Todd Akin and Paul Broun: If Elected President, the Biggest Threat Romney Will Have Will Come From His Own Party

One of the largest problems facing the Republican Party today is that it's leadership is beyond lacking. John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell ... all of the leadership within the Republican Party is bad beyond belief. Should Mitt Romney win the presidency in November, he will have a tall mountain to climb in order to get the party on track to actually work for the American people and get things accomplished in Washington. Is Romney up to the task?

It's a tough question to answer. Romney does have executive experience as a former governor, but in the state of Massachusetts, Romney did not have to deal with leadership inside his own party that was against him because the majority of the legislature were Democrats. So while Romney did deal with his own party minority leadership, the majority of his dealings were with the leaders from the opposing party. Should Romney win in November, he will at minimum be dealing with a Republican-controlled House. That is the part that scares me.

The leadership in the house has been abysmal. John Boehner has been ineffective and unable to rally his own party behind him when major legislation has been on the line. When I first started my blog, The Political Zealot, I talked about this issue, focusing on the debt deal fiasco, which almost blew up in everyone's faces because Boehner was unable to get his party behind his own deal. Blame can be had in both the House and the Senate though. In the Senate, we had the payroll tax fiasco, where Republicans hinted they would be against extending a tax cut that President Obama adamantly supported (they are supposed to be the party of tax cuts no matter what).

Going back to the House though, you start to see where Republican leadership is really scary and ineffective. Leadership in the Republican Party assigns members to different committees within the House based on seniority and their qualifications for each committee. At least that is how it is supposed to work. Recently, the Republican Party has been caught with their pants down by two members on the committee of science, space, and technology who have come out with public statements proving their ignorance of science in general. The first member, Congressman Todd Akin, made the statement that he believed that women had the ability to shut down their reproductive system when a rape happens.

The second member, Paul Broun, made a comment recently saying, "All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell." This statement has lead to Bill Nye (the science guy) to come out and say that Rep. Broun is "unqualified to make decisions about science, space, and technology." Even Broun's alma mater, the University of Georgia, where Broun received a degree in chemistry released a statement from the the science faculty rebuking Broun's comments.

The fact is that these two members of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology have absolutely no business on the committee, yet the leadership of the Republican Party in the House not only put them there, they have refused to remove them from the committee despite their comments. This is the leadership that Mitt Romney will have to deal with should he win the presidency in November. What makes this all the more difficult is that it is leadership from his own party.