There is a subset of conservatives who find some kind of a badge of honor by supporting the worst pro life candidates they can possiby find, as if they get extra credit for standing up for certain issues when the candidate is embarrassing. And as a bonus, they get to sit on their high horse and claim that everyone opposing their awful candidate is part of the RINO Rove establishment pro abort underground.
Then there are others who simply look at issue surveys and act like support for the right issues is all that matters, and they never consider that other factors are also important.
I would invite both groups to open their minds and consider that there are good candidates who also believe the right things and will vote the right way....and it is actually NOT a badge of honor to throw in with a loser just because he/she has the right beliefs. The right beliefs are not that rare.
Analogy: When Obama indicated that he was going to roll back Reagans work as the goal of his presidency, I agreed with Obama - he is indeed focused on Reagan. When Rove said Akin was a problem, I agreed with Rove. Now I may never agree with either man again, and I certainly don't agree with how they want to proceed from here. But within the narrow confines of what they said, I agree.
Rove did not destroy Akin’s campaign, Akin did. This is a conservative country, but many women and many suburban conservatives are only softly so. Given a choice, they will vote for the conservative, but if they perceive that candidate to be too dumb or too radical, they can be easily manipulated by the media to vote for the “mainstream” Democrat.
This was Akin’s problem. My son and daughter in law voted for Akin and I would have as well had I lived in Missouri. But, their Kansas City professional conservative friends did not. The guys who do elections for a living understood that Akin was a dead man walking the minute his comments were aired. Unfortunately, some folks with their own very narrow agenda understood how to feed Akin’s ego and were able to convince him to stay in the race. Those people claim to be conservatives, but they are not interested in advancing a national conservative political agenda, they are only interested in advancing their own personal power agenda and wrap themselves in conservative robes to do it.
I wonder how Akin’s conservative voting record is going to help us in the Senate the next two years? Conservative candidates who can’t win are worse than useless.