Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., is the conservative hero of the day for having organized a protest against Democratic healthcare reform proposals that's taking place on Capitol Hill Thursday. In preparation for that protest, she participated in a conference call with supporters and press on Wednesday night.
While on the call, she gave this rundown of where she gets the information she needs to do her job as a member of Congress:
The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning out of bed, I grab my cell phone and I look to RedState ... and I feel like I at least am kind of prepared to get out of bed, and then I go read the editorial page of Investors Business Daily or the Wall Street Journal for a wider background of knowledge for the day... I just find it is one of the most credible sources of information out there.
Yes, Bachmann's "wider background of knowledge" goes from the conservative blog RedState -- led by a guy whose idea of a brilliant political tactic is sending fake dog poop to a Democratic congressman -- to the WSJ's notoriously ideological editorial page and then to the IBD editorial page, which is sort of a poor man's WSJ for people completely uninterested in anything but a strict conservative line.
If 2009 goes down in history as the year when ideology finally pinned fact-based politics to the floor and dribbled a loogie over its face, then the people of Minnesota's 6th Congressional District will have proven themselves ahead of the curve. After all, they first elected Michele Bachmann to Congress back in 2006. And get this: They reelected her in 2008. Take that, evolution.
Evidence that Michele Bachmann stepped in a bucket of crazy? Take your pick. Calling Barack Obama un-American? Check. Death panels? Check. Encouraging armed revolt? Check. Calls for mass self-mutilation and/or suicide to protest the Obama regime? Check.
Forget truth. Hell, forget truthiness. The era of the Birthers is Bachmann's epoch, because the bar is so low. Indeed, there is no bar. Just as Glenn Beck can portray President Obama as a follower of Mao Zedong simply by connecting the two on a blackboard with chalk, Bachmann can go onto the House floor, spout out any odd claptrap that comes to mind, and still get reelected.
Bachmann thinks more carbon dioxide is a good thing, since it is a "natural byproduct of nature," just like syphilis, I suppose. She has warned that AmeriCorps could lead to "re-education camps" for young people; she suggested armed revolt to stop climate change legislation (urging her supporters to be sure they're "armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back"). She keeps hinting that there is some creepy, sinister plot behind the 2010 Census.
Bachmann isn't just crazy, she's crazy's frothy-mouthed cheerleader. Take her speech on healthcare reform last August in Colorado, at a time when some Americans had lost perspective, composure and in some cases all grip on the facts during town hall-style meetings across the country. Bachmann happily stirred the big pot of lunacy. "This cannot pass!" she shouted at her Colorado audience. "What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn't pass."
Bachmann, of course, came to national attention just before the 2008 presidential election, when she declared on MSNBC's "Hardball" that she was "very concerned that [Obama] may have anti-American views." She went on to encourage a media and congressional investigation into the anti-American views of all of her enemies. Although her opponent, Elwyn Tinklenberg, began to surge in the polls, that November she clung to her seat. The people of Minnesota's 6th District will get to have a third referendum on crazy in 2010, when Bachmann will face one of two Democrats: physician Maureen Reed or state Sen. Tarryl Clark. Unbelievably to the rest of the world, Bachmann's two-year jag of crazy seems to have strengthened her hold on her seat, but it's still possible she'll step beyond the realm of orthodox, increasingly acceptable right-wing crazy into a new crazy frontier that could cost her politically.
Possible, but not likely.
This is an actual quote from Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., as reported by the Minnesota Independent. She's speaking about the Obama administration:
"These people are not connected to reality."
No, seriously. This is the congresswoman who's been promoting conspiracy theories about the census and about an impending one-world currency, and it's the Obama administration that isn't connected to reality.
As if to emphasize the so ironic it actually kills all future irony nature of this statement, the Independent's report also contains this quote from Bachmann, about the timing of Congress' work on healthcare reform: "It’s intentional that they’re doing this at Christmas time and Hannukah.”
Right. Democrats deliberately blew umpteen deadlines, stretching this way past the summer -- when they'd wanted to have it done -- and risking it bleeding until next year, when members of Congress have midterms to think about, just because they knew that people would be distracted by the holidays. That makes total sense.
Every so often, the National Journal conducts a poll of "insiders," taking their temperature on various issues and on various personalities within their own party. Some outlets might not do this well -- "insider" is a pretty subjective term, after all, one subject to abuse the way "consultant" has been -- but the magazine always has a pretty good roster, generally filled with various members of Congress and other people who really do have influence in and knowledge about the Washington scene.
So it's interesting to see one result from the latest poll, when the "insiders" were asked about who in their party they'd like to "mute."
On the Democratic side, there were a couple of clear winners: 22 percent of those surveyed said they'd like to see Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., go quiet, while two liberals -- Reps. Dennis Kucinich and Sheila Jackson Lee -- were in the No. 2 and 3 spots, with 19 percent and 13 percent respectively.
On the Republican side, though, the top spot went to "no one," with 16 percent. Below that was a collection of conservatives, all tied at 11 percent: Reps. Michele Bachmann, Steve King and Tom Price, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, and Glenn Beck. That's an interesting contrast with the Democrats, where the people who insiders want muted are from both ends of the ideological spectrum.
If you're going to hold something you're billing as the "First National Tea Party Convention," there are a couple things you really have to do. The first is to invite former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin; the second is to invite Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn.
That's what Tea Party Nation, which is organizing this convention, did. And according to CNN's Political Ticker blog, the group has announced that both women will be speaking, and that Palin will be giving the keynote.
Now, Palin's people haven't yet confirmed her appearance, which -- given her history with announced speaking appearances -- may be a sign that she won't end up going. But we can hope.
WASHINGTON -- Most of the time, the halls of the Cannon House Office Building are pretty sedate. Every now and then, the soles of a pair of expensive loafers clack on the marble, and echo down the corridor; sometimes an eager intern, leading a tour group, breaks the silence with a few choice facts about American history. If there's a vote, bells ring, and lawmakers scurry to the Capitol building. But otherwise, not much is going on in the middle of a Thursday afternoon -- particularly since Congress likes to call it a week around then, anyway.
Unless, of course, you're talking about the Thursday when Rep. Michele Bachmann has summoned a horde of frenzied Tea Partiers to Washington for what she had called, on a preview conference call for conservative bloggers the night before, "the Super Bowl of our freedom."
In that case, the scene on the second floor of the Cannon building, just outside House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office, gets a little more boisterous. A small mob had gathered there for what anti-choice kook Randall Terry billed as a sit-in to protest abortion-related provisions in the House healthcare reform legislation. They wound up mixing with some of the people who streamed in after Bachmann's "House Call" rally ended to tell members of Congress how vehemently they oppose providing universal access to healthcare. Someone tore up all 1,990 pages of the reform bill and scattered them on the floor; a few of Terry's pals got arrested; the crowd started chanting, "Kill the bill! Kill the bill!" and just like that, the police were clearing the hallway. "This is the people's House, and we're being kicked out?" one woman muttered as she walked away. "Nancy Pelosi can kiss my fat ass."
That pretty much summed up the message the Tea Partiers' mini-march on Washington was aiming for Thursday: Nancy Pelosi, kiss my fat ass. Facing the prospect of House passage of a healthcare bill by this weekend, Bachmann and the conservative noise machine went into overdrive. Big things were at stake, after all -- socialism in America! "The best way that I know of to actually kill the bill would be if we could bring the town halls, the freedom-loving Americans, here to D.C.," Bachmann said Wednesday night on the preview conference call. "Why wouldn't we go for broke?" Ah, those August town halls; the speeches by Bachmann and her allies dripped with nostalgia for the freedom-loving days when the country supposedly rejected healthcare reform. Now, by November, there was an air of desperation to the appeals. Momentum has shifted back to the side of the reformers, and the chances of something passing look pretty good.
Still, for something organized on fairly short notice -- less than a week -- the crowd was fairly impressive. Thousands of people gathered between the Capitol and the Reflecting Pool, waving "Don't Tread on Me" flags and obnoxious signs about Marxism. (Then again, with the corporate-backed Astroturf group Americans for Prosperity shipping busloads of people in and handing out signs as they arrived, the turnout wasn't that surprising.) "The biggest vote in the United States, the biggest voice in the United States, is your voice -- the voice of the American people," a beaming Bachmann told her minions. "Republicans don't have the votes to kill this bill. We knew that we were limited but what we knew was unlimited was the voice of persuasion of the American people, and that's why you're here today." Democrats were thrilled at the prospect of Bachmann suddenly becoming a major GOP power broker. "If displays like today are what they think is a smart political strategy, all we can say is: go for it," Democratic National Committee spokesman Hari Sevugan e-mailed reporters.
It was quite a display. At one point, a man in the crowd near me shouted, "No federal government!" -- which would seem to expand the mandate of the march beyond even Bachmann's wildest dreams. For two hours, a parade of Republican House members, talk radio hosts and C-list Hollywood celebrities (Jon Voigt, John "Cliff Clavin" Ratzenberger) made their way to the microphone to gleefully bash President Obama, Pelosi and everything about the healthcare legislation. House Minority Leader John Boehner, of Ohio, got so caught up in the excitement, he confused the Constitution with the Declaration of Independence, reading from the Declaration but telling the crowd it was the Constitution. The mistake was understandable; the Constitution was on a lot of people's minds. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, of Michigan, bashed the healthcare bill for being too long -- especially compared to the "39 pages" in which "our Founding Fathers enshrined freedom in our Constitution for 200 years." In contrast, Hoekstra said, the healthcare bill is "2,000 pages -- and the people in this building behind us want to take your freedom away."
After the first few speeches, it was pretty clear that the House GOP had decided, en masse, that addressing the gathering was all but mandatory. Each speaker gave a special shout-out to the patriots from his or her own state who had come, and most of them also thanked Virginia and New Jersey for electing Republicans Tuesday. There was a lot of talk about the 2010 elections. "You know it's your House, but there's a lot of people there who don't belong there," Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas said, asking for help getting rid of the interlopers next year.
What made the healthcare bill such a menace? That was easy. "It's gonna be from cradle to grave, controlled -- everything you do, controlled by the government," Larry Herwig, an ex-Marine from Washington, N.C., told me. "They're gonna control everything you do, from what you eat, what doctor you get, what medicine you get -- everything, controlled." I told him I didn't think that was true. "Go read the bill," he said. "Have you read it?" The crowd buzzed with Fox News conspiracy theories. "Where's the Freedom Czar?" one sign asked. When Bachmann mentioned her favorite political philosopher, someone shouted out, "I bet it's not Mao" -- a reference to Glenn Beck's recent obsession with a flip comment by a White House official.
Eventually, the endless droning by the House GOP drove people over to the office buildings to start lobbying, many of them before the talks were over. Lines wrapped around the corner as the Tea Party masses waited to get through security. Bemused Capitol Police officers had to keep telling them to avoid bunching up at the metal detectors at each entrance. The protesters stormed through the halls urgently, propelled by their righteous indignation. "They work for us," said Sherry Warren, a real estate agent from Fairfax, Va. "They would not exist if it was not for us, the American citizen who votes and pays taxes."
Talking with Warren and her husband, David, I was a little surprised they opposed the healthcare bill so strongly. Both had gone years without insurance, they told me; only when David Warren's uninsured brother got sick, and ran up a half-million dollars in medical bills, did they decide to buy their own coverage. Not long after they did, both David and Sherry found themselves dealing with their own expensive medical problems. In spite of all that, though, Sherry Warren was adamant that healthcare reform was an attempt to solve a problem that simply didn't exist. "I don't believe them when they say that people who have major health issues in this country cannot get coverage," she said. "You can walk into a hospital -- they cannot refuse you. They're not allowed to." The whole thing was a power grab, an attempt to finish what the New Deal kicked off. "This all started with Roosevelt, and it needs to stop," she said.
When I asked her how she knew the motivation behind the bill was so nefarious, she patted me on the shoulder. "You haven't lived long enough, darling," she said. "It's obvious to all of us people out there that what they're doing is, increment by increment, taking away our liberties." And with that, the Warrens and their comrades-in-arms headed off to fight socialism some more, one page of legislative text at a time.
As a rule, special elections held to fill open congressional seats aren't the most exciting events. But the campaign in New York's 23rd congressional district is starting to get pretty interesting, with an intra-party squabble on the Republican side of things getting more juice by the day.
The district leans Republican, and the seat has been in the GOP's hands to this point -- the race is being held because Rep. John McHugh resigned when President Obama named him secretary of the Army. But it's still upstate New York, which may be more conservative than the state as a whole but is still pretty moderate by comparison to other Republican-dominated areas of the country. So the party chose a moderate, State Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, as its nominee. That enraged conservative activists, who've given their support instead to third-party candidate Doug Hoffman.
Scozzafava still enjoys the support of establishment Republicans, but her campaign's been imploding quite publicly lately under the strain of Hoffman's candidacy. Now, the independent is getting a further boost as the GOP continues to splinter over the race. In an appearance on Laura Ingraham's radio show Wednesday, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., appeared to endorse Hoffman, saying, "Hoffman is on the ascendancy,” she said, “and we have to win this seat, and people need to get behind the winning candidate, and it looks like that’s Hoffman.” (As David Weigel points out, Hoffman's actually polling in third place; the Democrat, Bill Owens, is in first place.)
Bachmann has a fair amount of conservative supporters these days. But she doesn't have anything close to the star power of another woman rumored to be ready to endorse Hoffman: former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
At this point, even an endorsement from Palin probably wouldn't be enough to put Hoffman over the top. But it could certainly have an impact, if not on this race than on the candidates Republicans pick for 2010; the national party would probably be forced to go farther to the right than it would like in some areas, which could benefit Democrats.
