Michele Bachmann wins Ames Straw Poll, cruises to Republican presidential nomination

By Michael J.W. Stickings

What you are about to read is true. You know it.

Scene: 24/7 cable news, yesterday, August 13, just after the Ames Straw Poll results were announced.

As you have surely heard by now, because it's more important than 9/11, the first Moon landing, and Nipplegate put together, Michele Bachmann won the contest with 4,823 votes, just ahead Ron Paul with 4,671. Pawlenty finished third with 2,293 but dropped out of the race today. Rick Santorum and Herman Cain finished fourth and fifth, respectively. Rick Perry and Mitt Romney came next, though neither one campaigned actively in advance of the contest. Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman the Formidable were even further back. Thad McCotter brought up the rear.

The takeaway, it seems, was clear.

Mainstream Beltway Media (MBM): (channelling Dick Vitale): It's over, baby! Awesome!

Dumb-Ass Regular American (DARA): What is?

MBM: The Republican nomination for president, baby! It's ooooverrrrrrr!!!

DARA:
But it was just a straw poll, wasn't it? No one actually voted for
anyone. The primaries don't start until... (racking the cobwebs in
narcotized brain)... like... like... next year or something.

MBM: Michele Bachmann! She's for real, baby, the real deal! She's unstoppable. The people have spoken!

DARA: Well, just the people who took the time to go to Ames. They're the party fanatics, aren't they? They don't even represent Iowa Republicans, let alone Republicans nationally.

MBM: I can't believe it, baby! I can't believe it!

DARA: And Romney and Perry didn't even campaign for the straw poll. And (summoning something heard ad nauseam on CNN, or MSNBC, or Fox News, OCDically flipping through the channels with beer in hand) aren't they really the two frontrunners now, along with Bachmann? I mean, Perry just got in the race yesterday. Isn't it premature to declare a winner?

MBM: Uh-oh... uh-oh... uh-oh...

DARA: What?

MBM: Rick Perry, baby! The titan from Texas! I believe, baby, I believe! Awesome!

DARA: (cluing in) So basically it doesn't mean anything.

MBM: Oh yes, show... time! Give it up, give it up! Slam! Woooooo!!!!! Woooooo!!!!! Awesome, baby, awesome!!!!!

DARA: (switching from beer to something harder) I wonder if The Bachelor's on.

And so we slide further into the abyss...

With writing all over the wall, Pawlenty drops out of GOP presidential race

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It wasn't so long ago that Tim "T-Paw" Pawlenty was the darling of conservative and generally David Broderesque pundits on the inside, heralded as the sort of appealing "bridge" candidate with executive experience who could unite the GOP's corporatist establishment and Tea Party / theocratic extreme. He looked the part, presidential but also populist, and George Will et al. just couldn't get enough of him -- sufficiently conservative, unlike Mitt Romney, but not crazy, unlike Michele Bachmann. (In this way, he was presented and promoted, with the same punditocratic swooning, just as Mitch Daniels was, it's just that Daniels never jumped in.)

Well, the shine faded pretty quickly as Pawlenty proved to be a terrible candidate -- not charismatic, not arousing of the base -- and, while doing terribly in the polls, proved to be a desperate one as well, trying everything he could to catch on, passing himself off, despite a fairly technocratic record in Minnesota (where he was anything but an ideologue), as both a devout social conservative (anti-gay, anti-abortion, etc.) and a hardline fiscal one (anti-tax, anti-spending, etc.).

Quickly, the punditocracy jumped ship, with even Will beginning to say nice things about Bachmann. And, really, it was only a matter of time before the inevitable dropping out. Even his wife was saying implicitly disparaging things about his chances.

Basically, if he couldn't do well in the Ames Straw Poll -- that is, in Iowa, close to home, where once upon a time (pre-Bachmann) it looked like he had a shot -- that was it. The writing was going to be on the wall for everyone to see.

And he didn't, finishing third behind Bachmann and Ron Paul in a contest that didn't feature Romney and Rick Perry (or at least for which they didn't actively campaign). Which isn't all that bad, perhaps, but he needed to do a lot better, particularly after sinking so much energy into it.

But it wasn't just Ames. Pawlenty never once caught fire, never once looked like a serious contender. And while there may still be room for a "bridge" candidate to emerge between Romney and Bachmann/Perry, it was clear that he wasn't going to be it.

And why? Who knows? Maybe he didn't want it enough. Maybe there isn't much of a constituency for someone like him in today's Republican Party. Maybe he's just too small for the national stage. Maybe he never really found himself, hence his desperate struggle for attention. Whatever the case, he seemed to wither and shrivel up as the campaign went along, hanging on at the very bottom of a weak and embarrassing field with the likes of Rick Santorum. That's sad company, to be sure.

And now it's over. We won't have T-Paw to kick around anymore. Not that anyone was paying much attention anyway.

Random thoughts on the GOP presidential field

By Richard K. Barry

Michele Bachmann won the Ames Straw Poll. I understand that it's an important indicator of how a GOP presidential contender might fare over time. I get it. Although the fact that she barely beat Ron Paul, who is a perfect example of a crazy fringe candidate, doesn't exactly make the results unequivocally useful, as far as I can tell.

I understand that this will make it easier for her to raise money and to get some wind in her sails (and any number of other metaphors you might be able to think of).

But she is not going to win the Republican nomination. Conjuring up Dana Carvey's brilliant George Bush senior impersonation: "Not gonna happen."

It's still probably going to be Romney. I guess Texas Gov. Rick Perry's announcement complicates things, though I was intrigued by the assessment of a few pundits who thought that we would be able to tell very quickly if he was the real deal or not.

I'm not sure I know what that is supposed to mean. Does it mean that either all of the Tea Party /social conservative energy in the campaign comes to him more or less immediately, in which case he becomes the consensus choice anti-Romney? Or that a number of candidates continue to share the hard-right constituency, in which case his campaign never really takes off?

Maybe that's their point.

I must say that I loved Paul Begala's description of Perry as "the perfect candidate for those Republicans who viewed George W. Bush as just a little too cerebral."

But is that a problem?

Unkind as this may be, I could modify that famous H.L. Mencken quote to say that "nobody ever lost electoral ground overestimating the intelligence of the average Republican voter." So maybe being duller than George won't be a bad thing for Perry.

Judging from Perry's campaign launch speech, which contained every standard fare Tea Party / social conservative speaking point, he will not be doing anything to alienate the radical right and he will not be forcing anyone on that side of things to think outside the box they've made for themselves. No, no, no.

And as I suggested yesterday, if you base your campaign on pandering to the radical right, you might be able to win the GOP nomination, but the general election would be a much harder nut to crack.

So here's the radical prediction of the day:

Perry's candidacy will eventually force Bachmann out. They appeal to the same constituency and he's going to be a better standard bearer.

Palin will endorse Perry. She has been saying all along that she will only run if no one meeting her criteria steps forward. Perry will be her guy and that will matter.

Most importantly, this will become a Romney - Perry street fight and the campaign will move decidedly to the right as Romney attempts to counter claims from Perry that he is not sufficiently conservative.

And, the prefect storm for the Democrats will have just gotten perfecter. The Tea Party and fellow travellers will have found their candidate. And, even if Romney is the eventual nominee, as I still think he will be, he will have had to tack so far to the right that independents will no longer be available to him.

In the short term, the Democrats have needed one effective, theoretically electable, Republican presidential contender to force Romney to the far right. Bachmann was never that contender. She's not that serious. Perry is.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Gimme that old slime and religion

By Capt. Fogg



The Republican circus' Big Top is beginning to fill with snarling dogs, rooting hogs and booming frogs fighting to get into the center ring -- the kind of things once relegated to side shows so as not to frighten young children and more 'sensitive' viewers.



Rick Perry is, as I write this, now announcing his candidacy from the State of South Carolina, where the First Civil War started with the booming of cannons 150 years ago. The Cold Civil War is heating up and so is the rhetoric. Rhetoric just as emotional and just as full of vain invocations of the common divinity. "It's time to get America working again" he says as though his party hadn't presided in ZERO job growth in the eight Republican years and as though we haven't had significant job growth since. Has Perry suggested anything positive or anything other than blind faith in what got us into this mess? Remember he's the guy who thinks the climate responds better to prayer than to carbon dioxide levels. So far it's still not raining in Texas.





Not all the candidates, however, are quite so willing to engage in such a pitched battle on an even field. All the likely female contestants for instance -- like Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann and Newt Gingrich seem to prefer to come out slapping and eye gouging but should anyone be so unfair as to ask such inappropriate, unfair "Gotcha" questions as "which newspapers do you read" or just what Mrs. Bachman meant when she said:

"But the Lord said, 'Be submissive. Wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands.' "

Perhaps since she wears her religion, not only on her sleeve and on her shield like a crusader, but constantly suggests the superiority it gives her along with the right to make peremptory statements about how the rest of us live our lives, it's an appropriate question. It's the same Question President Carter asked of the Southern Baptist Church and not liking the answer, quit the church in which he was raised and spent his life. She'd have us believe she only meant "respect" contrary to the literal word she's so eager to worship. But she didn't say respect, now did she? Nor did the word of God she thinks she's quoting.



Suggesting both that it's offensively inappropriate for anyone to ask clarification of Bachmann and that her explanation would be far too nuanced for us heathen to understand, we have Roland Martin writing on CNN.com today.



Martin tells us she was asked by Byron York:

"As president, would you be submissive to your husband?"

Forgetting the "Billary" gambit directed against Bill Clinton, Childe Roland hesitates not a bit to be offended on behalf of Biblical literalists and for the shy, sensitive and ever-so-subtly nuanced Bachmann who brought the subject up in the first place.



I don't know how old Roland Martin is; whether he remembers the Republicans' question as to whether John Kennedy would obey the Pope instead of the Constitution or whether like the other hand-waving, special pleading, smoke and mirrors artists he can only take refuge in fog shrouded ineffability when someone asks a damned good question he wouldn't hesitate to ask of others.



It's a question asked only because she's a woman, asserts Martin rather tautologically. After all, men aren't ordered to obey their wives in the old books some people confuse with the US Constitution. Apparently he thinks men aren't even asked similar questions about the conflict between their beliefs about the the legitimacy of government, their credos and their ability to administer secular laws in a secular country they may disapprove of.



He's quite wrong of course. These questions are asked and not just by me -- and they are important questions to ask of a party that is insisting in ever louder voices that secularism is a problem and that the country rightly belongs only to those with suitable church affiliations.



(Cross posted from Human Voices)

World comes to a halt as Republicans take to the stage in Iowa to debate future of humanity

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Ah, yes, there was a Republican debate last night in Ames. Good times. Maybe if I weren't on vacation I would have cared. (I was too busy watching The Makioka Sisters -- a stunningly beautiful film.)

Or maybe not.



No, no, let me be serious for a moment.

Did last night's debate mean anything? Well, not as much as Saturday's straw poll -- which won't really mean anything either, though it will clarify both public and insider GOP perceptions and possibly even help separate the wheat from the chaff, as they say.

Not that we don't already know what's wheat and what's chaff.

Romney is wheat. He's the national frontrunner -- though doubts remain on the right (if not venomous opposition from conservatives and other Tea Party types, and he may have a fairly low support ceiling.

Bachmann is also wheat, or at least what passes for wheat these days in the GOP (and on the far right generally). She's a serious contender, craziness notwithstanding.

Other than that?

It's amusing to see Santorum and Gingrich try to convince us we should take them seriously. Do they take themselves seriously? Of course. Do they know they've become joke candidates without a hope of winning anything other than the political equivalent of a Razzie? Maybe -- if they're being honest with themselves, but one doubts either one is capable of such self-effacing honesty.

It's also amusing to see more of the Bachmann-Pawlenty spat. T-Paw, lagging far behind in the polls (not even doing well in Iowa, so close to his Minnesota home), is still so desperate for attention that he's taking the gloves off, as they say, hopeful of emerging as the compromise candidate (particularly liked by the Beltway punditocracy) between the establishmentarian, business-oriented Romney and whoever ends up leading the charge from the radical right, either Bachmann or Perry (or both). Yes, I suppose he still has a shot. Yes, it's a long, long one. And he doesn't stand a chance against Bachmann in their little ongoing feud.

Pawlenty death watch: He'll "reassess" matters if he does poorly in Ames. Now there's a nice, lovely euphemism for "make up some self-aggrandizing excuses and get the hell out."

Perry life watch: It looks like he'll take the leap on Saturday. Not that he's trying to upstage the Ames straw poll or anything. No, of course not.

Cain? Yes, he took time out of his busy schedule scapegoating Muslims to grace us with his presence.

Paul? Hey, did you know he really hates government and much, much prefers the Hobbesian state of nature?

Huntsman? Oh, yes, Huntsman the Formidable, as I've dubbed him. He remains to me and impressive figure, an old-school, Reagan sort of conservative who in other, saner times would have been the clear GOP pick. Now? Not so much.

Wait, you want substance? Come on, you all know how it went. Obama is the satanic incarnation of anti-American evil. And taxes are bad, so very, very bad!

(But if you want some helpful fact-checking, check here. Needless to say, there was some fastness and looseness going on last night. What else is new?)

Besides, that spat is what seems to have gotten the most attention.



And, overall, it does now seem that civility in this Republican field is a thing of the past. As Slate's John Dickerson explained:

The debate had the makings of a serious discussion about leadership,
what form it should take, whether the candidates have demonstrated it,
and how it should be applied in Washington. However, this discussion
took place in a roller derby where that underlying theme was obscured by
people trying to bruise and batter each other. Criticisms and veiled
critiques broke out into the open among candidates desperate to avoid
being eliminated from consideration. In the end, there was a lot of arm
flailing. Everyone went round and round, and the lot of them wound up
where they had stood before the debate began.

Fight, fight, fight! Isn't that what we all crave -- what really gets us going? Who cares that the global economy is imploding or that our civilization is crumbling? Or that it's this right-wing ideology, so much on display last night, that is one of the main causes of our present (and future) crises?



Politics is a bloodsport.

And now, on that note, I'm going to go sit out on the deck and read (about something that has nothing to do with American politics circa 2011).

(photo)

The Michele Bachmann Phenomenon -- crazy, extreme, formidable

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I'm still on vacation, and enjoying it immensely (and trying not to pay too much attention to the news, even as the world economy crumbles yet further, day after disastrous day), but I can't resist posting on yet another fantastic political profile by Ryan Lizza at The New Yorker, this one on Michele Bachmann.

It's long but deserving of your time and attention.

We all need to understand better the phenomenon that is Bachmann, not least because she may win the Republican presidential nomination.

Mitt Romney remains the fairly clear frontrunner, but he may very well have a low ceiling of potential support, and, if Rick Perry isn't included (and he may or may not run), Bachmann is currently running a strong second. What's more, given Tim Pawlenty's weakness, she'll likely win this Saturday's Ames Straw Poll in Iowa, an influential barometer (at least for the media, but also for donors and, generally, for party undecideds), particularly if she does well, which she likely will (she is, after all, charismatic and engaging), in Thursday's GOP debate.

If Perry runs, she'll have a hard time securing the right-wing vote, assuming that Perry actually runs an effective campaign. Indeed, if she and Perry end up competing for that vote, Romney's path is made so much easier -- the nomination could then be his by default, with the right-wing vote split.

But if he doesn't, and if Sarah Palin stays out as well (as expected), and if the race turns into a Romney vs. Bachmann slugfest (as opposed to, say, a Pawlenty vs. Bachmann spat, which she crushes), who's to say that Bachmann wouldn't win? (She's got the right-wing bona fides, he doesn't. It might just be as simple as that.)

Anyway, enough horse-race speculation. Read Lizza's piece.

Here are the two high-level takeaways:

1. Bachmann is a crazy conservative ideologue and conspiracy theorist.

2. Bachmann has formidable political skills, has an impressive campaign operation, and is a serious contender for the nomination.

Crazy, extreme, and formidable.

Formidable because she's crazy and extreme.

Because being crazy and extreme is what makes you formidable on the right.

Which says all you need to know about today's Republican Party.

Mommy for President!

By Nicholas Wilbur

There are a million ridiculous factors by which we judge a presidential candidate's ability to run the country: charisma, attractiveness, faith, height, weight, hair color.

This is why a Rush Limbaugh or some other angry, ugly, fanatical, short, fat, and bald man would never succeed in a national race for public office. It's why even the coiffed Newt Gingrich struggles to maintain a staff for his presidential campaign. It's why Dick Cheney had to play the role of Number Two in Junior's administration.

To a lesser extent, legislative records matter, too, as do experience and vision, passion and ­(depending on party affiliation) eloquence.

You know what doesn't matter? Child-bearing abilities.

For almost a quarter of a millennium, the wise voters of this great country have elected presidents without a single thought to that man's ability to squeeze cone-headed offspring from his loins.

Even in 2008, when Hilary Rodham Clinton nearly captured the Democratic presidential nomination, there wasn't a word about her child-rearing skills. She exercised those skills only once, mind you, but that's one more than half the adult population is capable of doing. Clinton's campaign simply didn't consider popping out a kid a qualifier for the presidency.

Neither should presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann, although it's completely understandable why she does.

In order to induce that patriotic metamorphosis in the apathetic and apolitical masses and turn the American public into the American electorate, prospective constituents must experience that "intimate, personal connection" with their candidates.

When it comes to electability, the "warm and fuzzy," or "the connect," as Joe Biden calls it, is no less crucial than a candidate's citizenship. And while it's a necessary part of the campaign, it's also probably the easiest part. Politicians love to anoint themselves with the oil of Narcissus, and no time is an inopportune time for a self-aggrandizing testimonial.

For Bachmann, being a five-time babymaker and foster parent to 23 more kids is about the only personal quality the American public can appreciate. If presidential campaigns were reproduction contests, she'd be a shoe-in. Unfortunately, her creationist dogma and evangelical beliefs – particularly the idea that women ought to be submissive to their husbands – aren't exactly mainstream values. On top of that, she's a former tax lawyer, perhaps the most loathed profession in the U.S.A., who became a congresswoman, the second-most loathed profession in the U.S.A. And she can't even do that job well. She doesn't head any committees (or sub-committees), she's drafted no legislation, and she's passed no laws.

She's got Christianity and kids. Pretty broad. Not exactly a bottomless cache of domestic and foreign policy ideas that can be woven into a national platform of mass appeal.

But what the hell. Flaunt it if you've got it, especially if it's all you've got.

God may have told Bachmann to run for president, but for all of those southern conservative Christians who feel a twinge of obligation to support the evangelical candidate, He never told Bachmann she was going to win. For all we know, God wasn't even talking about president of the United States. Maybe he meant she should run for president of the local orphanage.

Bachmann is out of her league. Even Sarah Palin had more to offer than mere parenthood (although not much more).

If faith and stretch marks were the only prerequisites for running the country, Rush Limbaugh would have been president decades ago. 

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)

Elephant Dung #36: The Bachmann-Pawlenty spat

Tracking the GOP Civil War 

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.) 

Sorry, haven't done one of these in ages...

Not that there haven't been many, many instances of Republicans attacking fellow Republicans...

For example, as you may have heard, Tim Pawlenty, running well back in the GOP presidential race (and seeming more and more desperate), recently used the news of Michele Bachmann's migraine problem to suggest that the Minnesota congresswoman might not be up to the job of president. It was a cheap shot.

Bachmann quickly put concerns about her health to rest -- yes, I'll take her at her (and her doctor's word), and migraines, even serious ones, shouldn't be a disqualifier -- and, to her credit (even if one disagrees with her views), has fought back, slamming Pawlenty's record as governor of their state (criticizing him from the extreme right). She just wasn't going to take his shit lying down.

Now, I'd take Pawlenty over Bachmann any day. As her statement suggests, he's not nearly the right-wing conservative he's been trying to make himself out to be, while she's the real deal, a bona fide nut. And he's fighting back as well, with a spokesman noting that while he was "scoring conservative victories" as governor she was "giving speeches and offering failed amendments, all while struggling mightily to hold onto the most Republican house seat in the state." Ouch.

Pawlenty is so far back at this point that this hardly seems like a meaningful fight. Bachmann has emerged as the clear #2 behind Romney while Pawlenty has failed to generate much support at all. I suppose he still has a shot at emerging as the compromise candidate between Romney and Bachmann, but there may yet be Perry to contend with, and, thus far, he has done nothing to suggest that he could actually pull off a victory.

Still, with most of the Republican candidates falling all over themselves to prove their conservative bona fides and casually trying to outdo one another in their extremism, all while remaining mostly civil and directing their fire at President Obama, this little Bachmann-Pawlenty spat is about as interesting as it gets.

News of the Week

By Distributorcap

While the dog days of summer doldrums may be arriving early on the east coast in the form of a record 104 degree temperature in New York's Central Park, the rest of the world continues to plunge into insanity at its own record pace.

Insane congresswoman (and someone who has passed NO legislation and has NEVER governed anything) continues her 2012 presidential campaign in the Corn Belt.

Amy Winehouse: RIP.

Boner and Obama, the last of the foot stomping whiners, continue to soak up local color by battling for control of the whine vat.

Governor Rick Perry consults with his mentor about a potential run for the 2012 Republican nomination.

News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch proved one too many people has skied over this mogul when he testified in front of the British Parliament and basically told the world "he knew nothing."

Marcus Bachmann and one of his most famous ex-gays figure they could make a few extra bucks pitching for Abercrombie & Fitch.

Even in jaded NYC, the street vendors realized that they should beware of Greeks bearing coffee cups.

This day in history - July 21, 1925: High school teacher John T. Scopes is found guilty of teaching evolution

By Richard K. Barry

In Dayton, Tennessee on this date a high school teacher was found guilty of teaching evolution. Yes, John T. Scopes was found guilty of teaching science. (That's Darwin to the left, by the way, not Scopes).

So, where do the current crop of declared and potential GOP presidential hopefuls stand on teaching science in our schools?

Michele Bachmann has said that evolution is a theory that has never been proven one way or the other and that schools should teach intelligent design as an alternate explanation for the origins of life.

Tim Pawlenty thinks that creationism should be taught alongside evolution, which is Sarah Palin's view.

Rick Perry supports teaching creationism in Texas public schools.

Rick Santorum is a creationist, obviously.

To his credit, Newt Gingrich seems to have a more nuanced view (hell, let's give him credit for something).

Mitt Romney, also to his credit, once said that while he "believed that God designed the universe and created the universe," he also believed that "evolution is most likely the process he used to create human beings."

Even those who want to support science see the need to equivocate in order to keep a large segment of the conservative base happy.

All in all, things really haven't changed that much.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Social media: yer doin' it rong

By Carl 

Did you know there was a Republican presidential debate last night?

Don't bother looking for repeats of it on CNN or video on YouTube. 

It was held on Twitter:

Now there's the @140townhall, hosted by the Tea Party, for a few hapless GOP 2012 candidates. 

I don't think enough attention has been paid to how terrible, asinine and embarrassing it was. It was almost funny. The only way it could possibly have been worse would have been if Romney had showed up.

To give you an idea of the level of discourse, which you can read in less time than it took the candidates to misstype, Bachmann's opening statement begins as follows: "TY for this forum. I'm running 4 POTUS 2 bring the voice of the people back to DC."

How... dignified.

Now, in truth, Twitter may be the best venue for the GOP to debate issues: 140 characters means you can't explain anything, you can't easily obfuscate, and you have to create bumper sticker answers on the fly.

Plus, as I often say, Twitter is for twits. This is perfect!

Except what's the point of having an exchange like that if no one knows about it? What's the point of having a debate if it's going to become a muddled mess of snappy answers that you can't even really be certain thread to the other participants?

You might as well ask Dickie Goodman to sample the candidates' position papers and create a "debate" that way.

This points up the contrast in how social media is used by both parties.

The blogosphere/Blogtopia (© Skippy, The Bush Kangaroo) is well-established and -- as conservatives are wont to do -- pretty bipartisanly effective well after the blog-world lost its uniqueness.

Facebook is similarly fairly familiar now, and conservatives have made inroads there as well. Sarah Palin's Facebook page is among the most popularly and most carefully watched pages on the site.

This is a far cry from not too long ago, when Rupert Murdoch purchased MySpace as an attempt to "Fox News" social media, thus abandoning hundreds of conservatives to a lonely outpost on the edges of the cybergalaxy.

Now we have Twitter. Twitter is great for alerting people: you need a quick fundraising hit, or an urgent policy announcement, you link to it on Twitter and it gets around. Twitter is great for a wiseass like me (even though I don't tweet) who can snap off one-liners.

Twitter is not great for a dialogue. And therein lies the problem for the Republicans. They bring a rubber band to a knife fight.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Just another day in the rise and eventual fall of Michele Bachmann

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Let's scan the headlines:

-- Bachmann surges into the lead nationally, according to a new PPP poll, 21-20 over Romney, though a new WSJ/NBC poll has her a strong second to Romney but still well back, 30-16. The takeaway, I think, is that Romney is still the frontrunner but seems to be hitting a ceiling, and a fairly low one at that, while Bachmann has emerged as the most viable alternative. The different results here could be attributed to the fact that the latter poll includes Perry, who has not yet entered the race. Bachmann stands a chance in a one-on-one against Romney but would have much more trouble winning a three-or-more-way race, particularly with a strong conservative like Perry draining her support.

-- According to The Daily Caller, Bachmann "frequently suffers from stress-induced medical episodes that she has characterized as severe headaches. These episodes, say witnesses, occur once a week on average and can 'incapacitate' her for days at time. On at least three occasions, Bachmann has landed in the hospital as a result." The sources are anonymous, but, needless to say, Bachmann's health is a concern -- or at least should be.

-- Basically, Bachmann appears to suffer from severe migraines. But she says they wouldn't be a problem: "'Let me be abundantly clear -- my ability to function effectively has never been impeded by migraines and will not affect my ability to serve as commander in chief,' [she] said in a statement. She described the headaches as 'easily controlled with medication.'" 

-- ABC News's Brian Ross, a big-time reporter, tried to ask Bachmann about her condition at a campaign rally in South Carolina yesterday. According to Michael Crowley at Time's Swampland, who witnessed the violent incident: "Ross dashed after Bachmann, repeatedly asking whether she had ever missed a House vote due to a migraine. She ignored him. Ross pursued her into a parking area behind the stage. Her aides grew alarmed. When Ross made a beeline for the white SUV waiting to carry Bachmann away, two Bachmann men pounced on him, grabbing and pushing him multiple times with what looked to me like unusual force. In fact, I have never seen a reporter treated so roughly at a campaign event, especially not a presidential one."

-- Crowley makes a good point: "To zoom out for a minute, what's most interesting here isn't Bachmann's headaches. She's still a long way from the nuclear football, and unless the story takes some darker turn, I don't see why a seemingly manageable battle with migraines would be a game changer for her candidacy.

The more pertinent question may have to do with Bachmann's preparedness for the campaign circus. Running for President, at least in its early retail stage, requires a willingness to answer inconvenient questions in settings more chaotic and unpredictable than the cable-television interviews to which she is accustomed. The trail is a messy place where reporters will swarm you. It's definitely not always fun -- and can be enough to give even a seasoned candidate a migraine. The question raised this afternoon is whether Bachmann is ready for it."

-- I would say that while I think Bachmann has fairly impressive political skills, just as, say, Palin does, and can hold her own on the talk-show circuit, she, like both Palin and Romney, tends to want to avoid reporters whenever possible, and, more to the point, avoid having to answer uncomfortable questions that may require her to deviate from her talking points. I'm not saying she's not ready for it, but this sort of thing doesn't play well with the media, particularly those on the campaign trail and who demand, if only to do their jobs, more than mere talking points, and is communicated to the public as a major defect (which it is). Thuggery, of the kind Ross was exposed to, hardly qualifies as a suitable response. We know she's an extremist, but running away from reporters and using goons as a shield puts her in Palin territory. The media often excuse extremism, particularly extremism of the right, but they don't excuse being excluded. This could turn out to be a major problem for her.

There you go. Another day, a heavy dose of Bachmann all over the media. In the absence of Palin, she's, well, Palin, the sexiest (in media terms) thing going. She's not just crazy, she's doing well in the polls, fast becoming a viable contender for the GOP presidential nomination.

Attention is being paid. Understandably so.

Michele Bachmann and the End of Days

By Michael J.W. Stickings

A while back, it seemed to many of us that Michele Bachmann, surging in the polls and looking more and more like a viable contender for the Republican presidential nomination, was walking back some of her more extreme views, trying to appear less crazy than her (completely justified) reputation and, with extremists in the grassroots on board, trying to appeal more broadly across the party, including to the more moderate establishment, if not quite to independents.

Well, while she did indeed walk back a bit, she also launched full-throttle into the crazy, including by signing that bigoted (and utterly ridiculous) anti-gay, anti-porn pledge and by pushing the generally anti-science agenda of the GOP, particularly so-called "intelligent design."

All of which is nothing new for Bachmann. She has a long record of extremism, particularly with respect to her fundamentalist, theocratic Christianity. And the evidence just keeps piling up. Here's Think Progress:

Slate's Dave Weigel has reported an audio recording of Bachmann praying for the notoriously anti-gay ministry You Can Run But You Can't Hide, run by the radical preacher Bradlee Dean. Bachmann offered the prayer in 2006 (though the recording was uploaded in 2008). In it, Bachmann predicts, "We are in the last days," and says, "The harvest is at hand" — a Biblical allusion to the Rapture when some believe God will take saved Christians from the earth and leave the non-believers to face several years of torment and tribulation before the second coming of Christ.

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As Weigel noted, it's not terribly surprising that Bachmann is among those evangelical Christians who believe the end of the world is imminent. But it's still disconcerting that someone campaigning to lead America into the future believes that its days are numbered and millions of its citizens are doomed. Bachmann has toned down her religious rhetoric considerably since hitting the campaign trail.

Also jarring is Bachmann's belief that "nothing is more important than" converting people before the world ends. As she weighs in on critical debates like whether or not to let the U.S. default on its obligations, it's troubling that Bachmann is rooting for the apocalypse.

Disconcerting and troubling indeed. To say the least. Which is yet another reason why, viable contender or not, she shouldn't be let anywhere near the White House.

Ever. (Which may not be a long time, actually, not with the Rapture at hand. Right?)

Giuliani warns the GOP about making same-sex marriage a key issue

By Richard K. Barry 

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is still thinking about running for president. And as one who has supported civil unions for gays and lesbians but not same-sex marriage, he has been giving some thought about how to position the issue in a way that does the least amount of damage to his potential candidacy.

It seems that the approach he has decided on is that the Republican Party should "get the heck out of people's bedrooms." Here's the entire quote:

I think that marriage should be between a man and a woman, but I think that the Republican Party would be well-advised to get the heck out of people's bedrooms and let these things be decided by states... I think it's wrong, but there are other things that I think are wrong that get decided by democratic vote.

In an interview with CNN's State of the Union, he said that he doesn't see "harm" coming from New York's new law to legalize same-sex marriage, but added that:

I see more harm, however, by dwelling so much on the subject of gays and lesbians and whether it's right or wrong in politics. 

It is interesting to note that despite the fact that Michele Bachmann and her husband have made virtual careers out of opposing rights for gays and lesbians, Michele has used the same "states rights" argument to support, for her, a relatively hands-off approach on the issue of same-sex marriage more recently.

In Giuliani's case, he's got to take an aggressive approach because he's on the record supporting civil unions. Saying the state should stay out of the bedrooms of the nation is consistent with a libertarian position, supported by some in the Republican Party, or a 10th Amendment argument, which is supported by many in his party as well.

In either case, he gets to talk about it while not denying his own position, but also not dwelling on it.

That makes sense for him. It may even make sense for Bachmann if she thinks that culture war issues will be a distraction to the inevitable focus on the economy in 2012, which everyone agrees is the only way to beat Obama.

The formula for conservative electoral success in presidential races is usually some calculated nod to social conservatism that keeps the base happy enough, while not scaring independent voters.

Giuliani gets that he's just far too moderate to keep the base happy. But his comments are the closest thing we have seen to honesty on the part of a Republican when it comes to issues dear to social conservatives.

Look to see the other serious GOP contenders try out language that, however tentatively, begins to go down this path. I'm not suggesting a wholesale rejection of social conservatism, just weasel language that lets them park these issues in order to better focus on the economy.

If they are serious about winning a general election, they don't have much choice.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)