ST. LOUIS—After enduring a 48-hour shellacking by local and national Republican politicians, who asked him to quit his bid for the U.S. Senate, Rep. Todd Akin fanned the flames of a grass-roots backlash from his evangelical base Wednesday in hopes that he could change the narrative of his troubled campaign.

Mr. Akin, attacking "the party bosses" who are calling for him to pull out and condemning the "liberal media" for twisting his words, went on national television Wednesday morning and defiantly vowed to stay in the race. At the same time, his surrogates in Missouri began to spin scenarios in which he could beat incumbent Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill in November.

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