against Sen. Claire McCaskill, justified his opposition to abortion rights even in case of rape with a claim that victims of "legitimate rape" have unnamed biological defenses that prevent pregnancy. 

"First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare," Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview posted Sunday. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

That's what he said. I know. I had to read it over a few times myself. TPM added this little bit of information, just because some of us actually believe in science:

A 1996 study by the American Journal of Obstetricians and Gynecologists found "rape-related pregnancy occurs with significant frequency" and is "a cause of many unwanted pregnancies" — an estimated "32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year."

The scariest part is that the PollTracker Average shows Akin ahead of McCaskill by a margin of 49.7 percent to 41.3 percent.

Come on you Missouri Republicans, this isn't about one's personal beliefs about reproductive rights. This is about the fact that you have yourselves one monumentally stupid candidate.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)