Stopping the New Todd Akins – NationalJournal.com

MARIETTA, Ga.—The most dangerous man in Republican politics also has one of its loudest voices. Paul Broun had walked into the middle of the chandelier-adorned ballroom, forgoing the microphone used by other candidates who spoke on this Saturday morning. The congressman was addressing the Georgia Federation of Republican Women at a luxury hotel an hour north of Atlanta, the kind of gathering serious candidates for the Peach State’s open Senate seat must attend.

And Broun is a serious candidate—to the deep anxiety of nearly every Republican leader from Atlanta to Washington. His voice boomed as he delivered his four-minute stump speech, arms raised as he swiveled side-to-side to address an audience of mostly older women. The deeply religious politician was not unlike a preacher addressing his congregation.

“There’s four questions I ask about all legislation,” bellowed Broun, dressed in a tie-less black suit and, at 67, still possessing a full head of white hair. His checklist: Does the country need it; can the country afford it; does it square with the Constitution’s original intent?

And there is one more thing: “Does it fit with the Judeo-Christian biblical principles that the nation was founded upon?”

Broun didn’t elaborate. But he didn’t have to. For many Republicans, it’s all the reminder they need about why he can’t be the party’s nominee. Last year, Broun called the Big Bang theory and evolution “lies from the pit of hell.” The remarks, caught on videotape during a speech at a local church, have defined him as one of Congress’s most controversial lawmakers. And they were hardly the only incendiary comment from a man who once compared President Obama to Adolf Hitler, before Obama even took office. (He later apologized.)

On this October morning, Broun kept his speech anodyne, vowing to ease the country’s debt burden and make life better for future generations.

But establishment Republicans—or whatever you want to call the collection of strategists, donors, and leaders who value retaking the Senate above all else—aren’t forgetting what lies beneath. Because they know two things about Georgia’s Senate race: Paul Broun can win the party’s nomination, and if he does, the GOP will be saddled with its next Todd Akin.

Everybody remembers Akin, most of all Republicans running campaigns last year. The congressman’s gasp-inducing suggestion that women, despite all scientific evidence to the contrary, could prevent themselves from becoming pregnant after rape, cost the party a winnable Senate seat in a red state. But the damage reverberated far beyond Missouri—his comments became a cinder block tied to the ankles of Republican candidates across the country.

The party can’t bear a repeat, not while facing its last best shot at taking the Senate from Democrats. And not while it tries to rehabilitate its image before the 2016 presidential election, a contest Republicans are desperate to win. So GOP leaders are vowing to step in. And they’re not only training their sights on Georgia. Just as Akin wasn’t the only ham-handed GOP nominee —think Richard Mourdock in Indiana and Christine O’Donnell in Delaware—Republicans nationwide are on a search-and-destroy mission for candidates they fear could embarrass the party.

Party operatives describe the looming battle as an effort that will look less like an all-out assault and more like a series of stealthy precision strikes, because everyone involved acknowledges that any attempt to meddle in a GOP primary is fraught with risk. Rank-and-file conservatives, the kind who pick primary winners, don’t like being told what to do.

But no matter what that strategy looks like, the ensuing intraparty showdowns will determine more than the shape of next year’s midterm elections. Republicans will remember 2014 as either the moment GOP elders regained control of a party that had slipped from their grasp, or the one that saw hard-liners finish a coup six years in the making. When the results come in, everyone will know who’s running the Republican Party.

via Stopping the New Todd Akins – NationalJournal.com.