Failed 'Legitimate Rape' Candidate Compares Himself To Joe McCarthy

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The former U.S. Senate candidate who destroyed his 2012 campaign with his infamous remarks about "legitimate rape" thinks his downfall was a lot like the end of the career of 1950s communist-hunter Senator Joe McCarthy (R-Wisconsin).

Todd Akin, a former Missouri congressman, made the comparison in a Monday interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

"I use McCarthy as an example of someone who was assassinated by the media, so he had no credibility," Akin told the paper, "just as he believes he was politically assassinated by 'intentional and dishonest' distortions of what he said about rape and pregnancy in 2012."

Those 2012 comments - in which Akin claimed, "if it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try and shut that whole thing down" - drew widespread condemnation at the time and many Republicans are reportedly groaning about his recent return to the national scene.