Free Republic

Given what's come out of the mouth of Rep. Todd Akin (R) in the last couple months, casual observers might assume he no longer stands a chance anymore to oust incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) from her Missouri Senate seat. They would be wrong. A poll released by We Ask America on Oct. 2 shows McCaskill had a lead of less than a percentage point over Akin, 46 to 45.2; that's less than the margin of error, with 8.8 percent of voters undecided

Conservative commentator Mike Huckabee tells Newsmax.TV that Republicans who abandoned Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin following his controversial remarks about rape should “repent.” Huckabee, who was one of the first prominent conservatives to voice his support for Akin hopes that fellow conservatives will “repent of their sins and will get back and help Todd Akin” before it’s too late. “It’s interesting that he is, in some polls, leading and some he’s just barely behind within the margin of error and they’ve abandoned him,” said Huckabee on Wednesday. “They’ve got other Senate candidates that they’re pouring vast amounts of resources in...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill took aim Wednesday at Republican challenger Todd Akin with a new series of TV ads featuring rape survivors outraged by Akin's remark about "legitimate rape" and his opposition to emergency contraception. The three separate ads feature individual testimonials from three women who said they were raped, including one who describes herself as a "pro-life" Republican and another self-described "pro-life mother" who calls herself a "woman of faith."

The Democrats are in a full on freak out over Ohio. Harry Reid is giving his Super PAC $250,000.00 to run ads attacking Josh Mandel. ... Senator Bennet of Colorado is sending out emails to his supporters with the subject line “Buckeye for a day.” ... This isn’t just to help Bennett. This is to help Barack Obama too. The Democrats are going all in there. Consider, in contrast, Missouri, where the GOP has totally bailed on Todd Akin and the Presidential race in Missouri likewise went from a sure thing for Romney to now a borderline toss up. The...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — For establishment Republicans, it is decision time in the Missouri Senate race. Should they return to Representative Todd Akin’s corner? Many quickly withdrew their support for Mr. Akin weeks ago after his controversial comments about abortion and belief that victims of “legitimate rape” have a biological mechanism to fight off pregnancy, hoping to force him aside so another Republican candidate could battle the Democratic incumbent, Senator Claire McCaskill. But Mr. Akin called their bluff. He stayed in the race, reckoning that election math would oblige them to stick with him. Now, with Mr. Akin’s name legally...

Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin on Thursday released a decade's worth of federal financial reports he has updated with nearly $130,000 in state pension income that he received, but failed to disclose, over that time.

Just sent 50 bucks to Todd Akin. I think he can win this thing!! If he gets in he won't owe the Republican establishment SQUAT! I don't have a lot of money but if it means repealing Obamacare then 50 bucks doesn't sound like a whole lot after all.

Missouri Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin, thrown under the bus by Karl Rove and the Washington GOP establishment for his "legitimate rape" comment, is making a strong comeback in the polls and is now better-liked than incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill. Five weeks after making the comments that at the time seemed career-ending, Rasmussen Reports has Akin six points behind McCaskill, 51 percent to 45 percent. That result shows an improvement over past polls, some that had him behind by 10 points. And among those "certain to vote," he trails McCaskill by just four points, said Rasmussen. More surprising is that...

Missouri Senate Polls -- first poll : Akin +4, second poll McCaskill +1

One of the tragedies of the Obama Administration is the historic political accident that it had 60 Senate Democratic votes in 2009. The ability to break a filibuster without Republican votes empowered the left to think it could pass anything, and so it steamrolled ahead with ObamaCare, which needed every one of those 60 votes to pass. Now a couple of those Senators are expressing regrets about those votes after the fact. In our pages last week, former Indiana Democrat Evan Bayh rehearsed the looming economic damage from ObamaCare's medical-device tax. He described, as some of us predicted in 2009...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Republican challenger Todd Akin went on the offensive against Sen. Claire McCaskill in Missouri's Senate race on Monday, claiming that her husband's businesses profited from a federal stimulus act provision that helped finance low-income housing. Akin began running a TV ad claiming "the stimulus made McCaskill rich." In an interview with The Associated Press, Akin said the 2009 stimulus law funded a federal program for low-income housing that directed about $1 million to corporations affiliated with McCaskill's husband. He stopped short of accusing McCaskill of a conflict of interest, but he suggested she knew of...

— U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin released a new television ad over the weekend accusing incumbent Democrat Claire Mccaskill of getting “rich” off of the 2009 stimulus program. “Ever wonder why Claire McCaskill called the stimulus bill ‘wildly successful’,” the commercial asked. “Well now we know. The stimulus made McCaskill rich. More than $1 million paid to partnerships owned by McCaskill’s family.” The ad specifically points to $787,581 in stimulus funding directed to pay off debt within the Department of Housing Development’s Section 8 housing assistance program, which helps low-income renters afford housing. HUD chose to use its portion of...

Two of Mitt Romney's senior advisers say they are backing Todd Akin, the Missouri Republican Senate candidate they once shunned.

[Snip] Meanwhile, McCaskill has tried to make Missourians aware of her moderate stance. Most people wouldn’t brag about being ranked No. 50 for anything, but she has. She’s parlayed that number as proof that she’s truly a political moderate in her quest for reelection. The number comes from the National Journal’s annual lists ranking U.S. Senators from most liberal to most conservative and vice versa, based on their voting records. McCaskill has always fallen in the middle 10; this year she’s at No. 50 on the liberal list and No. 51 for conservatives. Her rankings have been consistent, too: Every...

Kit Bond -- a former governor, senator and decades-long fixture in Missouri Republican politics -- will endorse Todd Akin's Senate bid Friday, according to an Akin campaign source. Bond's official backing of the embattled candidate could signal to the state’s GOP establishment that it's time to get behind the challenger’s effort to unseat Sen. Claire McCaskill now that that the deadline for him to withdraw from the race has passed. Last month, Bond was at the forefront of a failed effort to persuade Akin to drop out after the Republican nominee made a controversial claim, for which he later apologized,...

Todd Akin is coming out with a new ad, aggressively going after Sen. Claire McCaskill for getting rich from the president's 2009 stimulus plan. The ad, shared early with POLITICO, comes amid a flurry of new activity as Republicans decide whether to support Akin now that there's no question that he'll stay in the Missouri Senate race. "Ever wonder why Claire McCaskill called the stimulus bill 'wildly successful'? The stimulus that didn't create jobs, that cost us billions. Well, now we know: The stimulus made McCaskill rich," the ad starts, adding that the stimulus sent more than $1 million to...

A French proverb declares: “What is hard to endure is sweet to recall.” I seldom agree with the French, but, as a former professional boxer, I know this to be true. In 2003 I was fighting Cuban heavyweight Roberto Valdez before thousands at Chicago’s UIC Pavilion. Valdez was big, strong and mean. I was told that, a few years earlier, he had traversed shark-infested waters, alone, on a rickety makeshift raft to enjoy freedom in the land of the free. This, of course, is the very land Barack Obama seeks to “fundamentally transform.” The American vision he shares with many...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — A conservative fundraising group endorsed embattled Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin on Thursday and said its membership had pledged $290,000 to help replenish the Republican's financially strapped campaign against Democratic U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill.

Yesterday, the National Republican Senatorial Committee announced in a statement that it might yet fund the candidacy of Representative Todd Akin as he tries to unseat Senator Claire McCaskill in Missouri. “As with every Republican Senate candidate, we hope Todd Akin wins in November and we will continue to monitor this race closely in the days ahead,” said NRSC executive director Rob Jesner. (In August, the NRSC claimed that “if [Akin] continues with this misguided campaign, it will be without the support and resources of the NRSC.”) Will the NRSC actually go through with this, and thus likely bring American...

Tuesday, September 25, was the last day U.S. Senate Candidate Todd Akin (R-MO) could withdraw from the race. And he isn't going. So the GOP standard-bearer is Todd Akin; he needs our help, and we need to support him. Yes, he made a stupid remark, and as a result, what should have been an easy Senate win turned into a hotly contested race. He apologized profusely, but rather than come to his aid, Republicans of every stripe denounced him and called for his resignation. This is idiotic.**snip So while we are twisting in the wind over a single dumb comment,...