'I was validating the willful misinterpretation of what I had said,' Akin writes. Akin un-apologizes

Todd Akin takes it back.

He’s not sorry.


Two years after the Missouri Republican’s comments on rape, pregnancy and abortion doomed his campaign and fueled a “war on women” message that carried Democrats to victory in the Senate, one of the few regrets he mentions in a new book is the decision to air a campaign ad apologizing for his remarks.

“By asking the public at large for forgiveness,” Akin writes, “I was validating the willful misinterpretation of what I had said.”

( PHOTOS: 5 controversial Todd Akin quotes)

And when it comes to his infamous line about rape and pregnancy, that “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” he writes defiantly: “My comment about a woman’s body shutting the pregnancy down was directed to the impact of stress on fertilization. This is something fertility doctors debate and discuss,” Akin writes. “Doubt me? Google ‘stress and infertility,’ and you will find a library of research on the subject.”

“Firing Back: Taking on the Party Bosses and Media Elite to Protect Our Faith and Freedom” hits bookshelves July 15. An advance copy was provided to POLITICO by a source involved with the book.

Akin argues that he could have defeated Sen. Claire McCaskill in Missouri, despite his comments, if it weren’t for the piling on from both liberals and conservatives. He compares his situation sympathetically to that of George Allen, who lost a Senate race in Virginia after calling a liberal tracker a racial slur. And he accuses liberals of hypocrisy for asking Bill Clinton to headline the Democratic National Convention.

( From last year: Akin says he regrets rape comments)

The forward is written by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, but few other conservatives are likely to cheer Akin’s return to the national stage in the final months of a campaign season Republicans vowed would not be shaped by the mistakes of 2012, when comments about rape and women’s issues derailed their hopes of retaking the Senate.

Akin isn’t concerned. Here are some key takeaways from his book:

Defends comments on rape

Akin offers no apologies for his “legitimate rape” comment and blames liberal news media for how it was received. The liberal opposition research super PAC American Bridge dug up the video and sent it to Talking Points Memo, described as one of the “well-funded, left-leaning blogs.” Talking Points Memo posted the footage and started a firestorm.

Akin systematically defends every phrase in his response to whether abortion in the case of rape should be legal. “Taking my comments in order: When a woman claims to have been raped, the police determine if the evidence supports the legal definition of ‘rape.’ Is it a legitimate claim of rape or an excuse to avoid an unwanted pregnancy?”

( From the POLITICO archives: Akin: 'Legitimate rape' victims rarely get pregnant)

“My comment about a woman’s body shutting the pregnancy down was directed to the impact of stress on fertilization. This is something fertility doctors debate and discuss. Doubt me? Google ‘stress and infertility,’ and you will find a library of research on the subject.”

To further make his case, Akin says he was hesitant to appear on a local Fox show hosted by Charles Jaco, where he made those comments, because the “hard-bitten liberal” could make the interview a “high-risk venture.” The fact that Jaco didn’t immediately pounce on his comments was because he heard them “in context with the various qualifiers.”

Akin later says during his time as a state legislator, he wished he could have done more to “end this evil,” referring to abortion, which in his view “easily trumps slavery as the greatest moral evil in American history.”

As Akin makes the case that he has “zero sympathy” for anyone who commits rape, he tries to illustrate his commitment by pointing to President Bill Clinton. Akin writes that if he had been in Congress in 1998 he would have voted to impeach Clinton. The investigation started, according to Akin, with allegations of sexual assault of Paula Jones, which then led investigators to learn about his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky. The impeachment involved Lewinsky, not sexual assault.

Akin writes that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney should have defended him by using Clinton’s indiscretions and alleged comment that one woman “put some ice on that” just as Clinton was set to serve as a keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention. In 2012, Romney denounced Akin’s comments and urged him to drop out of the race.

What Akin believes Romney should have said when asked about the “legitimate rape” comments: “[Bill Clinton] is giving the keynote speech at the Democratic convention in two weeks, and you want me to denounce a decent, God-fearing man for his inelegant comments about rape? No, not happening, and if the truth hurts, put some ice on it.”

Attacks GOP establishment

There is no love lost between Akin and the GOP establishment.

The former lawmaker spends a fair amount of time cataloging who wronged him. Karl Rove gets plenty of ink for his comments at the Republican National Convention, where he joked to donors that “If [Akin’s] found mysteriously murdered, don’t look for my whereabouts!” Akin also dings former National Republican Senatorial Committee Executive Director Rob Jesmer in the book for allegedly pressuring a supporter to try and “persuade as many pastors as possible to sign a letter asking me to step down.”

Akin singles out Rove, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Whip John Cornyn, GOP Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Roy Blunt of Missouri, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and House Speaker John Boehner as the group of Beltway RINOs whose decisions are closely tied to which candidates are supported by Republican super PACs. Akin later calls McCain’s 2008 presidential bid a “futile effort” and describes the senator as “old, brittle, and internally angry.”

No politician frustrated Akin more than Blunt. While Blunt was “cool” to his candidacy in the GOP primary, Akin said the senator later came to embrace his run before deserting him. Akin writes that after he asked Blunt to continue supporting him, the senator not only wouldn’t stick by him, but took part in the national calls for him to quit the race.

“As I mentioned previously, Roy Blunt is good at politics and usually tries not to leave fingerprints on his handwork. This time he would leave a bloody war club with his fingerprints all over it,” Akin writes.

Akin focuses throughout the book on what he sees as the Republican establishment constantly abandoning the conservative wing of the party. “[W]e can sit on the bus (in the back!), but they don’t want us to drive the bus!,” Huckabee writes. He goes on to say that the GOP establishment “still bruised that they didn’t beat Todd in the primary, saw [the comments] as their opportunity to take him out and select someone more palatable to their tastes.”

Akin repeatedly writes that he stood up to the GOP establishment as member of the House and during his campaigns. “The Beltway Republicans hoped to remake me in their image. One place where they thought a makeover was most needed was my TV ad. In this ad, much to their consternation, the word God was mentioned, not just once but three times. They even proposed negotiating the mention of God down to once, but this, I told them, was not a subject for negotiation.”

Blames the liberal media

Akin largely blames the liberal media for using his comments on rape against him and points to examples that he believes show that the media hold Republicans to a different standard.

“I was the target of a media assassination. … So it really didn’t matter about what I said, or logic, or truth. I had mentioned ‘abortion’ and ‘rape.’ That was enough. It was simply an assassination.” He writes that it was hypocritical for the media and Democrats to use his comments as part of the “Republican war on women” narrative when two weeks later the Democratic Party cheered for Bill Clinton, “who was actually accused of sexual assault on multiple occasions,” at its convention.

In part, Akin uses the current political atmosphere and media to argue that trackers who follow candidates on the campaign trail are just looking for a candidate to slip up.

In that context, Akin defends former Virginia Gov. George Allen’s comments in 2006, when he called a tracker of Indian descent “macaca.” Allen would go on to lose to Democrat Jim Webb. The incident is even credited with dashing Allen’s national political ambitions.

“He could not possibly have known that, in the Portuguese language at least, the word means ‘monkey.’ Allen is not Portuguese … and neither was his opponent,” Akin writes.

In defending former President George W. Bush, Akin again points to the media, who along with the Democratic Party “had convinced themselves on the basis of some scattered bits of evidence that President Bush was an awkward bumbler not up to the task of leading the nation.”

He also says that the media — even Republican columnists like The New York Times’ David Brooks and The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan — essentially gave then-candidate Barack Obama a pass. “But other than Obama’s Senate record and his hard left background, the media and our Republican elite assured us there was nothing to worry about. … Unfortunately, by yelling, ‘Racism!’ every time anyone criticized the president’s policies, Obama’s fellow Democrats and their allies in the media have only aggravated racial tensions.”