The Bachman Chronicles
by digby
This is a good day for good reads and this piece by Matt Taibbi on Michele Bachman is one for the ages. Not only does it give a picture of a very dangerous, dumb, extreme politician, but it shows just how easily this woman could capture the imagination of the people and wind up on a national ticket. Here's just one little example of her lunacy that should, in a sane world, completely disqualify her from running for office at all, much less be taken seriously as a presidential contender:
In 2003, after the Massachusetts Supreme Court issued its famous ruling permitting gay marriage, Bachmann proposed an amendment to the Minnesota constitution banning gay marriage — despite the fact that the state legislature had already passed a law making same-sex unions illegal. Even the politicians who were sufficiently gay-phobic to have passed the original anti-marriage law were floored by the brazen pointlessness of Bachmann's bill. "It's unnecessary, it's redundant, it's duplicative," said Assistant Senate Majority Leader Ann Rest.
The episode was classic Bachmann, whose political strategy throughout her career has mostly revolved around having her Little House on the Never-Existed Fundamentalist Prairie sensibilities rocked by something she has read (or misread) in the news, then immediately proposing a horseshit, total-waste-of-everybody's-time legislative action in response. In 2009, after she saw a news story about the Chinese calling on the world to abandon the dollar as its reserve currency, Bachmann somehow took this to mean that the Obama administration might force ordinary Americans to abandon their familiar green dollar bills for some international and no doubt atheist currency. To combat this possibility, Bachmann introduced a resolution to "bar the dollar from being replaced by any foreign currency." Even after the gaffe was made public, Bachmann pressed on, challenging Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to "categorically renounce the United States moving away from the dollar." Imagine Joe McCarthy dragging Cabinet members into hearings and demanding that they publicly disavow the works of Groucho Marx, and you get a rough idea of the general style of Bachmannian politics.
I had forgotten about that. There are so many ridiculous Bachman statements likethat that it's hard to keep up. But it is also indicative of her strange talent. She has no idea what she's talking about but she has an instinct for saying things that sound as if they make sense to people who are clueless. It's not the Palinesque "deer-in-the-headlights-dog-ate-my-homework" rambling nonsense. her language is quite precise. She speaks in a sort of idea soup rather than word salad, that has a sort of ideological symmetry to it, even though it bears no relationship to reality.
Her recent pirouette on Medicare in which she accused the Democrats of trying to destroy the program in order to force old people into Obamacare so they can pull the plug was just such a ploy. It's a bizarroworld version of current politics but there's a certain logic to the argument that she just gets.
She doesn't have the sex appeal that Sarah Palin has, which is probably in her favor. (Social conservatives get over-stimulated and confused around female sexuality.) But she's attractive and poised and is a professional politician who knows how the game is played. And she's both ignorant and savvy, accessible and extreme. She's very creepy.
I wonder if everyone remembers how Bachman first burst in to the national consciousness:
C&L also noted at the time:
Bachmann has quite a thing for Bush, apparently. This press release from her campaigning days reads more like a diary entry for a 12 year old who got to meet her Tiger Beat teen idol:
I have never been in the Presidential limousine before so I was a little unsure what to do when the limousine stopped at the custard stand. I wasn't sure if I should exit with the President or get out of my side of the car. Karl Rove told me I would exit out the door on my side after The President steps out and someone would open the door for me. I could not believe I was discussing what flavor of custard to order with the President of the United States!
That was four years ago. Now she's running for president.
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