Political strategist Dick Morris has joined the chorus of Republicans calling for embattled Rep. Todd Akin to drop out of the Missouri Senate race, saying possible control of the Senate next year is too important for the GOP to lose because of his "crazy" statement about rape.
"His comment about rape not causing pregnancy and that somehow a woman's body closes it down, was so crazy, so off the charts, that he has completely surrendered his chance to win," Morris told Fox News' Sean Hannity Monday night.
"It's worse than Christine O'Donnell's witchcraft line," Morris added, referring to the 2010 GOP Senate nominee from Delaware who said she had "dabbled into witchcraft" but "never joined a coven."
Morris said that Akin's comments were all the more upsetting and damaging to the party because he was leading in the polls against Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, who he described as "the single most vulnerable democratic Senate incumbent running."
"This will re-elect her, unless by 5:00 [Tuesday] Todd Akin decides to put country and patriotism ahead of personal ambition and withdraw," said Morris, a Fox News contributor and former political adviser to President Bill Clinton.
If not, Morris warned, "Our ability to control the Senate could be captive to Todd Akin's bad statement."
Morris also used the appearance on Hannity's program to blast away at President Barack Obama's news conference Monday, in which he insisted he "didn't approve" or have anything to do with a super PAC ad essentially tying Mitt Romney to the death of woman who died of cancer because his company shut down the plant where her husband worked and he lost his health insurance.
Morris said Obama should have denounced the ad for what it was, something "so far beyond decency" that Republicans should make a big issue out of it at the GOP national convention in Tampa next week.
He said in the end he believes Obama will pay "a big price for it," noting that his personal favorability ratings are now lower than his job approval ratings while "Romney's poll numbers have not dropped an inch with these attacks."
He said the president and his supporters are taking dead aim at Romney with their negative attacks, but with a gun that apparently shoots blanks and does more damage to them than it does the presumptive Republican nominee.
"You are looking at a gun that doesn't shoot bullets, but has one hell of a back kick," he said.
Speaking earlier on the Hannity show, Republican strategist Karl Rove also weighed in on the president's news conference, saying he "should have condemned that ad" and used his appearance before reporters "to clean up his campaign."
"The president has done nothing to clean up his campaign," said Rove, also a Fox News contributor. "And you know why? It's the only way he can win, and he knows it, is by tarnishing Mitt Romney's reputation and going after him in a deeply personal and really repulsive way."
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