Anti-women, anti-kids and anti-college students: The dream GOP candidate

The Sexual Spirit of ’76

By GAIL COLLINS, NYT

In colonial America, conventional wisdom held that women could not get pregnant unless they enjoyed the sex.

People, who would have thought I’d have an opportunity to bring up this factoid right in the middle of a presidential race? Thank you, Representative Todd Akin of Missouri! Without you, we might have been condemned to spend today reinvestigating the Congressional Budget Office Medicare cost projections.

But, instead, we are going to deconstruct the now-legendary explanation from Akin of how, in cases of “legitimate rape,” women’s bodies will “shut that whole thing down” before pregnancy occurs.

Akin, a U.S. Senate nominee, has a reputation for, shall we say, thinking outside the box. It was not for nothing that the incumbent, Claire McCaskill, had targeted him as the Republican I’d Most Like to Run Against. McCaskill was particularly attracted by his comparison of federal student loans to “Stage 3 cancer.” And then there was his vote against the school lunch program.

(More here.)