Yesterday, Todd Akin insisted that he is not into trying to play the victim…he just wants to make it clear that the “jerks” in the media “assassinated” him during his campaign for the U.S. Senate. Akin, who has been promoting his new book by explaining that he was the target of an evil conspiracy to censor and destroy him because of his patriotic and Christian values, appeared on Tuesday’s “The Steve Deace Show” to retell the tale.
Seeing that Akin has been trotting out the usual right-wing talking points about persecution from the media and the left, we thought Deace was being ironic when he said during the interview: “We’re conservatives here, so we’re not into victimology.”
“Right,” Akin replied … before blaming his notorious remark about “legitimate rape” and women’s bodies on “gotcha questions” and a left-wing media plot to “victimize any Republican they could.”
Akin, still insisting that he is not into victimology, went on to allege that the politicians who called on him to drop out of the race “basically threatened me” and painted himself as the victim of a media “assassination.”
“The media wants to roll another Republican and do this assassination thing, but when is someone just going to stand up to these jerks and tell them what they are and say they are manipulating the news for their own agenda,” he said.
The interview also veered into the realm of absurdity when Akin insisted that he is actually a very “electable” candidate because he consistently won re-election to the U.S. House and described Republicans as “stupid” for thinking that right-wing candidates can’t win elections.
“That was the only race I’ve ever lost,” he said of his landslide defeat in 2012.
Akin did in fact win successfully win re-election in his congressional district. Of course, the Missouri congressional district he represented is not exactly a swing district representative of the rest of the country, as it is heavily Republican and 90.5 percent white.
