Honestly, what is the problem with rape and Republican candidates this year? First, Rep. Todd Akin loses a lock on a Senate seat by holding forth on “legitimate rape” and how women possess some magic ability to prevent pregnancies by rapists. Now, Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock (who defeated respected Senator Richard Lugar) has proclaimed with only a few weeks to go in the election that the impregnation of women in rape is part of God’s plan. What happened to the good old day when GOP candidates primarily followed a formula campaign based on lower taxes and longer criminal sentences?
Mourdock was asked in the final minutes of his debate with his opponent Joe Donnelly about abortions in cases of rape and proclaimed that when a woman is impregnated during a rape, it is all part of God’s plan — a type of divine family plan via sexual assault. Mourdock proclaimed: “I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that’s something God intended to happen.”
Donnelly promptly after the debate took the position that such pregnancies through rape are not part of what “my God, or any God, would intend that to happen.” Mourdock soon realized that he had pulled an Akin and may have aborted his campaign. He clarified that he did not believe God intended the rape: “Are you trying to suggest somehow that God preordained rape, no I don’t think that. Anyone who would suggest that is just sick and twisted. No, that’s not even close to what I said.” Really? Here is what you said: “I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that’s something God intended to happen.” Sounds a lot like God intended the rape victim to get pregnant. The best that Mourdock could claim is that God did not intend for the rape to occur, but, once it did, decided that it was important for the woman to become pregnant by her rapist.
I am also unclear on why God preordains the pregnancy but not the rape that caused it. This is often a matter of theological debate when people insist that prayer caused God to spare their lives in a tornado but that he decided not to spare the lives of their neighbors or their own home from the tornado. It is the tension that arises from a view that God controls all events as part of a divine plan as opposed to a divine plan that allows free will and/or fate to govern events.
Pat Robertson recently insisted that God does not send tornados but that victims would still have been spared if they prayed more:
However, Robertson does believe that God at times sends natural disasters to punish us as with Hurricane Katrina. That may reflect the more nuanced view of Mourdock that God may not have sent the rapist but did want you to become pregnant by your rapist. The question is whether, if God micromanages such events, did he intend GOP Senatorial campaigns to implode across the country?
Source: Big Story
Akin may be on to something. If a republican screws with your mind it shuts down and will not conceive a rational thought.
rcampbell:
part of the problem for people like me is economics. The democratic party is pretty good on civil liberties but not so good on economics [my view]. The republican party isnt so good on some civil liberties and is just marginally better than democrats on economics [again my view].
I believe that the phrase: “pull an Akin” ought to be part of our lexicon on this blog. It should be used in these instances when “went in dumb, come out dumb too” characters run for office and then Pontificate on issues concerning pregnancy and women’s rights to their own privacy and bodies. Especially when the dumbschmuck (that is one word) invokes God. If they dont invoke God it can still be “an Akin”. What do you all think?
“This is often a matter of theological debate when people insist that prayer caused God to spare their lives in a tornado but that he decided not to spare the lives of their neighbors or their own home from the tornado. ”
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Giving rise to the even more thorny theological question: What if God decides it’s time for my seatmate on the 747 to meet his maker as we’re flying over Dubuque and he’s in perfect health?
Not sure even 20 novenas is going to help me.
Ah, those angels on the head of a pin.
Bron
“…People like this guy really ought to start their own party …”
I dare say they did. They began with infecting the GOP in the 1980s with the Moral Majority and the GOP sold their soul for votes. Then they started the teabagger party and ultimately they took over the GOP. These guys and their views ARE the Republican Party now. It would appear at this point that peoeple who used to indentify with the old Republican Party have three choices. They can either join the now more moderate, less Progressive (to the chagrin of some of us) Democratic Party which is much closer to the old East Coast GOP thinking, form a new party or overtly reject these John Birchers and their religion-based fringe as not in line with American views.
It is increasingly clear that elections are about what the government wants, not what the citizenry wants.
Expect more of the same only in larger doses.
Elaine says, “This is not the Republican party that I recall from my earlier years.”
That Eisenhower would be ashamed is without question. The GOP of today is so chock full o’ extremists and nutbags, it’d even embarrass Nixon and was a criminal. I really feel sorry for moderate and centrist conservatives. Liberals at least have a totally corrupt and spineless option that doesn’t represent them in the DNC. The rational conservatives don’t even have that pretense of representation any more.
Ah. more of those good ol’ GOP family values. Everything is God’s will you see … everything that is, except the election of Barack Obama.
Richard Mourdock, misogynist
Pregnancy after rape is what “God intended,” says the Indiana Republican, showing the real right-to-life movement
By Irin Carmon
10/23/12
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/24/richard_mourdock_misogynist/
Excerpt:
Dear everyone asking what it is about Republican candidates and their clumsy talk about rape: This is a feature, not a bug.
The latest entrant into the Republican rape insensitivity bake-off is Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, who said tonight that “even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” He, of course, joins fellow Senate candidate Todd Akin, with his now-canonical “legitimate rape” comment, and Rep. Joe Walsh, running for election in Illinois, who claimed there was no reason a woman would ever need an abortion to save her life or preserve her health. The trailblazer was tea party candidate Sharron Angle, who failed to unseat Harry Reid in Nevada two years ago, and famously said that if a hypothetical teenager was raped and impregnated by her father, it was an opportunity to turn “a lemon situation into lemonade.”
Here’s why this is happening: The newer crop of Republican candidates and elected officials, are, more often than not, straight from the base. They’re less polished than their predecessors; they’re more ideologically pure. As a result, they’ve accidentally been letting the mask slip and showing what’s really at the core of the right-to-life movement.
For years, the movement has fought plausible charges that it is anti-woman by repackaging its abortion restrictions, in Orwellian fashion, as protections for women. They’ve done it so successfully that until recently, when so many alleged “gaffes” went viral, no one really noticed. What is the so-called Women’s Health Defense Act? A proposed ban on abortion before viability. What are “informed consent” laws purporting to give women all the information they need before having abortions? Forced ultrasounds, transvaginal, and some of them involving the forced viewing of the ultrasound, at the woman’s expense, under the stated supposition that she has no idea what’s growing inside her unless someone makes her look. (Never mind that 60 percent of women who have abortions have already given birth at least once.)
Where does rape come into this? If you doubt that the abortion obsession in this country is about sex more than it is about “babies,” just look to all this agonized public parsing about “legitimate rape” and “forcible rape.” Americans are, at least in theory, sensitive to survivors of rape, whose bodies have been cruelly used against their will, and they see a forced pregnancy as further suffering. The corollary, of course, is that pregnancy is the just punishment for consensual sex, or, if you think an embryo or fetus is the same as a person, that rape justifies capital punishment. But most people don’t think in those consistent absolutes, which is the reason that the antiabortion movement has sometimes conceded to rape exceptions, as Mitt Romney has — they’re willing to suffer them, occasionally, as a sort of gateway drug towards stigmatizing and marginalizing all abortion.
Bron,
This is not the Republican party that I recall from my earlier years. What’s especially scary is that some of these candidates get elected to office.
Elaine:
not all of us would wear a pink hood nor arm ourselves with ultrasound probes.
Although I do not consider myself a republican any longer for that reason and others.
People like this guy really ought to start their own party or maybe he is just really stupid and didnt think about what he was saying. Stupid is less dangerous than actually believing God’s plan for a human being is to be raped.
I used to go to church with these people and they scare the hell out of me. These people are front pants zipper taliban.
Evidently, Mourdock is only talking about women who haven’t been “legitimately” raped.
Elaine, et al,
We can only hope the electorate exorcises them with their votes.
Will Rogers never met these guys or he would have to change his mind.
What next–a posse of Republican Congressman wearing pink hoods and armed with ultrasound wands running around the country terrifying women?
*****
Justice Holmes,
It is truly sad that fellows like this aren’t considered demented fringe elements in their party these days. Even their vice presidential candidate cosponsored personhood, ultrasound, and “Let Women Die” legislation.
While some people see no difference between our two major political parties–I certainly do,
*****
AY,
These guys need more than help. They need an exorcism!
So, Mr. Mourdock, does God get off watching the rape happen? Certainly He sees everything and since he intended for the rape to happen, thats much more than just idly sitting by and letting it happen, do you suppose He actually enjoys the show?
Was He getting His kicks when my SO was jumped, stabbed in the neck for refusing to cooperate, raped & left for dead as she bled out? You sick f*k.
These guys need help…. Soon, I hope…. Maybe after wall street raped America everything else is fair game….. Like a kid in a candy store, a hillbilly with moonshine…or a meth head without a lighter…..
“I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that’s something God intended to happen.”
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“I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that’s something that some twisted #sshole pretending to be God intended to happen.”
G*d
“I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that’s something God intended to happen.”
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“I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that’s something that some twisted asshole pretending to be God intended to happen.”
G*d
Indiana, Indiana, Indiana:
Where did you get this guy and how did you dumb RepubliCons nominate him to be on the ticket?
It used to be that people who said things like this were considered sad demented fringe elements who needed help but now they are the standard bearers of the Republican Party. Any women who votes for a Republican needs her head examined but won’t be able to afford it because she probably doesn’t have health care but then I guess that is God’s plan too.