ago, senator mcconnell says he s sure the apology is sincere but not sufficient. he wants to akin to step aside. they re going to put pressure on him until the 5:00 deadline central time comes along to get him to change his mind. my sense is he s not going to do this. congressman akin has to make the decision if he s going, he s going alone. it doesn t look like the national senate committee will fund money. it s a tough, tough campaign. krits, on the other other side is smiling and giggling no, he s not, actually. this is an awful discussion to have regarding this issue of rape. but let me bring this in, this point. i don t throw chris the softball. i ll ask you, chip i get a softball. i m excited about that. here s the deal, will this hurt the overall party, could this hurt governor romney and the party itself? because obviously these words
from mitch mcconnell are of concern for a reason. will this hurt your party in november? i think what we re doing is talking about it today and not talking about unemployment number or jobs, we re talking about rape. though it s a terrible thing to talk about it it s like one of the most i can t imagine anything worse for a woman than rape, that s what we re talking about and we re 80-something days away from the campaign. this doesn t help us as we go into our conventions next week. chris, i was going to ask you, does it help the democrats. obviously it does. senator boxer was on made the point of the legislation co-sponsored by the potential vp here, paul ryan, and his close association at least on that legislation with congressman akin. i mean, listen, it hurts the republicans because you have akin becoming a story, if he doesn t drop out, it s something that s going to literally hang around and haunt the republican party to the election, no question about that. especially w
in this regard. he hasn t mirrored the words of the outrageous statement by congressman akin, but on the issue that you ve identified, there are similarities and they have to live with that. one observation when mike huckabee s on the radioing talking about extraordinary people who have been born by virtue of a rape, that also tells you that the far right of the republican party is not going to wave the white flag on this exception being carved out for rape or incest. that s an issue that s going to live for the next couple of days going into tampa. that s not a good thing for the gop. your point, michael you have pat robertson, tony perkens, conservative leaders sticking with akin and now, in fact, tony perkins, we ll talk about late, has set his sights on senator scott brown, one of the first big name republicans to come out against akin. shaunna, i want to play governor romney s late est assertion.
quite some time in front of the white house press poll, all of a sudden pops in to talk about this subject among other things obviously, but, yeah, this was taking advantage of the political opportunity that s being handed to the campaign. joining me now, obama campaign national press secretary, ben la boat. thank you for your time. thanks for having me. your response to michael steele saying this was political theat, the president talked about syria, of course, this issue on congressman akin. well, this isn t theater. it s reaelt. take a look at the republican party platform of mitt romney s republican party. passed today, included a human life amendment that would ban abortion under all circumstances including in the form in the cases of rape. and incest. and could impact some forms of birth control. these were legislative initiatives that congressman ryan worked with congressman akin on while he was in congress. governor romney previously endorsed the personhood amendment.
believes in strongly. who is obviously on the presidential ticket as well. and romney s on record saying they re on the same page on almost every issue that would come up through the course of the campaign. i don t think it s a stretch to say that even though what paul akin said was beyond the pale as far as what romney or other, you know, establishment republicans think that a national political figure should be saying out loud, but it reflects what the political party does believe from a policy perspective. chip, let me bring you back in, so many have tied congressman ryan into this. joe scarborough took great issue, pointing out that ryan s never used the language that akin used in the interview on sunday with the notion of rape, but he did use this forcible rape language in legislation that they co-sponsored. john heilemann, i think, had interestingen sight. they co-sponsored legislation