So what is new in Todd Akin’s campaign for the Missouri Senate? Lots of sheepish Republican movers and shakers, that’s what. An enthusiastic Newt Gingrich led the way, Jim DeMint followed, flourishing a check-book, and now Roy Blunt, rather obviously holding his nose, is back on board with Brother Todd:

Congressman Akin and I don’t agree on everything, but he and I agree the Senate majority must change. From Gov. Romney to the county courthouse, I’ll be working for the Republican ticket in Missouri, and that includes Todd Akin … .

The Tea Party express is sending signals that they’re reconsidering their earlier harsh judgment of Akin, while the NRSC is also indicating that, after traversing the five stages of grieving, rage, denial, etc., they’re also willing to accept reality and make do with Akin.

It wasn’t always this way as Talking Points Memo‘s video reel of prominent Republicans “dumping” on Akin demonstrates. Of course, everybody always knew that both sides were bluffing and that it was Akin who held all the cards. Seriously, did anyone really expect that the BMOCs in the GOP would concede the Senate to the Democrats without a fight? These guys and their corporate backers have been working too long and too hard to establish Carl Rove’s “permanent Republican majority” to give up just because of a dim-witted backbencher’s faux pas.

At the Huffington Post Christine Pelosi points out that the motive for GOP backtracking on Akin goes way beyond efforts to reestablish control of the legislative branch:

Now why would Senate Republicans flip-flop? Why would establishment Republicans display such moral bankruptcy as to ask their female donors to support a man who won’t let them contemplate abortion even if raped? Because of reason number three: the United States Supreme Court.

It’s all about the Justices. Supreme Court nominations are blocked or approved by United States Senators, and Republicans want Todd Akin making those decisions for Justices who would reaffirm Citizens United and overturn Roe v. Wade; who would expand freedom to carry guns but restrict freedom to marry LGBT partners. This is not just another vote up or down on the issues — this is a critical vote to choose between a Sonia Sotomayor or an Antonin Scalia; an Elena Kagan or a Clarence Thomas. We know how Todd Akin would vote and we know how Senator Claire McCaskill has voted. The choice for women’s choices could not be clearer.

Pelosi is inarguably right about the GOP imperative to get their ducks, including ugly duckling Akin, into a row so that they can also, eventually, recapture the judiciary. But the motivation goes much deeper than a desire to eviscerate women’s rights and revive nineteenth-century social mores. The real big deal for the GOP is the not-so-secret GOP drive to decimate New Deal precedents, Social Security, Medicare, pro-labor legislation, while establishing a happy, unregulated haven for those corporations who are people, my friend, and whose greenback-backed free speech rights they value so highly. I suspect that Todd Akin, who sees socialism behind every corner, will do just as well as the next pea-brained zealot when it comes to helping shore up a Supreme Court that will bring happy-ever-after to the corporatocracy.  

Numerous news outlets are reporting that Rep. Todd Akin will support an earmark ban in order to get some campaign support from U.S. Senator Jim DeMint’s Senate Conservatives Fund. I appreciate that beggers can’t be choosers, but wasn’t it just a month or two ago when Akin was vociferously defending his earmarking practices?  I think he even produced an ad contending that his wise earmarking saved lives. (Of course, the subject only came up because John Brunner was making the claim that Akin’s judicious use of earmarks also made the Akin family a little bit richer.) As the Post-Dispatch notes, Akin explicitly defends earmarks on his congressional Website:

Some believe Congress should be prohibited from designating where money should be spent. While well-intentioned, such action violates the Constitution and shifts important spending decisions from elected representatives in Congress to unaccountable bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.. This is not the right path. Rather, such spending decisions should be carefully vetted  during the committee process-a process that is open and transparent to the public.

Contrast that with a recently posted statement on Akin’s campaign Website that purports to “set the record straight”:

Claire McCaskill has questioned Todd’s position on earmarks. For the record Todd’s position on earmarks has been clear and consistent and is not in conflict with Senator DeMint’s ban on earmarks.

I’ve always known that Akin was logic-challenged, but come on! Not even the divinely inspired Todd Akin can be against something and for it at the same time. Especially after he defended that something for years by arguing that it’s a constitutional mandate.

That’s probably why Akin’s statement is so vague, and, on the theory that the best defense is offense, veers post-haste into an attack against Claire McCaskill’s hypothetical earmarking practices. It seems that, according to Akin, McCaskill – who introduced legislation to ban earmarks – is a hypocrite because she voted for the stimulus, and Akin is an advocate of the theory that the stimulus was chock-full of wasteful earmark spending. Of course, whether or not the stimulus contained earmarks is debatable and depends largely on how one defines earmarks.  Even Politifact, which identified a few earmarks in the bill, conceded that “It’s worth noting again that Obama managed to get a bill that was largely free of earmarks.”

To summarize: Akin believes that earmarks are the best thing since apple pie (and he may have even pocketed some of that metaphorical pie), but he has no problem supporting a ban and thinks it’s consistent with his beliefs. His opponent, however, who has never taken an earmark, and consistently worked to get them banned, is an earmarking queen because she voted for a stimulus bill that was largely free of earmarks. Laughable? Maybe, but I bet it’ll go over great guns with Akin’s hardcore supporters who’ve been well trained to howl when they hear the word “stimulus.”

Relative to which, there was another prong to the Akin attack that hinged on citing some of the items in a list of “wasteful” stimulus projects bandied about by several GOP congressmen a couple of years ago. Here Akin’s logic seems to be that earmarks are often characterized as wasteful, so if you can show that there was waste in the stimulus, it must be because it was full of earmarks.  

Unfortunately for Akin’s logically twisted agenda, there may be some problems when it comes to demonstrating that the stimulus was larded with waste. NewsWeek‘s McKay Coppins looked at five of the items from the GOP list, two of which are cited by Akin as examples of wasteful stimulus spending, and found that they mostly did what the stimulus was supposed to do – create jobs. One would suspect, given the partisan rancor that obviously inspired the list, many more of those “wasteful” spending projects did so as well. And, in fact, an audit of the program reported in 2010 that:

…  Of the nearly 200,000 prime and sub contracts that the Recovery Act awarded, just 293 led to “consequential investigations” of fraud. That’s 0.2 percent-i.e., two-tenths of a percent. Given the amount of money we’re talking here, that’s astonishingly clean, even by private sector standards.

Lest you think this is just the Obama Administration whitewashing its own record-and me whitewashing their whitewashing-the General Accounting Office has reached the same conclusion, calling the amount of waste and fraud minimal. …

A small price to pay for saving us from another Great Depression.  

People for the American Way have a video excerpt up from a right wingnut documentary. Apparently the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center is secular or something:

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) appeared in a Coral Ridge Ministries documentary about the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, which they claim is covertly trying to weed faith out of public life. Coral Ridge Ministries is one of the leading proponents of Christian Reconstructionism and frequently makes documentaries about creeping socialism and the dangers of Obama’s presidency. Akin, who recently declared that “at the heart of liberalism really is a hatred for God,” argued that the Center’s lack of religious content shows that it “will snuff out the light of freedom,” while DeMint argued that “secularization is a forerunner of socialization” and will destroy freedom.

Representative Todd Akin (r): They will snuff out the light of freedom if they are allowed to continue in this political correctness [cliche ominous background music] and rewriting the history of America.

Senator Jim DeMint (r): So we’re fighting a, a battle here against those who want to secularize our country. And it’s important to the political process because secularization is, is the forerunner of socialization. And we’ve seen that in Europe and all around the world. And I don’t believe we can maintain a free country unless we maintain a country that’s built on the principles of faith.

What it is it with right wingnuts? They just throw crazy shit against the wall in the hope that rubes will send them money? It must be a living. They don’t read, that’s for certain:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion….

And being from Missouri you’d think Representative Akin would be familiar with the state’s Constitution:

Missouri Constitution

Article I

BILL OF RIGHTS

Section 7

Public aid for religious purposes–preferences and discriminations on religious grounds.

Section 7. That no money shall ever be taken from the public treasury, directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect or denomination of religion, or in aid of any priest, preacher, minister or teacher thereof, as such; and that no preference shall be given to nor any discrimination made against any church, sect or creed of religion, or any form of religious faith or worship.

Article IX

EDUCATION

Section 8

Prohibition of public aid for religious purposes and institutions.

Section 8. Neither the general assembly, nor any county, city, town, township, school district or other municipal corporation, shall ever make an appropriation or pay from any public fund whatever, anything in aid of any religious creed, church or sectarian purpose, or to help to support or sustain any private or public school, academy, seminary, college, university, or other institution of learning controlled by any religious creed, church or sectarian denomination whatever; nor shall any grant or donation of personal property or real estate ever be made by the state, or any county, city, town, or other municipal corporation, for any religious creed, church, or sectarian purpose whatever.

Evidently not.

Lucille van Pelt. Charle Brown. Football.

This has got to be a joke, right?:

Washington (CNN) — President Barack Obama told GOP leaders behind closed doors Tuesday that he had failed to reach across party lines enough during his first two years in office, a senior administration official told CNN….

That’s why Senator Mitch McConnell (r) said this, right?:

….the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president….

Uh, President Obama, you’re not supposed to help them achieve that goal.

Steve McCroskey, where are you?:

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

Indeed.

We’ve had a lot fun with Claire McCaskill’s Twitter feed (just scroll down the page for any number of posts on the subject), but on the whole I think it’s a good thing. When we mock a McCaskill tweet, we’re mocking what she is saying, not the fact that she’s writing it in a format of 140 characters or less. And truthfully, I’ve found out more in a series of tweets from McCaskill about what she thinks on a subject than I have from whole newspaper articles about her.

Which brings me to a couple of posts from St. Louisans Shamed Dogan and Steve Patterson. Shamed Dogan is a Republican activist and apparent Twitter disciple, while Steve is a progressive blogger and urban advocate. Both of them miss the mark on Twitter

http://www.urbanreviewstl.com/…

http://shamed.blogspot.com/200…