When word got out that a group of freshman Republican Congressmen, on what looked like a fact-finding tour of Israel with some of their staff, paused with the affairs of state long enough to imbibe a considerable amount of alcohol and jump into the Sea of Galilee, one without his clothes, as the saying goes: It all hit the fan.
They were excoriated in the press, had their hands smacked by the Republican leadership and were subjected to Democratic snickering. Further, I know they will be subjected to some very bad jokes by the Democrats for as long as this incident has legs. They also received some major harrumphing from some of their constituents, and in the end decided to fess up and just say: “We were stupid and we’re sorry, and we won’t do it again.”
I visualize them sitting around after the story broke in Politico and trying to decide how to handle it and what to say. I’m sure someone suggested they say they were just carried away by religious fervor and it was all just a mass baptism. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, and probably pointed out that that would never fly. So, they did what politicians hate to do, which is tell the truth with a minimum of spin and just say, “sorry.”
I, for one, was really relieved when the story broke. It wasn’t just that these were young Republicans doing something silly, because generally speaking, incidents like this have long been the purview of my own Democratic party. I was relieved, because some of these guys seemed so straight that I often thought they slept in their suits and ties. Now they had suddenly shown another side, and I thought to myself, you can do business with these guys.
The guys who really scare me are guys like Missouri congressman Todd Akin, now running for the U.S. Senate in Missouri, who seems to be an entirely different species. Anyone who talks as he did about “legitimate rape,” hitting a hot button that resonated across the country, enraging many—particularly women—poses a major political problem for the Republican party, which already has a growing gender gap.
The entire GOP jumped on Akin to get him to quit, but as of this writing he didn’t appear to be getting out, and seems to be a guy who thinks he’s on a mission for God. Now, even Romney has asked him to quit, which sort of surprised me a bit. If they keep pounding on him, people are going to start feeling sorry for Akin and reasoning that while he may be an idiot, at least he’s a principled idiot, making it seem like the rest of the party—including their standard bearer Romney—is just overreacting, like Akin is claiming.
Akin could be a time bomb for them. If they cut off his money and support, all he has to do is hold a press conference, point to Romney and say, “I’m worried because I’m a life-long Republican (which I assume he is) and our standard bearer Romney seems to jump whichever way the wind is blowing at that moment. Presidents often don’t get to choose issues, history chooses the issues for them and it requires a steady hand and careful judgment and not panic with every shift in the wind.”
Well, I’m sure you all get the idea. This guy could be very dangerous for the Republican Party and the Romney campaign. It remains to be seen how they put the maximum amount of space between the campaign and Akin and how badly the Missouri polls show the damage to Akin to be.
P.S. In a new poll, the reputation of the Congress hit a new, all-time historic low, and the poll was taken before the incident in the Galilee. Isn’t that special?