So how extreme is David Barton? Here’s the religious right’s favorite phony historian (dark coat, red shirt) standing this week in support of Republican Senate nominee Todd Akin of Missouri, more than a month after Akin made his outrageous statement suggesting that only some rapes are legitimate. Barton, who heads the Texas-based organization WallBuilders, joined Phyllis Schlafly and other religious-right leaders at the event.
Barton endorsed Akin in this YouTube video posted in early August.
That video was posted before Akin’s “legitimate rape” statement, but Barton has actually tried to excuse Akin since then, calling the statement simply a “misstep”:
“(L)et’s not get distracted with this because what happened is liberals in the Republican party and liberals in Democrat party [sic] would love for people to focus on that misstep that Todd said and that way they don’t have to talk about the contrast between him and his opponent, Claire McCaskill.”
For Barton, a former vice chair of the Texas Republican Party, politics trumps decency.
