It wasn’t that Todd Akin was such a bad guy so much as the fact that he had chronic foot in mouth disease.
Here was my take on Akin: he was NOT tea party guy...he’d been in the House for six years, or six terms, not sure which - meaning he was damned near part of the establishment. He was self serving, paying his entire family out of campaign funds, and he was too arrogant and ignorant to know exactly what Claire dear is admitting to...she created Akin so she could beat him, because she knew that Bruner or Steelman would rock her clock in the general.
Akin only glommed onto the tea party thing AFTER the primary when both many in the TP and the GOP - e said NO to him. It was a rare case when the estabs were correct....only they didn’t want to claim him as one of their own, which he was.