http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=8AB28190-7E7D-43B2-8508-A6DC4C331AD8 Rush Limbaugh: I could have made Todd Akin quit
By: Kevin Robillard
August 22, 2012 03:12 PM EDT
Rush Limbaugh said Wednesday that he had the power to convince Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) to quit his Senate race.
“If I had demanded Akin drop out, he’d be gone,” he said. “If I had demanded that Akin quit the campaign, he’d be gone.”
Limbaugh was mocking media reports that claimed he had called on Akin, who is under fire for comments about abortion and rape, to drop his bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill. While Limbaugh did not go that far, he did hope Akin would make the “right decision” and step aside.
“I’m a guy on the radio. Who am I to tell this man what to do?” Limbaugh said on Tuesday, according to the transcript.
Limbaugh, a Missouri native, was skeptical of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s calls for a third-party candidacy in the state.
“A lot of people think Todd Akin is being mistreated, and a lot of people have decided they want to stand by him and that everybody else should, too,” he said, adding that a third-party candidacy could “hand it to McCaskill. I think she could still lose, big. McCaskill is unpopular on her own in Missouri. She’s unpopular even if she were to be unopposed. I won’t go so far as to say that unopposed would beat McCaskill, but it’d be close.”
Limbaugh encouraged Republicans to embrace their party’s position on abortion, arguing Democratic support for partial-birth and taxpayer-funded abortions is more extreme than Republican opposition to exceptions for rape, incest or the mother’s life.
“Their convention is gonna be the pro-abortion convention,” Limbaugh said. “They’re gonna end up celebrating abortion at their convention.”
Half of all Americans identify as “pro-life,” and 41 percent identify as “pro choice,” according to a Gallup poll from earlier this year. But 77 percent of Americans want abortion to be legal at least under ‘certain’ circumstances.”
Limbaugh also suggested how the GOP could turn the tables in the “war on women.”
“You could have a Republican theme night: war on women,” Limbaugh said. “You could have women on the stage like Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, Monica Lewinsky, Kathleen Willey, Elizabeth Gracen, Juanita Broaddrick, Sally Perdue, all of the women Democrats have abused.”
All of the women listed by Limbaugh have claimed that they were sexually assaulted by, or had an affair with, former President Bill Clinton.
Clinton is delivering the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention.
