It seems that America has caught Bachmannia. After the New Hampshire debate, Michele Bachmann has surged in polls. In fact, at least one poll has her tied for first place in Iowa with Mitt Romney. Markos at Daily Kos is already saying that Bachmann will be the nominee. I guess I have my doubts – is she another flash-in-the-pan like Donald Trump? Her history of saying dumb things will probably not help her win the nomination, not with many Republicans spooked by the idea of a Sarah Palin candidacy. Bachmann proved her deep silliness this week with her John Wayne/John Wayne Gacy mix-up and then yesterday she did an interview with George Stephanopolous:
Host George Stephanopoulos began by noting, “In your announcement you said ‘my voice is part of a movement to take back our country.’ From whom?” Bachmann replied, “Well, from the people all across the nation.”
Hahaha. She’s saving America from people all across the nation. Even sillier, she turned John Quincy Adams (born in 1767) into a Founding Father to cover an earlier gaffe when she said the founders worked tirelessly to end slavery.
Bachmann: Well if you look at one of our Founding Fathers, John Quincy Adams, that’s absolutely true. He was a very young boy when he was with his father serving essentially as his father’s secretary. He tirelessly worked throughout his life to make sure that we did in fact one day eradicate slavery.
Stephanopoulos: He wasn’t one of the Founding Fathers – he was a president, he was a Secretary of State, he was a member of Congress, you’re right he did work to end slavery decades later. But so you are standing by this comment that the Founding Fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery?
Bachmann: Well, John Quincy Adams most certainly was a part of the Revolutionary War era. He was a young boy but he was actively involved.
I guess Bachmann comes from the Sarah Palin school of media management – when you make a mistake double down.
Jonathan Berstein is mad at the media tendency to dissect gaffes but to ignore the substantive stuff like her dismissal of the debt ceiling. Stephanopolous, to his credit, did try to get Bachmann to talk about her past statements about removing the minimum wage and how it will end unemployment but she avoided the question.
You know what’s not getting nearly the same treatment? Bachmann has been going around for some time now, including on her Sunday TV appearances, spouting absolute nonsense about the debt ceiling. She’s claiming that somehow it would be no big deal if the limit wasn’t raised.
And yet, while her “gaffes” are getting pilloried by reporters, that assertion is just getting he-said-she-said type “balanced” reporting (see, for example, this AP story).
We’re not talking here about a peripheral issue, or trivia: this is perhaps the central current issue in American government, and she’s simply dead wrong about it.
I get Berstein’s point. While we point and laugh, are we ignoring the really radical ideas coming from Bachmann like setting corporate and inheritance taxes to zero, letting America default on its debts and removing worker protections? Bachmann’s ideas, whether she fizzles or not, will probably get incorporated into the GOP platform and move them further to the right.