Mitt Romney Pleases the Crowd.

Sisyphus must return to his rock, so this place will be a lot quieter in coming weeks.

In the meantime, the more I think about the Todd Akin matter, specifically the Republican response to it, the more pissed...sorry, the more irritated, annoyed, angry, irate and furious I become. What was the man's great sin? Was it that he used "legitimate" as an adjective for rape? Was it that he is stupid about female biology?

Only for a few minutes. How long did it take the Romney campaign to assert, not that Mr. Akin's words were poorly chosen, not that he might need educating about the effects of violence on a woman's ability to conceive, but that his opposition to aborting a baby consequent to its conception by rape was not one shared by Mr. Romney himself? It took less than one day for Mr. Romney to agree with the liberals screaming "extremist!" that the real issue was the rape exception, and nothing but the Republican nutcase rape exception.

(If you want to watch a liberal of the rabid sort trying to take advantage of this, watch this video starring Lawrence O'Donnell of msnbc.}

So rather than have the courage to upbraid Akin for speaking stupidly, he instead undercut Akin's fundamental moral opposition to killing babies, an opposition shared by millions in the prolife base. Worse, he, Romney (of the abortion 'epiphany'), apparently sincerely believes that killing babies conceived by rape is a good thing. Why else would he support it? Babies conceived by rape must be different than other babies. Less human, less innocent, what? What is it, Mr. Romney, that makes them different such that you would set aside what you claim on your campaign website, that "taking innocent human life is always wrong"? (I also heard on the news today that he has refined his position still further, now extending his approval to those cases in which the mental or physical health or the very life of the mother might be threatened. If anyone could check this out, I'd appreciate it. That 'health' exception is quite murderous.)

The real abortion extremist is not Todd Akin but Barack Obama, as Rich Lowry reminds us at Politico. At Mark Levin's website you can listen to Obama arguing before the Illinois state senate in 2002 against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, which would have required doctors to administer aid to the tiny survivors of abortion in the event, says Obama, that the child was "just not coming out limp and dead." I'll warn you that it's painful to listen to, not just because of the subject matter but because you'll find out what an inarticulate bozo sounds like when he's trying to rationalize the unforgiveable. The quoted print accompanying the video leaves out all the 'uhs' and 'and-uhs,' but it might do people some good to find out just what a dismal mediocrity this man is.

But that's only what I've always known. As for the Republicans, I think George Neumayer said it pretty well:

Beneath all the hysterical extrapolations from his remark, which grew wilder and wilder as the days passed, lay that essential demand: approve of killing unborn children conceived under circumstances of rape or be deemed "anti-woman."

This culture of hectoring explains why Mitt Romney rushed to the cameras upon hearing Akin's remark to pronounce abortion in those cases "appropriate." In a rotten culture, proof of one's "civilized" bona fides comes from such shameless pandering.

An authentically conservative party would find Romney's unprincipled position far more chilling than Akin's gaffe. If unborn children gain or lose their right to life depending upon the circumstances of their conception, then the party has already conceded that that right doesn't exist...A party less cowed by political correctness and less in thrall to conventional wisdom wouldn't have cannibalized its own so quickly...Making a bad situation worse, party bosses joined the media mob in brutalizing Aiken not for any high crime but for a single dumb remark. The same country club Republicans who rallied around Arnold Schwarzenegger after he was credibly accused of assaulting women demanded that the Missouri congressman leave the race immediately for a mere comment. If social conservatives had any doubt as to their disposable status in the party -- which they shouldn't , since they have been treated like fodder for years -- they can add the hair-trigger purging of Akin to their list of complaints.

In Romney's GOP, moderates can make any number of mistakes (starting at the top of the ticket) but conservatives are called to perfection. Should they fail, GOP officials will waste no time sacrificing them to the gods of political correctness.

Think about it. With his now fully revealed (I presume) and rather expansive stance on abortion, in his agreement with the liberal scream machine that Todd Akin is an extremist, Romney is saying the same of you and me, and of his running mate, Paul Ryan. We're nutcases. We don't care about the pain and anguish of a rape victim. We want to punish her by forcing her to have a baby that will remind her every day of the circumstances of its conception. Mr. Romney must be saying that there is something terribly cruel about pro-lifers who care more about the life of this little lump of something in the womb than about a real live walking around human woman. And yet he calls himself pro-life too.

What I'd like to say to him would consign his fate to the netherworld, but I'm not supposed to do that. Let's just say that some epiphanies are less thorough than others, and that if he's pro-life, I'm something else. I'm sure he and his liberal allies can find a good name to call me.