Missouri Loves Company, or Akin for a Win

These are Republicans: white, badly coiffed, men

Today's post is brought to you by the Bad Puns Division of Distasteful Inelegance.  We mostly keep them locked away in a soundproof chamber, but every once in a while one of the Pad Puns Specialists sneaks out and whispers several particularly odious puns over the PA system here at DI World Headquarters.  We are particularly susceptible to the harmful effects of earworms after the Autumnal Equinox, so unfortunately we couldn't keep them out of this post today.  We apologize, and assure you we will be more vigilant against the evils of bad pun-ditry in the future.
On to today's topic...

Since we have stopped wondering who will be the next President of the United States, we have started thinking about what will happen in the second Obama Administration.  [A series of post on this topic are in the works.  Oh, and sorry for not editing out all the bad puns today.  We are tired after a long weekend of bacchanalia. -ed.] A lot of the way the next four years will play out has to do with which party controls the Senate.  As recently as August, the smart money was on a switch in Senate majority.  Now, however, it is looking far more likely as not that the Fightin' Donkeys will retain their slight majority in that body.

The thought of the Democrats holding the Senate seemed like a fantasy earlier this year, but as President Obama has built momentum this summer he has carried along the prospects of his fellow Dems in Congressional races.  This has put ever increasing pressure on the Republicans to claw back any competitive Senate race possible in order to regain control of both houses of Congress and ratchet up their game of keep-away with the President's policy agenda.

Now, with precious little time left to reverse the trend, we are seeing signs that that Akin fellow in Missouri isn't quite so radioactive to Conservative backers anymore.  It's a telling moment for the Republican brand when they can reverse themselves thusly on Akin and come to his aid with little apology.   We might ask ourselves, as a nation, whether we can countenance a party that would even want to win a Senate seat, regardless of its importance, by these means let alone be represented by such a person.  Unless this is just a public acknowledgment by Conservatives that they are just going to punt the female vote from now on, which is even worse than impugning 47% of you since women are more than half the population.

Just as we noted earlier, Republicans are shuffling along to their own irrelevance.

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