"Todd Akin makes Michele Bachmann look like a hippy."

This is how senator Claire McCaskill described her Republican challenger, the now infamous Todd Akin, yesterday on MSNBC's Morning Joe.

It was a clever sound bite, and let's face it, Akin has been, as comedian Kathy Griffin might say, "A gift from baby Jesus." His "gaffes" (read: rape apologia ) have now become the stuff of legends, and he's quickly becoming the public face of the Republican Party's extreme right wing. Now, in an interview the Kansas City Star, he's claiming that in last week's debate McCaskill's seemed "too aggressive," and unladylike:

"I think we have a very clear path to victory, and apparently Claire McCaskill thinks we do, too, because she was very aggressive at the debate, which was quite different than it was when she ran against Jim Talent," Akin said. "She had a confidence and was much more ladylike [in 2006], but in the debate on Friday she came out swinging, and I think that's because she feels threatened."

It's easy for outsiders to laugh this off as one wingnut who'd never be taken seriously enough by anyone, even the most right wing faction of the Republican party, to win an election, but I know this state too well, and it scares me that he might actually pull it off. It also bears repeating that these are not isolated incidents. Jill Filipovic in The Guardian says:

"Akin's problems aren't limited to his own backwards views on women, or even the repeated slip-ups that reveal the depth of those views. A look at his past comments and at his voting record shows that Akin fundamentally doesn't trust women, and he definitely doesn't trust rape victims. Akin doesn't just have a far-right anti-abortion voting record; he praises rightwing militias with ties to radical anti-abortion action. He opposed the creation of a sex offender registry. (Tracking rapists is too aggressive and unladylike, perhaps?) When voting for legislation that would have finally made it possible to prosecute husbands for raping their wives, Akin supported the bill but worried that the legislation might be used "in a real messy divorce as a tool and a legal weapon to beat up on the husband". He co-sponsored the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, which changed the definition of rape by specifying that government-sponsored healthcare dollars would only pay for abortion if a pregnancy was caused by "forcible" rape, instead of just regular old rape." 

 If there's anything good to come of this, at least we're talking about the legislation surround rape, abortion, or even what it means to call your competition "unladylike," but in 2012, we shouldn't have to revisit the same old battles we've been fighting for decades.