Did John Kasich just accuse the Pope of "pantheism"?

You might think so if you read the headline and the partial transcription at Real Clear Politics, but I've watched the video and did my own transcription:

"I read a great book on St. Francis of Assisi, who the Pope... models himself after. The environment was given to us by the Lord, and it needs to be taken care of. And it shouldn't be worshiped, that is called pantheism. So, I think the Pope pointing out the fact that we need to take care of the environment is good. I don't agree with his conclusion that all of it is bad because of free enterprise, because it's lifted people out of poverty, and he cares about the poor, and so do I. But, I mean, a nice warning to people about the environment. In my state, we've reduced emissions by 30% over the last 10 years. We want to develop renewable. So, I have no problem. If the Pope wants to talk about pollution and how we need to be conscious of it, good for him."

And after a question about legislation, Kasich indicated he didn't know what the Pope's legislative agenda is and: "Let's not get carried away... I think what he was trying to say is we care about the environment, and I agree with him."

Reading the presentation at Real Clear Politics, Meade said "I think the Republicans have their new Todd Akin" — that is, a dumb guy who will emit sound bites that will get a lot of attention and embroil other Republicans in distracting discussions that will tarnish them all. I was going to frame this post around that idea. But Kasich did not accuse the Pope of pantheism, nor did he equate environmentalism with pantheism. He didn't even distance himself from environmentalism.

But "pantheism" is a powerfully distracting word, and it would be helpful to Democrats to exploit whatever they can find to make Republicans seem to have some weird notion that environmentalism is religious heresy.

ADDED: You know, Kasich is a little blabby and he may be kind of dumb. I'd advise him to think about what he wants to say before he just starts riffing. Have a point and get to it. He was asked a question about whether environmentalism is a moral issue, and he began soberly telling us about his readings on theology. He may believe he's the thoughtful, educated man in the GOP group. That's a huge vulnerability! Remember, Todd Akin seemed to think he was lecturing us on science.....

Priebus on the "biologically stupid things" Republicans said.

"If you go around and you say a lot of biologically stupid things and you poison the well and you create a caricature or you allow a caricature to become reality, you’re not going to win an election."

"We need a third party to save this country. Not Ron Paul and the Ron Paulites. No."

"We need a legitimate third party to challenge the current system that we have, because I don’t believe that the Republican Party... has the ability to rebrand itself."

Said Herman Cain, who would like the GOP to rebrand itself in the opposite way from what I'd like.

I voted for Romney even though I reject the package of issues that comes marked with the label "social conservative," Cain's favorite material. One reason I felt calm and distanced from the results of the election in less than 24 hours is that I only wanted about half of what Mitt Romney was offering, and I agree with Obama on the other half. Making the best of what happened is, for me, automatic. I support gay rights and abortion rights, to name the 2 most prominent social issues in this year's elections.

The linked article — at Salon — is a bit confusing, especially the last paragraph:

After the GOP’s crushing 2008 loss, there was lots of talk about a new third party. When the Tea Party emerged, this talk almost became a reality. Instead, the conservative activists opted for a hostile takeover of the GOP. It’s still very unlikely that Cain or anyone else could start a viable third party, but his comments underscore the cleavage within the conservative movement in the wake of the defeat last night.

I thought the Tea Party was about the economic issues — taxing and spending. Do the social issues belong in the Tea Party? Well, apparently they've seeped in. Were Todd "legitimate rape" Akin and Richard "something God intended" Mourdock Tea Party? I didn't buy the "War on Women" demagoguery, but those guys made the GOP look really awful — at least old-fashioned and dumb if not deeply sexist or scarily religionist.

Can we get a GOP with sound economics and a commitment to individual liberty?

McCaskill 48%, Akin 38%.

Rasmussen, today.

“Why does Ann Coulter call Todd Akin ‘a selfish swine?’”

Asked Lawrence O’Donnell (who, strangely, looks almost exactly like Todd Akin).

“Because Todd Akin’s bat-crap crazy ideas on rape are going to make it so much harder for [R]epublicans to win control of the Senate. Right now, Democrats hold 51 Senate seats, Republicans 47, independents 2. Republicans would need to pick up four seats to gain control of the Senate. They would need only three seats if Mitt Romney actually won the election, because then the vice president, Paul Ryan, would be able to cast a tie-breaking votes.”

But according to Coulter, O’Donnell['s] failure to invite her to appear on his show makes him “a complete pussy”....

The link goes to The Daily Caller (which badly needs proofreading — I had to fix 2 things in this short cut-and-paste). The main reason I'm linking to this item is that the picture of O'Donnell looks so much like Akin.

I looked for a picture of Akin to make my point and got distracted by — speaking of "a complete pussy" — this.

ADDED: Selfish swine or kind toad?

"Democratic Convention To Become Celebration of Abortion Rights."

Notes Instapundit, who says:

[B]oth pro- and anti-abortion groups are focusing on the “legitimate rape” part because it distracts from the very issue Akin himself was trying to hide from: What about pregnancy that results from rape. Akin doesn’t want to confront that this happens, which is why he put forth his dumb rape-doesn’t-cause-pregnancy theory. Pro-choicers, for the most part, don’t want to confront that an abortion that happens after a rape is still just as much an abortion as one that happens because nobody bothered with birth control.

I think both sides should own it. Stand in your truth and be straightforward about what you really believe. 

Rush Limbaugh had a similar theme on his show today:

Sarah Palin wants Akin out.

"... Palin championed Sarah Steelman, who was her choice for the ticket in Missouri’s bloody Republican primary, and added that if Akin doesn’t drop out by the end of September, 'it’s going to be a third party then.'"

AND: This, from Bill Kristol:

Now is the time for kind, unassuming—and private—persuasion by conservatives, by pro-life and pro-marriage advocates, by serious people who've worked with Akin and by his fellow Missourians. I have reason to believe that's now beginning to happen behind the scenes. And I suspect that by the Democratic convention, by Labor Day, Akin will have stepped aside. 

Big UK lefty George Galloway fired for saying something about rape.

There's Todd Akin over there on the right, but the left is screwing up over rape too:

Mandy Rhodes, the editor of Holyrood, said the Respect party MP's remarks that Assange was guilty of just "bad manners" by failing to ask permission to have sex with a sleeping woman, had left her "frankly gobsmacked".

See? Galloway thought the incident was outside of the category that Todd Akin would label "legitimate rape" (and, to drag in another lefty, Whoopi Goldberg would call "rape rape").

[Rhodes] said it was impossible for [Galloway] to continue his column following his remark that having sex with a sleeping woman was "not rape as anyone with any sense can possibly recognise it" if she had already had sex with that man.

"There is no excuse, ever, for sex without consent, and regardless of the details of the Assange case, Galloway's comments and inappropriate language about rape per se are alarming," Rhodes said in a statement on the magazine's website....

God disapproves of Republicans.

Suggests Dana Milbank noting the following trinity of occurrences:

●A report comes out that a couple dozen House Republicans engaged in an alcohol-induced frolic, in one case nude, in the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus is believed to have walked on water, calmed the storm and, nearby, turned water into wine and performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes.

●Rep. Todd Akin, Missouri’s Republican nominee for Senate, suggests there is such a thing as “legitimate rape” and purports that women’s bodies have mysterious ways to repel the seed of rapists. He spends the next 48 hours rejecting GOP leaders’ demands that he quit the race.

●Weather forecasts show that a storm, likely to grow into Hurricane Isaac, may be chugging toward . . . Tampa, where Republicans will open their quadrennial nominating convention on Monday.

If these 3 things belong in a set, I'd say it's a set of things that Democrats and their allied media have gotten excited about pumping up beyond any meaning. Dragging God into the mix is just part of that. Now, I suspect that Todd Akin himself believes that God has sent him this tribulation to overcome, and that's why he's got the spirit to defy the worldly establishment Republicans for the salvation of millions of innocent unborns.

But the other 2 things are the essence of stupid. It's stupid to push them as significant issues, and bringing in God is close to flaunting that you think God is some kind of joke — as fictional as the humanity social conservatives attribute to an embryo.



If God controls the weather, let's not worry about global warming. Or are you going to say He controls the weather but not the climate? We're talking omnipotence, or do you think that's some kind of joke?

But this skinny dipping story... what the hell? Hell, I say. Swimming naked has been the normal way to go swimming since forever. I'm virtually certain Jesus and his disciples swam naked in the Sea of Galilee. God sends us into the world naked. The unborn — are they human? — float naked in the waters of the womb. Is there something wrong with nakedness that the Democrats would like to make a big deal about? Some Republicans were unholy in the Holy Land?

Explain your theory/theology and why it's consistent with American principles of keeping religion and politics separate. (You define your concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life, and I'll define mine. That's liberty for you.)

***

The hurricane that approaches is named Isaac, which makes me think of Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited" (a song he played at the concerts we just saw in Missoula and Fargo):

Oh God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”
Abe says, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”
God say, “No.” Abe say, “What?”
God say, “You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin’ you better run”
Well Abe says, “Where do you want this killin’ done?”
God says, “Out on Highway 61”

Driving somewhere between Fargo and Madison the other day, Meade asked me what's Bob Dylan's greatest line. I said "The next time you see me comin’ you better run."

If you really believed in God, you'd be careful how you used his name. You'd be afraid. Dylan's Abraham, told to kill Isaac, said: Man, you must be puttin’ me on... Do you think God is joking?

Do you think He's some kind of joke?

"Representative Todd Akin said definitively on Tuesday that he would not leave the race for the Senate in Missouri..."

"... saying on Mike Huckabee’s radio show that 'there’s a cause here' and that an outpouring of grass-roots support would propel him to victory without the support of the Republican establishment."

"We’re created by God for some special purpose," Mr. Akin told Mr. Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas.

If God is for us, who can be against us?

The first link goes to the NYT, which has that as its top story on the front page. And right under it is: "G.O.P. Approves Strict Anti-Abortion Language in Party Platform."

"I'm Todd Akin... Rape is an evil act. I used the wrong words in the wrong way and for that I apologize."

Can you find it in your heart to forgive him? If you forgive him, should you say, nevertheless: Get out, you're hurting your party right now, and it's a big distraction? It's a wrong irreparable in a short time span. Now, you've got until 5 p.m. to get out of the race.

It's like some cowboy movie: You've got until sundown to get out of Dodge.



Now, I think Akin should drop out. It's not fair for him to hold the spotlight, and he's hurt his entire party. From the party's point of view, every day that's about him — and the war-on-women topic rape — is a day that not about the economy and what Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan might do to save us from the depredations of the Democrats.

And yet... would the Democrats oust one of their own because he said one thing wrong? The GOP got played into destroying George Allen over the inane word "macaca." Democrats have their ways of disparaging Republicans for being racist/sexist/homophobe/whatever. It's not like they're going to stop. Each time they take a guy out it creates incentive to take another guy out. We can ruin X, like we ruined Allen and Akin.... It's a fun game... for them.

If Akin steps down, will takedowns like this continue?
	Yes, which is why he should stand his ground.
	Yes, but this one's too important, and he should step down.
	No, this is an unusual incident, not part of a series.
	No, the Democrats don't play the game Althouse describes in the post.
pollcode.com free polls

Should Todd "legitimate rape" Akin step aside?

The editors of the Nation Review Online say he should:

While Akin is a stalwart conservative and an honorable man, we regret to say that he inspires no such confidence. That is one reason why Senator Claire McCaskill, the sitting Democratic senator, boosted him during the Republican primaries with ads calling him a “true conservative.” She knew that she is the weakest Senate incumbent on the ballot this year and that her only hope was to draw a weak opponent. Akin won a three-way primary with a plurality of the vote; there was no run-off. McCaskill’s strategy is now paying off.

Akin has backed off from his remarks, albeit with the politician’s excuse of “misspeaking.” People who make such remarks on television are typically capable of making more like them, or rather incapable of exercising the judgment to refrain. We suspect that this same lack of judgment will cause Akin to blow past tomorrow evening’s deadline for him to leave the race and allow the Republicans to select a better nominee. We hope the congressman, who surely wants to see a Senate with as much conservative strength as possible next year, will prove us wrong.

Akin should...
	Step aside right now.
	Stand his ground.
pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: "National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (R-Tex.) informed Rep. Todd Akin on Monday that the national GOP will not spend money to help elect him to the Senate...."

AND: Hannity, talking to Akin, essentially tells him to get out:

I think there is one political reality that I think has to be faced by you and your campaign and that is that you know, the reality here is that Democrats now have a ton of ammunition and they are now going to try to use these remarks to hurt everybody they can. And if I was put in that position, I would at least be thinking about what is in the best interest of the party. hat is in the best interest of, you know, Mitt Romney in this case. What is in the best interest of the people of Missouri, are they going to be able to hear a campaign about issues or is this going to be the distraction of the campaign. Are you -- you're not even considering that?"

Krauthammer says Akin must leave:

"He's got to leave... He's toxic. Nobody will touch him. Republicans aren't going to support him. He's not going to get any money. They've tossed away a seat that they could easily have won. It isn't only that it was offensive and toxic; it was unbelievably stupid. And there is enough stupidity in Congress that we don't need to add to it in this large amount. The guy's got to leave."

It was sharp of Republicans to drop Akin cold. No one thought he was worth defending.