Election 2012: Do Crazy Rape Comments Really Matter?

Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock.Chris Bergin/Chicago Tribune/Zuma Press

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


This election season has seen many ill-advised statements about rape and abortion from white, male, Republican candidates who have had exactly zero experience with either. We’ve already covered many of those statements, but what’s most interesting is how they’ve affected the candidates who made them.

Take, for example, Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin (R-Mo.). He had a solid lead on incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill from March to mid-August, when he stated his belief that women have magical rapist-sperm-killing abilities. His polls numbers took a nose-dive after that, as it appeared that voters in the state were going to “shut that whole thing down.”

But polls in the past few weeks show that the race might end up being a whole lot closer. McCaskill is still projected to pull out a win, but not by nearly the margin anyone would have predicted two months ago. (Since the remark, reporters have also tracked down police reports indicating that Akin was arrested eight times in the 1980s for protesting outside abortion clinics.)

Meanwhile, over in Indiana, Senate candidate Richard Mourdock drew similar outrage after he stated in an October 23 debate that “even if life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that is something that God intended to happen.” Mourdock beat long-serving Sen. Dick Lugar in the Republican primary last May, and was expected to defeat Democrat Joe Donnelly on Tuesday. But his poll numbers have dropped since the rape remark (and Democratic efforts to capitalize on them), and it seems pretty clear that the comment had a significant impact on the state’s voters. Now pollsters are predicting a Democratic win in Indiana.

The lesson here seems to be that if you’re a Republican male politician from the Midwest, you should keep your insensitive rape comments to yourself. Or, perhaps, just make them far enough before the election so that voters can start to forget about it before they go vote.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate