Those Conservatives Who Put Winning Second

One person on Twitter reduced the fatal statement of Todd Atkin about rape, pregnancy and abortion to this observation: "Conservatives don't really help themselves when they attack their own.” Why yes, that's what this is all about.

How about conservatives who are terminally stupid and wield campaigns of utter incompetence but whose self-promoted high moral courage is more often spoken about than lived?

Todd Atkin, winner of the Missouri republican primary, challenger of Claire McCaskill, essentially said that if raped women have a biological function that is triggered to prevent pregnancy. Does the reader have any idea what it's like to have typed that sentence as a conservative?

If he hadn't missed a one-shot groveling apology with which he could truly abase himself, Atkin could have gone to ground, quietly raised money, shared his psychiatric records with potential donors, and have been rolled out in late September or early October for a decent win. Claire McCaskill is the electoral opposite of Amy Klobuchar. This seat is one of four US Senate seats needed to retake the majority by republicans. Everything that could go amiss, did.

First, Todd Atkin won the primary. In this, MO resembled MN in offering up its weakest candidate because oh look, over there, purity. See how it shines, my precious?

Next, Atkin gave an interview in which, somehow, he said what is summarized above. Baffling, to be honest. How does one invoke the abortion topic in such a profoundly ignorant manner?

Realizing the mistake if not its enormity, Atkin's issued a weird, non-apology apology, both underlining his original misstep while apparently trying to repudiate it. When conservatives have a hard time discerning what a conservative is saying, rest assured the media will run even more riot with it than is their usual shameful custom.

Sean Hannity, whom I find impossible to listen to, as opposed to Rush Limbaugh, fairly begged, from what I could read, Atkin to realize the gravity of his mistake and to leave the race. No he said, for reasons I've yet to grasp.

Then came the surreal news that this train wreck was going to appear tonight on Piers Morgan. More bafflement but by this time the temperature of conservatives on Twitter was quite high. Enough. This is the balance of the US Senate and we know full well what is in that balance. Must we nationally come down like the proverbial ton of bricks and change the state of affairs?

Yes.

Next, it was let be known that the hapless Atkin would not, after all, be appearing on Piers Morgan. The mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging conservative collective let out--what else?--a collective sigh. Alas, no taxpayer funded Heart of the Beast puppet masks were available to us in which we could celebrate. The oppression of The Man lay heavy on our hateful shoulders.

Morgan's producers, of course, were not about to let a good ratings thing get away and so they embodied the American national press by interviewing an empty chair. Who was dumber, we conservatives on Twitter wondered, Piers Morgan who personifies the louche state of American media, or the chair, who, with that lighting and all, did, one could say, have more dignity than Joe Biden?

I could, I must confess, see Don Shelby, our Ted Baxter, in that empty chair. Talk about meta. 

Previous to this money had been vanishing all day for Atkin. It's a very odd experience to see money for a campaign disappear like that on Twitter. Perhaps some dull witted but self-esteem heavy layabout could apply for a Minnesota Legacy Grant to explore that further someday.

The next act in the scene was out of Star Trek: he's dead, Jim.

It seemed too late in the news cycle, especially after the spectacular bungling all day long, for the Atkin campaign, if anything was left of it, to say it was over.

Would anyone in America not begrudge Todd Atkin the best sleep he is possible to manage? No. Then quit in the morning with our thanks that you will not be forgotten.

Amazingly, some "name" conservatives were wondering if sanity wasn't really a ruse for madness? Who knows, once you travel to the intersection of Crazy & Purity street? Atkin should stay; their tone-deafness making them all the more convinced. Comparisons were made with democrat scandals where the curr managed to survive. But this is like pointing to a cadaver and imploring him to realize others were not dead.

Erick Erickson. Dana Loesch. Both bemoaned wanting to win, which requires removing Atkin, with eviscerating conservative principles, which it manifestly does not.

Do they need to get out more? Leave the post-Breitbart (I die a bit every time I write that) cocoon and talk to others?

I don't know.