The Akin fiasco was modern Republican egotism and political incompetence in a nutshell. To start with the primary: Steelman is a serial officeholder too scared to challenge the incumbent Democrat Nixon for governor, who ran basically because she thought it was her turn in the Senate. Brunner is a rich dude who enjoys buying things. Akin is an "evangelical" Christian who visits lots of different churches. Also there were various cranks.

If there were a core group of republican leaders in this state (rather than just a bunch of tired old emeriti angling for lobbyist gigs), they would have recognized that the evangelical vote was going to Akin. It's not as though he's an unknown quantity; he's been representing the same dozy safely-gerrymandered suburbs of St. Louis for decades. So they would know what a tool he is, and they would have known they had to get all the moderates voting for the same candidate in order not to be saddled with Akin in the general election.

Which, since they have no way of influencing Brunner, would mean that Steelman would have been urged to step aside. She could have stepped into some committee appointment, or kept lobbying, or whatever, but she would have been taken care of by the establishment. Next time around, it could have been her "turn" again.

Nothing like that occurred of course. Perhaps they thought McCaskill could have been beaten by anyone, and they wanted to prove it by nominating the dumbest guy they could find. If so they've been listening to Rush too much. McCaskill is not the pwog extremist they'd like to paint her as. As she bragged in her ads, she got the perfectly moderate score of "50" among Senators. If she had been running in 2010, Akin might have had a chance even with his rude comments, but in the quadrennial general election you can't just take the piss. Obama has coattails in St. Louis and Kansas City.

McCaskill isn't as dumb as we all thought either. She actually ran ads during the Republican primary supporting Akin as the "True Conservative Choice". She did so openly, and all the Bible-thumpers thought she was trying to trick them with reverse psychology. I guess her checkerboard has more dimensions than theirs.

And then within a week after the primary Akin spouted all that voodoo-illiterate-snake-handler let-me-tell-you-about-legitimate-rape nonsense. Why on earth is any Republican candidate ever allowed to answer a question about rape? Why do they ever utter anything besides "rape is terrible, and I'm against it 100%"? There are no upsides to answering that question!

At that point the national Republican machine noticed what a hash of things their chums in Missouri had made. I'm sure they tried to buy off Akin, much as the state folks should have tried to buy off Steelman earlier. In Akin's case, the offer would have had to have been much sweeter, not least because he's much less rational: a national post in a potential Romney administration plus the promise of really sweet lobby dollars for him (they could have hit up Brunner for some of this) while he stayed in the House and an office on K Street after he left it. I'm not sure if they didn't offer a big enough bribe, or if Akin was too dumb and prideful (pride is ever the evangelicals' favorite deadly sin) not to take it, but the deal didn't get done.

It didn't help that all the local Republican bigwigs, even those not up for reelection, immediately jumped on the airwaves to deplore Akin as soon as they possibly could. You can trick, buy, or even (rarely) reason with an evangelical, but you can't bully one. As soon as the rustics in the Ozarks heard that fancypants Danforth was trying to overrule the voters' choice for nominee, the phones in every political office in the state lit up. At that point it was too easy for Akin to fool himself. After all, he's a believer.

So, this is the Republican Party. I still vote for them occasionally, and if I lived in a Blue state I probably would do so more often. Mostly I'm really bummed Johnson only got 1% this time around.