Will Akin stay or go?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Especially financial sense, since they probably will face difficulty in terms of getting a pay check from his campaign.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

We are at the height of the scandal right now and I guess Akin will recover from this blunder if he stays in the race (which I find the most likely scenario). Akin's favorability ratings are probably going to improve if he manages to lead a flawless campaign in the next weeks while McCaskill's numbers are unlikely to change much. So Akin still has a good chance to win this race.

What makes you think that he possess the ability to run such a campaign? When he was third in the polls and way back from Steelman, his entire campaign was essentially based around him getting headlines for making one stupid statement after another to bring attention to himself. Worse still, he didn't even really win the primary by any particular action that he took, but instead won it as a result of the actions taken by Steelman, Brunner and McCaskil.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

After all, due to McCaskill's unpopularity in Missouri, Akin just has to be perceived as a more or less acceptable alternative, he doesn't need to be loved by everyone.

Rape isn't something taken lightly over here. When your party is already involved in a War on Women, and you start trying to tell these women that they were not legitimately raped, you wouldn't be able to overcome that, especially against a female opponent. We've seen the GOP lose races because of this as recently as 2010 in Colorado.

Or at the very least successfully push people over the theshold of convincing them that such is really the case when it is not. Either way, the result is the same and the idiot in question loses.