Todd Akin: âWomen Votersâ Caused the Great Depression
Todd Akin sparked more outrage today as video emerged of theÂ Missouri U.S. SenateÂ candidateÂ attributing the cause of the Great Depression to allowing women to vote. A video published by an investigativeÂ journalist in France shows Akin at a 2006 closed door Club for GrowthÂ meeting in which he claims that the passage of the 19th amendment precipitated the worst economic depression inÂ modern history. "In 1920 women were given the right to vote in this country. Just ten years later they had spent all our money and the economy was in ruins." "It began simply and nobly. Why not let women vote? Isn't this a country with equal rights for all?." "But pretty soon every housewife in America was demanding free toasters, free electricity, free radios, freeÂ ironingÂ boards and free dish-washingÂ machines. They got everything they wanted. And we went bankrupt." A Boom of One's Own The causes of the Great Depression have been debated widely, with economists alternatively blaming ineptÂ monetaryÂ policy or insufficiently profligateÂ fiscal policy for the economy's failure to recover from anÂ initialÂ fall in output. FewÂ scholarsÂ believe Akin's thesis, however, that the economy crashed because of demands for free appliances from newly enfranchised women.Â Nevertheless, the U.S. CongressmanÂ believesÂ this menace continues to the present day: "Who spends all the government's money? Democrats.Â Who votes for Democrats? Women. If women couldn't vote the last Democrat president would have been Jimmy Carter." "We should have got eight years of George H.W. Bush and John McCain. Instead we got the Clinton recession and the Obama depression. And it never would have happened if we only counted the male votes." Akin, however, rejected the idea that women should be disenfranchised again: "'We're stuck with the system we haveÂ unfortunately. I don't think it would make sense to go back. But let's be honest about the root of the problem - it's the fallacy of fallopianÂ economics. Women just can't say no to the mean alpha-male who offers them free things." Akin previously attractedÂ controversyÂ by claiming that women who were victims of "legitimate rape" could not get pregnant. He is running to unseatÂ incumbentÂ U.S. Senator Claire McKaskill.