It's almost impossible for one article to list the political entertainment Michele Bachmann has provided us with in the last 8 years, so we can only focus on key points. And one of the most (frighteningly) hilarious points about it was that some people took her seriously. Actually, a great many people took her seriously.
Especially Glenn Beck:
Tony
Perkins (Family Research Council) also chimed in:
For eight years, she served more than
the people of Minnesota--she served the families of America with her tireless
stand for conservative values. A proud voice for life and marriage, Michele
never shied away from a fight--and our movement is better for it.
Better for her
clueless attacks on Obama? Better for her seemingly endless gaffs? Better for
her flimsy credibility? Better for her gift of the oxymoron "Bachmann on the Intelligence Committee"?
The End Of The Bachmann Alternative Reality Show
To the many fact-checkers Bachmann kept busy, she seemed to live in an alternate
reality, making up things as she went along (remember the $900 million-a-day
Obama trip to India?). Trying to parrot Christian Right ideologies, she
imagined a new world where every family would foster at least 23 kids (as she
did), fight to canonize George W. Bush, pray away the gay, and lovingly deport
every Muslim in the country. To this pundit, the most ridiculous of the
Bachmann Alernative Reality Show was her appearance on the Jay Leno Show. Ed
Schultz (below) immediately highlighted it since she was in the midst of her
"broke" primary campaign. Her "pray away the gray"
comment/joke showed just how clueless she was to what the public knew about her
husband's unlicensed clinic and her answers on Afghanistan and other issues
were downright embarrassing.
Of course, others beside Beck and Perkins will be bemoaning her departure,
saying that it is the result of a smear campaign - the investigation of her
primary campaign expenditures is just a insidious attack* - and her faithful
will be penning odes to her "courage". Tea Party acolytes will print
"Bachman 4 Presidant" signs in hopes of luring her back to the
political arena in 2016.
Her swan song will probably be Tony Perkins' Values Voters Summit in October, with accolades and awards aplenty.
But In The Real World ...
Conspiracy theories, Islamophobia, dubious ethics and inane attacks on Obama
have taken their toll: Democrats are rejoicing, sending a "Bye-bye Bachmann" pettition/letter to Congress asking only 100,000
signatures.
My guess is that they already have more than the 100,000 signatures.
TBog of
Firedog Lake:
I shall miss her star turn panache and
amphetamine eyes; she gave good face to the Loonier Than Thou wing of the
party...
Of course the big loser in all of this is delightful hubby Marcus
Bachmann who stands to lose more "Me Time!" with Michelle always about the
house and constantly under his marabou bedroom slippers with the four-inch
heels. On the other hand, more time with Michelle means even more repeated
viewings of Far
From Heaven in the hope that Michele will
finally "take a hint".
House of Cards
Her announcement comes as the Office
of Congressional Ethics looks
into claims by Mrs.
Bachmann's former campaign aides that she might have improperly used money
raised by one of her House-affiliated political action committees to help her
presidential bid in the run-up to the Iowa presidential caucuses in January
2012. She came in sixth in that race, even though she campaigned heavily in the
state. The defeat led her to pull out of the race the next day.
The shallowness of Bachmann's political presence cannot be overstated: as
shallow as Sarah Palin, but with more tenacity and "guts" to
go-the-mile while rattling off everything and anything that came into her head
- or was handed to her by Frank Gaffney, for it was Gaffney who pandered to her
gullibility. Oh, there were other jokers who stacked up in Bachmann's House of
Cards, but Gaffney was the ringleader.
And it was gullibility that made the House of Bachmann a House of Cards ready
to fall down at the right touch of investigative reasoning, but, ironically, it
was not investigative reasoning that signaled the fall: instead, it was the
response by party leader John McCain to her Muslim Brotherhood witch hunt. It
was the kind of "have you no decency?" backlash from a Republican
colleague that took her aback, although, again, she seemed clueless to the
warning as well as to the metaphor.
Conspiracy theories, witch-hunts, gaffs, unfounded statements: all-in-all,
Michele Bachmann's tenure in Congress was a House of Cards...
... filled with jokers.
*In an ironic twist: the campaign in question - Iowa - was where she both won
the straw poll and where vote-salesman Van de Plaats got into a wee bit of
controversy (along with Rick Santorum).
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