September 28, 2012

Quote of the Day: Todd Akin Is a Cult Leader

 

Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin is under fire this week for saying his Democratic opponent, Sen. Claire McCaskill, is not “ladylike,” for comparing children’s health insurance to the Titanic, and for alleging that the National Defense Authorization Act legalizes bestiality. So, kind of a typical week for him.

But this, from Akin’s pollster Kellyanne Conway in an interview with the Family Research Council, may just take the cake. In attempting to explain Akin’s resilience, Conway pulls up an odd analogy: the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian cult compound in Waco, Texas:

I’ve expressed this to Todd as my client for a while now, I’ve expressed it to him directly—the first day or two where it was like the Waco with David Koresh situation where they’re trying to smoke him out with the SWAT teams and the helicopters and the bad Nancy Sinatra records. Then here comes day two and you realize the guy’s not coming out of the bunker. Listen, Todd has shown his principle to the voters.

Sure, Todd Akin is a crazy cult leader. But he’s our crazy cult leader.

(h/t Right Wing Watch)

 

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We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

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