This, probably, isn’t what the Republican Party needed — especially the day after 138 House GOPers opposed the Violence Against Women Act, after months of reluctance among party leaders to bring the bill up for a vote.
Celeste Greig, the President of the California Republican Assembly — a volunteer organization that Ronald Reagan once called “the conscience of the Republican Party” — discussed Todd Akin’s infamous “shut that whole thing down” theory with a reporter on Friday [ht TPM]. And things were starting off, well, not catastrophically for her — about the best a Republican talking about rape can hope for.
“That was an insensitive remark,” Celeste Greig told the Daily Democrat on Friday. “I’m sure he regretted it. He should have come back and apologized.”
And then the train jumped the rails.
“Granted, the percentage of pregnancies due to rape is small because it’s an act of violence, because the body is traumatized. I don’t know what percentage of pregnancies are due to the violence of rape. Because of the trauma the body goes through, I don’t know what percentage of pregnancy results from the act.”
Astonishing.
