Akin's wife says pressure to quit over 'legitimate rape' comment is also like getting raped

The wife of Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) is comparing Republicans who are trying to force her husband out of the Missouri Senate race over his "legitimate rape" comment to British soldiers who raped the daughters and wives of American colonists in 1776.

In a recently published profile, Lulli Akin told the National Journal that Republican party bosses had tried to replace free and fair elections with a "tyranny, a top-down approach" by pressuring her husband to step aside after he said that women could not get pregnant through "legitimate rape."

"Party bosses dictating who is allowed to advance through the party and make all the decisions -- it’s just like 1776 in that way," she explained, recalling colonists who “rose up and said, ‘Not in my home, you don’t come and rape my daughters and my … wife.' But that is where we are again. There has been a freedom of elections, not tyranny of selections since way back. Why are we going to roll over and let them steamroll us, be it Democrats or Republicans or whomever?”

Lulli Akin added both President Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney "seem to be embodying" the traits of a British monarch "with all the tactics that they’ve been revealing" towards her husband.

Todd Akin said his wife's remarks were "a little more grandiose than the way I would say it," but there was "tremendous sense of uprising I feel among the people I talk to."

According to the latest Real Clear Politics average of polls, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) is leading Akin by over 5 points.

Watch this video of Todd and Lulli Akin from The Associated Press, broadcast Aug. 21, 2012.

(h/t: Talking Points Memo)