Want to really insult a Republican politician in Mississippi? Tell him he sounds like former Missouri Representative Todd Akin.
A super-PAC supporting Senator Thad Cochran's reelection bid in Mississippi launched a new mailer comparing challenger and state Senator Chris McDaniel's comments about boobies, slavery and the word "mamacita" to the bizarre "legitimate rape" comment that lost Akin a spot in the Senate.
See also: Todd Akin Has the Inside Scoop: Women Can't Get Pregnant from 'Legitimate Rape'
"Why does the Wall Street Journal compare Chris McDaniel to Missouri's Todd Akin?" the mailers ask, according to The Hill politics blog. When Mississippi residents open the mailer, a 35-second clip plays of McDaniel joking that the Spanish word "mamacita" really means, "You're a fine looking young thing," as well as his thoughts on a 2006 gubernatorial candidate's "boobies."
"It's so interesting to see this woman basically using her boobies to -- I shouldn't have said that -- using her breasts to run for office," McDaniel says about Loretta Nall, a write-in candidate who made cleavage a focus of her campaign. "And if that is not the most typical libertarian platform, I have no idea what is. The only thing that could make the campaign more libertarian is a heroin needle in her arm."
Listen to it here:
McDaniel, a former radio-show host with a flare for the provocative, encouraged listeners to emigrate to Mexico if the U.S. government ever ordered taxpayers to pay reparations to the descendants of slaves.
"If they pass reparations, and my taxes are going up, I ain't paying taxes," he says. But if he's moving to Mexico, McDaniel needs to learn a few key Spanish phrases, he says. He lands on "mamacita" as a good translation for "sister," adding that, "Mamacita works....I'm an English-speaking Anglo. I have no idea what it means, actually, but I've said it a few times, just for, you know, fun. And I think it basically means, 'Hey, hot mama.' Or, you know, 'You're a fine-looking young thing.'"
And there's plenty more where that comes from. McDaniel also wonders why Hollywood doesn't cast more Muslims as villains, calls waterboarding "a fairly humane form of torture" and calls Democrats "the party of sex on demand, the party that supports the homosexual agenda," according to The Hill.
See also: Karl Rove's 2012 Campaign Strategy: Kill Todd Akin
McDaniel's press officer released this official response to the media:
"The liberal press clearly loves to attack conservatives of all types. When Chris got into this race he knew they would throw mud, so it's no surprise they'd dredge up decade-old comments made on conservative talk radio. Chris will continue to deliver his conservative message of controlling government spending, lowering taxes and repealing Obamacare across the state."
While McDaniel's comments seem ignorant and purposefully shocking, Daily RFT has to say that nothing compares to designating only some rapes as "legitimate," as Missouri's own Akin did. After all, Akin's complete lack of understanding about the human reproductive process and about violence against women allowed the Riverfront Times to put this glorious image on our cover:
So nice try, Mississippi, but our crazies are still the craziest.
Follow Lindsay Toler on Twitter at @StLouisLindsay. E-mail the author at [email protected].
