Washington Post: Dems Spent $1.5 Mil To Help Akin Win Missouri GOP Primary

Seems like it's turning out to be a pretty wise investment on their part:

Senate Democrats got exactly what they wanted in Missouri on Tuesday night. Now comes the hard part.

Republican Rep. Todd Akin’s primary victory clearly boosted vulnerable Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill’s survival odds this fall. But to win, McCaskill will have to make the general election campaign as much about her opponent as herself.

That’s easier said than done. But Akin — and some of the things he’s said in the past — does make it a bit easier.

There’s a reason why Democrats spent over $1.5 million trying to help Akin win his three-way primary. He was the most conservative candidate in the field — and the most unpredictable one. He shook up his campaign staff late last year. He recently released a head-scratching and jumbled campaign ad. And Democrats have already launched a microsite highlighting his controversial statements that won’t play well with moderates. (“America has got the equivalent of the stage III cancer of socialism because the federal government is tampering in all kinds of stuff it has no business tampering in,” Akin once said.){...}

“I’m not going to tell you this is definitely a gimme for McCaskill, but I think the framework of the race is different,” said Democratic strategist Roy Temple, a veteran of Missouri politics.

Akin’s uncompromising brand of social conservatism, for example, might lead him to say something that may give political moderates — the same moderates who don’t like the economic policies advanced by Obama and Senate Democrats — pause in the Senate race.

Everything has to go right in the fall for McCaskill to survive. Akin has to slip up, she has to be flawless, and it may even take a little luck. But on this day, Democrats can argue that much of the race has gone right for them so far, with Akin’s win being the latest example of their strategy succeeding. And they’d be correct.

This was written August 8th, by the way.

Interesting the way these things work out.Spend some cash to get a gaffe prone idiot to win the primary and then just wait for him to do your work for you.

Just turning the election focus from Obama's abysmal record and his performance on the economy to the abortion issue was probably worth it all by itself.

Of course, the big question is whether this cynical ploy did the country any good as a whole. But as I might have mentioned before, I don't think that's really what concerns the leadership of the Democrats at the moment.