There’s no accounting for troglodytes.
Take Rep. Todd Akin, the dumb-as-dog-poo Missouri Republican hoping to eject Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill from the US Senate.
Akin was generally expected to do well against McCaskill, one of President Obama’s most vocal supporters.
Until Sunday.
That’s when Akin went on local TV and blew a .50-caliber hole in his foot — torching his own campaign and substantially diminishing Republican hopes of taking control of the Senate come November.
Asked about abortion — he opposes it, even for cases of rape — he said:
“From what I understand from doctors, [pregnancy from rape] is really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
Leaving aside what Akin considers “legitimate rape,” it’s hard to imagine real doctors saying any such thing.
If such conversations occurred, surely they were in the fever swamps of Todd Akin’s imagination.
Now, a lot of foolish things have been said — indeed, are said every day — about abortion. It’s one of the most emotionally freighted issues in American politics, and has been ever since the US Supreme Court summarily legalized the procedure in 1973.
In so doing, the court effectively choked off a political process that was moving — albeit slowly — toward an uneasy national consensus on the topic.
This had the unhappy side effect of leaving the field to charlatans and extremists — to folks like Akin, among many others.
Akin spent most of yesterday apologizing — and promising to stay in the race.
That would be unfortunate.
Virtually unrestricted abortion is the law of the land; no one should have any doubt that it will remain so.
But Akin’s bizarre observation has become a major distraction in a national political campaign of virtually unparalleled importance to the American people.
Even if he withdraws from the Missouri race — and the pressure for him to do so was enormous and growing yesterday — he has managed to poison the rhetorical well.
Certainly in that state.
And likely nationally to boot.
The economy? Unemployment? Obamacare? The Middle East?
Shouldn’t these topics trump the mutterings of a ridiculous Missouri congressman?
The next step is up to Akin.
There’s no doubt what it needs to be.