Power

New Ad on Akin Focuses on Social Security

The DSCC is making a his stance on Social Security an election issue, but for Congressman Todd Akin, his social agenda may be just as alarming.

Rep. Todd Akin

After last week’s primary win, Republican Congressman Todd Akin is ready to take on Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill in the Missouri senate race. As a sign of how expensive this race will eventually become, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has already bought air time for its first anti-Akin ad, highlighting his lack of support for Social Security.

Via Roll Call:

“Congressman Todd Akin has a plan for your retirement: work longer. That’s because Akin would undermine Social Security,” a male narrator says over video of an elderly man punching a time card in a dark, brick-walled room.

“I don’t like it. I didn’t design Social Security. FDR put it in place,” Akin then says in the ad in a clip taken from C-SPAN with a small internal edit.

“Akin would risk your retirement savings with a private investment program that benefits Wall Street. He’s already taken almost half a million dollars from Wall Street. He’d give them your Social Security money,” the narrator says over graphics.

“That work for you?” the narrator asks over video of the elderly man, who has just punched his time card. “Congressman Todd Akin: way out of Missouri’s mainstream.”

While the DSCC focuses on economic issues, however, it’s Akin’s “Dominionist” worldview that has others concerned about the effect he could have on policy as a senator. Think Progress‘s Zach Beauchamp notes Akin’s fervent support of the ideas of Reverend D. James Kennedy, who believes America should be run under Biblical law.

Akin’s rhetoric and policy views bear clear marks of Kennedy’s influence. In “The Bible and Economics, one of the two Kennedy tracts that Politico reported were favorites of Akin’s, Kennedy writes that “the Bible has a great deal to say” about politics, economics, and science, and that we can use it to “erect certain systems and derive an understanding about those subjects.” Akin actually goes further, calling the Bible “an entire blueprint for the way civilization can be structured” in an apocalyptic anti-Obamacare video from 2009.

Will Akin’s rabidly anti-choice record or his desire to see the morning after pill banned be the next ad from the DSCC?