Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” co-host Martha Raddatz moderated a heated political roundtable discussion between Matthew Dowd, Ana Navarro, David Plouffe and Kristen Soltis Anderson.
Republican strategist Ana Navarro opened the discussion on the 2014 midterm primaries this week which saw Republican establishment candidates beating Tea Party candidates. She said, “I think it has been a painful growing process. But this has been a very good week for the Republican Party, because we are bringing candidates out of the primaries that are actually electable. The Democrats are going to have to have a much tougher time that are not Todd Akins.”
The Todd Akins reference was from Akins 2012 U.S. Senate campaign in Missouri. He made controversial comments claiming that victims of “legitimate rape” rarely get pregnant. Akin was quickly denounced and abandon by the GOP and then presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
Matthew Dowd, the chief strategist for the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004, argued that the Tea Party has actually now merged into the mainstream Republican Party. Navarro fire back and said, “For a very long time, the mainstream Republicans just sat there and took the pummeling. What we saw this week, they woke up finally and they fought back and when they fought back they won. OK?”
Former Obama senior advisor David Plouffe took on the Akins mention and retorted, “I don’t get the celebration … they’re not witches and defenders of rape.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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