Has One CNN Commentator Lost His Fucking Mind Over Akin?:
While other Republicans were throwing Senate candidate Todd Akin under the bus for revealing a bit too clearly what the GOP actually believes about abortion rights for rape victims, some on the right were there to offer a comforting nipple for Akin to suckle at. CNN contributor and Redstate blogger Erick "Erick" Erickson practically ripped off his shirt and yelled to Akin, "Nurse at these man-boobs, misunderstood sir."

There's a couple of camps of Akin apologists: the "let's move on, nothing to see here" camp and the moral equivalency camp. Erickson is firmly in the latter, and his blog post yesterday was the kind of straw-grasping you see an especially desperate defense attorney take in the trial of his serial disemboweler client. "Well, he may have ripped out his victims' intestines and swung them around like lassos, but, really, is that so bad compared to the Holocaust?" he might say. Or perhaps "Yes, but the prosecutor once jaywalked."

See, however smugly doughy he might look on CNN, Erickson allows his freak flag to fly proudly in Redstate. How does he defend Akin? By bringing up a widely discredited allegation about President Obama: "The people horrid (sic) by Todd Akin’s remarks are, I’m sure, thrilled to have a President who defended infanticide...President Obama was the only member of the Illinois State Senate to speak in favor of the position that a child who survives an abortion and fully exits the womb can still be killed by the abortionist."

And that'd be awful if it was true, and Erickson can take quotes out of context all he wants and condemn Politifact, but, fuck him, it's not true.

Erickson concludes, having compared Akin's "legitimate rape" remark to Biden's "chains," with this bit of despairing: "The media barely spent any time on the shooter at the Family Research Council. I bet they’ll spent a whole lot more time on this than either the FRC shooting or even Ted Kennedy killing Mary Joe." The Rude Pundit has to admit that he doesn't get the right's obsession, even postmortem, with Chappaquiddick. It's as if Ted Kennedy's auto accident is the most important event of the last fifty years. And if that's all you've got to give as an example of liberal hypocrisy or whatever, then you've got a pretty empty quiver there.

And as for the shooting at the FRC, well, sorry, but we had already had two shooting sprees with multiple victims in the two weeks before. How much coverage did the Wisconsin Sikh shooting get compared with the Colorado one? Tell you what: you give us that that was racist, we'll give you that the FRC coverage was liberal bias. But what the fuck does this have to do with Akin? It's like comparing apples and ducks.

See, Erickson and others on the right are shit-scared right now, which is pretty much what he said today in asking Akin to heroically put his country ahead of himself and step down. (Dude, he's a Republican. Did you really think he'd act honorably?)

They're scared because Akin opened the door for a discussion of abortion rights and the GOP's attitude towards women, especially as it affects a certain running mate. Oh, how they wanted to concentrate on the economy and ignore shit like the Republican campaign platform that takes Akin and Paul Ryan's pre-VP selection stance, calling for a ban on all abortions with no rape exception.

That part doesn't actually bother Erickson. Writes this CNN contributor, who is given a nationally televised platform on a regular basis, "Congressman Akin said something dumb and inarticulate. But God bless him for trying to explain why so many Christians do not believe in an exception for rape and believe that to have one could see an increase in the number of claims of rape that are not actual rapes ('legitimate' rapes in his words), but are claims of rape used to justify an abortion when abortion is otherwise prohibited." Are clinics overrun with false rape charges in order to secure free abortions? Is this a thing? No, it's hysteria replacing reason.

So, yes, God bless Todd Akin. He did speak the truth. Now let's see where that argument gets the GOP.