Bachmann is a legislative lightweight whose priority has been Fox News appearances — not authoring substantive bills or helping her hard-pressed district. During her time in the Minnesota state Senate, she was known for her antigay histrionics — not any actual accomplishments. Bachmann is not qualified to hold the influential post that helped launch the careers of other GOP heavy-hitters, including former President Gerald Ford; former Vice President Dick Cheney, and Jack Kemp, Dick Armey and John Boehner…. Bachmann has specialized in nothing but campaign flame-throwing and falsehoods, the most recent of which is the ridiculous claim that President Obama spent $200 million a day on his trip to India. Her 40-plus appearances on Fox News since the beginning of the year also raise a logistical question: How would she have time for additional House leadership responsibilities? Her time is spent caucusing with Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck…. Bachmann’s own party leaders….know she’s not qualified. That Bachmann thinks she is raises further questions about her judgment.
I’ve written on several occasions about my dismay that inveterate baby-farmer Michele Bachmann is the Congresscritter from Minnesota’s 6th District. My dismay stems from the fact that her district just happens to encompass St. Cloud, MN…which is where I went to high school. Being a native Minnesotan, I’d always thought that I had a pretty good feel for the people I grew up around. As it turns out, I didn’t- and don’t- have a freakin’ clue. I had no idea that “my people” were so undemanding of their representatives and so willing to tolerate and traffic in ignorance, hatred, and fear-mongering. If you believe that Americans get exactly the quality of representation they deserve- and I certainly do- any reasonable person would still have to be astonished that the standards of those voters in Minnesota’s CD-6 are so abysmally low. Confronted with the opportunity to elect a reasonable, competent, and well-adjusted Congresscritter, they passed on Tarryl Clark and went back to Bachmann, whom no lucid person could describe as “reasonable”, “competent”, OR “well-adjusted”.
You have to know that Bachmann is an empty suit more adept at caucusing with Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck than doing the job she was elected to do when her home-state newspaper savages her bid for a Republican leadership position. The editorial board at the Minneapolis StarTribune (full disclosure: I delivered newspapers for them as a young lad) has scoffed at her leadership aspirations…and not without good reason. If you think about substantive legislation that Bachmann has been involved in crafting and shepherding into law…well, it would be a very short thought. Bachmann has been far more adept at the politics of personal destruction, innuendo, propaganda, and fear-mongering than the heavy lifting of legislating. She’s very good at self-promotion…but not so much at the nuts-and-bolts realities of the job she was elected to do.
Michele Bachmann IS a lightweight. In a legislative sense, she can barely put one foot in front of the other. A Congressional seat is not a platform for sowing hatred and division, and yet that’s exactly what Bachmann has done with her time in Washington. That she was not only elected, but continues to be re-elected simply defies rational understanding. Minnesota is not like Texas, in that Texans would vote for a week-old ham sandwich if it had an “R” behind it. Minnesotans, while by and large serious about their religious faith, do not define themselves by it in the manner that Texans do. This is why I’m so amazed and disturbed that the people of Minnesota’s CD-6 could repeatedly vote for a brain-dead dogmatic zealot like Michele Bachmann. Apparently, these folks really DO have exactly the quality of leadership they deserve.
