There's one criticism that Democrats often make of Republicans that I think is inarguably accurate. Democrats accuse Republican politicians of being out of touch, and they certainly seem to be, but the people they're most out of touch with are their own supporters.
Two recent episodes illustrate the point. The first was Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin's claim that raped women don't often conceive and that even if they do they shouldn't abort the baby. Republicans from Romney on down were incensed. Rather than pointing out the obvious that - setting aside Mr. Akin's questionable biological understandings - his views on abortion are those of most of the world's Catholics and Evangelicals and are certainly more defensible and less extreme than the view of Mr. Obama that a live-born infant should be allowed to die if the mother had tried to have it aborted, they instead unanimously called for Mr. Akin to disappear.
Yet, among Missouri voters Mr. Akin is still a popular alternative to incumbent Claire McCaskill, especially among Republicans, and polls show him recovering from the initial burst of bad publicity suffered for his unwise remark about how the female body responds to emotional trauma.
A second example was the reaction of the Republican elites to Clint Eastwood's presentation at the Republican convention last Thursday night. The party mucky-mucks were aghast at what seemed to be a rambling, somewhat off-color skewering of President Obama, but the folks on the floor and watching on television apparently loved it. You can watch it here if you wish.
Mike Huckabee has a particularly hard-hitting piece on the Akin affair here, and Jonah Goldberg at National Review has some interesting reflections on Clint Eastwood's boffo performance at the convention.
I wonder if we'll not soon see a lot of the party's big-wigs start moon-walking away from their earlier disavowals and condemnation of both Akin and Eastwood. The man who should be leading the backtrack pack is, as Huckabee points out, Karl Rove who has managed to become as unpopular among conservatives as he is among liberal Democrats.
