I tend to not have a problem with party moderates, so long as they play nice and are moderate on things that don’t include fiscal responsibility. Now that you know my prerequisites, it won’t come as a surprise that I’m not a member of the John Danforth Fan Club. This is fine, as he’s not a member of the Let’s Retake The Senate club:

“I cannot support Todd Akin,” Danforth told reporters after a fundraising event for Missouri Attorney General candidate Ed Martin in Columbia. “The problem with Akin is he taints the party. That’s why I think it is important to disassociate the party with him.”

“He has become the type of somebody who has just been totally written off by women, and I think that’s the problem. The Republican Party has to stick with its basic points — the economy and the debt and the future of the country, and not get in these side issues and lop off large groups of the public,” Danforth said. “He’s become the model for doing that.”

Danforth said Akin is a “big minus” for the party and said he is “going to hurt people down ticket.”

Well as a conservative Christian, I’m so glad a former senator known as Missouri’s Rockefeller weighed in, a senator whose family-named center benefited from the stimulus, a senator who whole-heartedly supported the harvesting of embryos for their stems cells, a senator whose disdain for Christians laced his every remark on conservatives with bitterness.

After his tantrum over Dick Lugar’s loss (Danforth also loathes the tea party) he seethed to Think Progress:

“If Dick Lugar, having served five terms in the U.S. Senate and being the most respected person in the Senate and the leading authority on foreign policy, is seriously challenged by anybody in the Republican Party, we have gone so far overboard that we are beyond redemption.”

[…]

An effort by some, and apparently a large number, 60% in Indiana, to purge the Republican Party and to create something that’s ideologically pure and intolerant of anybody who does not agree with them — not just on general principles, but right across the board.

Because that’s what a conservative Republican does, runs to a far-left website to trash your party. Spare me your missives about Danforth’s “leadership.”

When confronted with his support over harvesting embryos for their stem cells, Danforth gave an illogical Biblical example (which Fred Sauer deconstructed here) that was something to the effect of God wanting him to harvest embryos and those who oppose him are fake Christians or something to that end. He ignored the science which shows that the most successful cases of stem cell treatment comes from the use of adult stem cells. I know this firsthand: my mother-in-law was cured of a rare syndrome affecting her bone marrow using adult stem cells at the Mayo Clinic.

The Pitch asked why Danforth was a Republican after his speech wherein he bashed the party:

Danforth spoke recently at the Center for Practical Bioethics in Kansas City. His address opened by criticizing Rush Limbaugh for rooting for President Obama to fail. Danforth went on to lament the emphasis on hot-button issues, including “gay marriage, abortion, proposals to criminalize certain stem cell research, politicizing end of life decisions and the public use of religion.”

I was reminded by a friend of a remark I made on Danforth back in March. Before the Akin remark, the controversy in the MOsen race was that Akin was too limited government. Danforth wants to be a kingmaker and Akin was an insurgent into a race that the RINO faction of the MO GOP wanted for someone it could puppet.

Nobody really thought anything of it at the time, but to the inner circle—and observers of the inner circle—it was all the buzz. Now Danforth is mad because after he helped to flame the overreactive hysteria following Akin’s comment, he didn’t win. He didn’t get Akin out of the seat and he didn’t get to cancel the decision made by Missouri voters for his own preference.

So now he’s angry and is working against us in the senate rather than for us. John Danforth has cast his lot, and it seems to be with Claire McCaskill. Kudos to Roy Blunt who parted with this sentiment and came out in support of Akin. Considering Danforth made the above remarks at an Ed Martin fundraising event, it would be nice for Martin to follow Blunt and support Akin in this race.

Bitterness is not attractive on Danforth. What was that he said about “intolerance” and “ideological purity?”