The Rob Zerban campaign (donate, at Actblue) has a great new short video with the title of my post: What is it with GOP men and rape ? It's not an expensively produced ad, but it gets the job done.
Three candidates - Richard Mourdock, Todd Akin, and Roger Rivard. The first two are running for U.S. Senate. All three have made disturbing statements about women and rape.
All three have been endorsed by Mitt Romney's vice presidential running mate Paul Ryan. Argues the Zerban video, Ryan endorsed these three candidates because he agrees with them.
As I wrote in an op-ed this afternoon, Mourdock Inflames The GOP's "Divine Rape" Problem
We've been here before - in 1990, Republican Clayton Williams, vying with for Ann Richards for the Texas governor's seat, erased his narrow lead and handed Richards the election by suggesting that women being raped should just "relax and enjoy it."
But the 2012 election has been especially notable for explosive Republican statements about rape, which might well determine which party will control the U.S. Senate on November 7th.
First, Missouri Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Todd Akin resurrected a 13th Century Medieval medical theory by claiming that women who were victims of "legitimate rape" (implying, of course, that some rape might be "legitimate") could shut down their own fertility, preventing conception. Akin's comments led to quick calls from top Republicans, such as vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, for him to pull out of the Missouri Senate race.
Akin's real crime, it seems, was in his bluntness, for stating directly what Ryan put much more obliquely, when he suggested in an interview that rape is another "method of conception". In Ryan's delicate way of putting it, the woman who had been raped was conveniently absent.
Now, Indiana Republican for U.S. Senate Richard Mourdock has further inflamed the controversy by stating, in a debate last night, that all pregnancies, even those conceived during rape, are a "gift from God".
It's the sort of thinking you'll find coming out of the militant wing of the anti-abortion movement (which Todd Akin was a foot-soldier in) and the Pro-Life movement, that's standing behind Richard Mourdock despite his statement on God and rape.
But if all pregnancies - even those caused by rape - are indeed a "gift from God", from there it's no great logical stretch to conclude that, in some way, God is "pro-rape".
Republicans in the Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock mold seem fatally attracted to this, like moths to a flame. They know they can't go there, not even close: ah, but they must.
In reality, Akin and Mourdock are stating, albeit clumsily, accepted Republican Party positions. That's the real scandal, argued CNN's John Avlon, in an August 21, 2012 op-ed:
"Akin was trying to articulate his opposition to abortion, even in cases of rape and incest. This is a position that vice presidential hopeful Paul Ryan -- primarily a courageous fiscal conservative -- has supported throughout his career, even penning a 1,500-word essay on the subject with the eye-opening title "The Cause of Life Can't Be Severed From the Cause of Freedom." "
Ryan's essay, which astutely noted that automobiles have no inherent rights because they are not human beings, claimed that liberals have the agenda of "reducing the number of human beings who can make choices" whereas conservatives "see human beings as assets, not liabilities"; the proper role of government, stated Ryan, is "to secure the right to life and the other human rights that follow from that primary right."
Ryan's upbeat essay, published in 2010 by the Heritage Foundation neatly skirted the public relations quagmire that the position life, according to divine will, begins at conception, opens up. Ryan knows where to stop short; Akin and Mourdock fell in.
In a way, Richard Mourdock went even further than Todd Akin, who referenced a medical theory that's obsolete by only six or seven centuries. Mourdock suggested that God micromanages the world so intensively that he "intends" every pregnancy which results from rape to happen - that's over 30,000 divine interventions per year, according to an estimate of the number of women who get raped and conceive annually in the U.S.
read the rest here