Republican Rep. Todd Akin decision to continue his campaign against Democratic incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill wasn’t well received by many on the right, and perhaps one of the most exasperated reactions came from conservative talker Mark Levin.
Levin, the author of “Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America,” wanted his listeners to realize that there was more at stake to the race than just Todd Akin.
“Now I want you to step back, which is hard to do with these emotional things — step back,” Levin said. “In any other walk of life, if you can excuse something that is really stupid and insensitive you’ll go ahead and do it. But if the future of your business is at stake, if the future of a military operation is at stake, if the future of your country is potentially at stake — you don’t take the risk. You just don’t because the country is too important. Your children and grandchildren are too important.”
“This isn’t about RINOs versus conservatives,” Levin continued. “This isn’t about pro-life versus pro-choice. This is about winning a seat in the United States Senate, where the nation is split almost 50/50 and we’re trying to take the Senate away from Harry Reid. We’re trying to take the presidency away from Barack Obama and we’re going in with a wounded candidate. [Akin] wounded himself. He shot himself in the foot. Now I wish he didn’t. He wishes he didn’t. He apologized. We accepted his apology, but what does that have to do with anything?”
In the end, Levin said that Akin would in time be forgotten even as the elections of 2012 never would.
“’I’m tired of Republicans buckling,’” Levin continued. “Well who’s buckling? We want to beat these people and drive them back into the sea. We want to take the Senate. We want to kick Harry Reid’s ass out of the Senate and Barack Obama out of the Oval Office, and in order to that you can’t have too many stupid mistakes. That’s the problem.
“Fifty years from now, no one will know who Todd Akin is, but they’ll know what happened in this election because the fate of the country rests on this election. The future — liberty of your children, grandchildren rests on this election. I don’t know who Todd Akin is. I’m sure he’s a very decent man who said a very stupid thing.”
