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 after Akin’s controversial comments about “legitimate rape,” an NRSC aide told the Washington Post.
Akin had refused to withdraw his Senate campaign earlier Monday as Republicans, hoping to contain damage to the party brand, stampeded away from the staunch anti-abortion Senate candidate after he used the phrase “legitimate rape” in talking about abortion and pregnancy.
The six-term congressman is the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate. Akin was asked in an interview Sunday on St. Louis Fox Affiliate KTVI-TV if he would support abortions for women who have been raped. Akin said he opposes most abortions and that if a woman is raped, her body “has ways to shut that whole thing down” during what he called a “legitimate rape.”
The House member from Missouri apologized, calling his remarks “a very, very serious error.”
Earlier in the day, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney condemned Akin’s original remarks. “Congressman Akin’s comments on rape are insulting, inexcusable and, frankly, wrong,” Romney said in a phone interview with the National Review Online, the second time that he has addressed the issue. “Like millions of other Americans, we found them to be offensive.”
The GOP outside group American Crossroads and its affiliated nonprofit Crossroads GPS have also canceled a scheduled buy this week on Akin’s behalf, as first reported by Politico.
During his first news conference in several months, President Obama said Akin’s comments were offensive.
“Rape is rape, and the idea that we should be parsing and qualifying and slicing what types of rape we are talking about doesn’t make sense to the American people and certainly doesn’t make sense to me,” Obama said. “So what I think these comments do underscore is why we shouldn’t have a bunch of politicians, a majority of whom are men, making health-care decisions on behalf of women.”
Missouri’s Democratic governor Jay Nixon said Monday that he completely disagrees with Akin’s comments, which he called offensive and harmful. Nixon said in a written statement the comments were “inaccurate, wrong and remarkably out of touch with reality.”
Information from The Washington Post, The Associated Press, Politico.com, KTVI-TV, National Review Online contributed to this report.