Whether for good or ill, Todd Akin is staying in the Missouri Senate race.
Now the GOP is in a complicated pickle. Having said publicly that they will stop funding Akin’s campaign, if they keep their word then Akin will have virtually no cash to run on for the next 2 ½ months. (He’s one of the worst personal fundraisers in US politics—even if some diehards cough up more cash than they otherwise would have, his campaign is going to be running on fumes.) But if the RNC stays away from Akin, this still leaves Karl Rove, even though he too publicly said he will pull the plug on all further funding for Akin’s Senate bid. Of course Rove could always change his mind and pump money to Akin after all, and lie his head off about it afterward (what’s one more lie in a pile exceeding ten million?) But if neither the open GOP money nor the covert GOP money is made available to Akin, that means the GOP is tacitly endorsing Claire McCaskill in the race.
Oh, the horror…
Another possibility is that the GOP party can officially kick Akin out of his candidacy, and run someone else in his place, whereupon Akin can cobble together a write-in or Independent candidacy, turning the contest into a bound-to-be-amusing three-legged race.
Whatever happens, I foresee tears ahead for the Missouri GOP. (Tears, as in the Biblical “weeping and gnashing of teeth”.)