RSS Feed MenuThe Tea Party has discarded Sarah Palin in favor of a new icon: Michele Bachmann.
The incense and hallelujahs once heaped upon the Martyr of Wasilla have been redirected to the Saint of Waterloo. As with Palin too, the Bachmann-mania seems likely to prove both embarrassing and temporary. Before it subsides, we thought it might be a useful service to future generations of Republicans to preserve some of the most effusive statements – in hopes of inoculating this party against recurrences of this form of delusion in the political cycles to come.
David French on why Bachmann is facing the same “unfair” attacks that Sarah Palin did:
Why the hate? The secular feminist world view was built around multiple destructive cultural lies: motherhood is a barrier to self-actualization, orthodox religion traps women unhappily in the home, and the only real path to power and happiness is exploding, not upholding, traditional religious values. Yet a mother of five (with 23 foster children), happily married in a Christian family, and who proudly espouses the very traditional values most repugnant to the academic feminist Left is a leading candidate for the most powerful office in the world. She is a living refutation of their foundational beliefs, and — like Sarah Palin — she must be destroyed.
As we enter a primary season where Republican infighting threatens to reach a crescendo, I hope we can learn a lesson from Sarah Palin’s ordeal. You may or may not support Michele Bachmann for president, but we can (and should) defend her against the coming ideological onslaught, an onslaught that is aimed at her but whose real targets are the core values that govern many of our lives.
Jennifer Rubin on Bachmann’s fortitude:
Perhaps the most un-Palin quality Bachmann possesses is her refusal to play the victim or to complain about her attackers. Instead, she has mastered the art of making them look petty and silly while reemphasizing the qualities she hopes will impress voters — tenacity, strength, a sense of humor and empathy for average Americans. As I have said many times, those expecting Bachmann to crumble under the glare of intense scrutiny are kidding themselves.
A rousing indictment of Bachmann’s treatment by the media, posted on Redstate:
Oh, yes: We must get to the bottom of THIS [Referring to the Daily Caller's report on Bachmann's Migranes]–, and quickly, too! Not a moment to spare, before she gains more traction. If there’s one mission the leftist-media complex must pursue with dogged, rabid determination, it’s that NO strong, accomplished conservative woman should ever be allowed to peer above the fox-hole: They must be destroyed at all costs.
This enthusiastic embrace of Bachmann might be something conservatives will come to regret as more of her past come to light. We have already seen The (very Catholic) National Review make space for arguments that it’s ok that Bachmann’s old Church thinks the Pope is the Anti-Christ. Andrew Stuttaford writes:
Even the original Atlantic article (written, doubtless, to create a spot of bother for Rep. Bachmann, who has, the article reveals, had to deal with this issue before and did not do so as well as she might have done) includes this quotation from a WELS spokesman:
Some people have this vision of a little devil running around with horns and red pointy ears. Luther was clear that by ‘Antichrist’ [he meant] anybody who puts himself up in place of Christ. Luther never bought the idea of the Pope being God’s voice in today’s world. He believed Scripture is God’s word.
Roman Catholics will not see eye to eye with Lutherans about this (and vice versa), but that should not be breaking news.
UncleLew // Jul 21, 2011 at 5:44 pm
Please tell me that cover is Mad magazine parody.
marcopolo // Jul 21, 2011 at 5:52 pm
Good grief that picture reminds me of something out of N Korea or The USSR at the height of Stalin.
I always knew the Right would end up as Fascists, looks like it’s happening right before our eyes.
LFC // Jul 21, 2011 at 6:06 pm
gocart mozart // Jul 22, 2011 at 12:13 am
When fascism comes to America, it will be shouting “Where’s the birth certificate!” and have the stench of rancid tea on its breath.
torourke // Jul 22, 2011 at 9:58 am
Let’s take a trip down memory lane okay LFC?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7x-wpc2TpoM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51kAw4OTlA0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt6JWzBqLWs
Creepy and fascist doesn’t begin to capture these videos.
busboy33 // Jul 22, 2011 at 4:54 pm
1) So your point is that the GOP is just as disgusting as Democrats? That is certainly an interesting way to defend their actions.
2) 2 of your linked videos are apparently somebody’s home movies. What they have to do with Obama I don’t know. The third was Ashton and Demi, and sure its heavy on the propaganda, but again They aren’t Time, or Newsweek, or any other alleged source of news, which the National Review would like to be. The only way the parallel works is if you accept that the National Review should be given as much consideration and respect as Ashton Kutcher and/or some crazy lady’s home videos. While I certainly am happy to do so, I got the impression you had a different opinion of Nat Rev.
torourke // Jul 22, 2011 at 6:18 pm
1. No, my point, which I explained on a post down the scroll, is that the author utterly failed to make his case that the GOP has begun an embarrassing, worshipful campaign of Bachmann. He can point to some statements of people defending her, but nothing that even comes close to what Ezra Klein had to say about Obama.
NR’s cover art is typical of how they portray people they report on. They don’t worship Bachmann, and I can bet you next month’s paycheck they won’t even endorse her.
2. My second point is that it’s a bit rich for all the lefty commenters in here to jump and down screaming about crazy Bachmann supporters are when it was only three years ago that plenty of Obama supporters (some of them quite famous) engaged in a glassy-eyed support for their candidate that was truly frightening.
torourke // Jul 22, 2011 at 9:41 am
How would this compare to Shepard Fairey’s Stalinist depiction of the ONE in 2008 marcopolo? Or the various other depictions of Obama in that style that were rampant in lefty circles during that time?
Redrabbit // Jul 22, 2011 at 10:03 am
Well, at least those depictions actually looked like Obama. This painting does not resemble Bachmann. I think the reason is that it lacks the eerie, blank, schizophrenic gaze.
torourke // Jul 22, 2011 at 10:57 am
Ah yes, you’re totally down with Stalinist-style propaganda as long as it accurately depicts the Nietzschean qualities of your favored progressive. I imagine the other lefties are on this site are on board with this thinking too.
marcopolo // Jul 22, 2011 at 10:44 am
That image was a photograph, it was then just dou toned. It was not a fanciful imaginary idealization of someone looking into the distance. Bachmans image has Kim Jong Ill written all over it.
Also your constant false quivalence in the face of criticism is the mark of an intellectual coward.
torourke // Jul 22, 2011 at 11:12 am
Oh it was just du toned to make it look like Stalinist propaganda? Well then! False “quivalence”? You’re right there, only not in the way you think. What conservatives have done with Bachmann pales in comparison to the Obama-worshipping that occurred in 2008.
Your poor spelling and amnesia about the creepy, fascist treatment that lefties gave the ONE is just the sort of reaction I expected from a dimwitted, hackish troll such as yourself.
marcopolo // Jul 22, 2011 at 11:16 am
Tool.
TerryF98 // Jul 22, 2011 at 11:20 am
“is just the sort of reaction I expected from a dimwitted, hackish troll such as yourself”
Look in the mirror and you will see a perfect representation of what you describe.
Carney // Jul 22, 2011 at 10:44 am
@marcopolo:
marcopolo // Jul 22, 2011 at 10:46 am
It’s a duo toned PHOTOGRAPH. Another intellectual coward.
LFC // Jul 21, 2011 at 6:05 pm
David French said… “She is a living refutation of their foundational beliefs, and — like Sarah Palin — she must be destroyed.”
Well at least he didn’t say she is a living “refudiation” of …
NRA Liberal // Jul 21, 2011 at 6:05 pm
I’ll admit it: I actually like Bachmann.
I disagree with almost all of her politics, but I’ve come to realize that any anti-corporate movement in this country can only come from the Populist right.
Her vote against TARP means a lot.
LFC // Jul 21, 2011 at 6:10 pm
It does mean a lot. It means that she’d allow the country’s economy to collapse, heaping untold misery on millions of Americans, in order to “get back” at corporations for taking advantage of the special favors her own party bestowed upon them. Sounds like a person who believes what they believe and has no time to consider the outcome, especially since it wouldn’t hurt them (just faceless nobodies). It also sounds like a person who doesn’t grasp the difference between keeping the animals penned up in the first place vs. burning down the barn in a fit of pique after they’ve gone so that they can’t come back.
Traveler // Jul 22, 2011 at 2:35 pm
She got over $260k in subsidies for her farm, in which she is a partner, which is fundamentally equivalent to a corporation in this context. Her husband got another $30k. The sheer hypocrisy is breathtaking. See http://www.politicususa.com/en/bachmann-dairy-farm
Saladdin // Jul 21, 2011 at 6:24 pm
Perhaps the most un-Palin quality Bachmann possesses is her refusal to play the victim or to complain about her attackers.
Seems as if Ms. Rubin’s memory may be fadin’
Graychin // Jul 21, 2011 at 6:38 pm
I almost feel sorry for “conservatives” these days. They keep looking for a “true” conservative (the second coming of that notorious liberal Ronald Reagan), but their idols always are fatally flawed. If only they could run that “generic Republican” who does so well in the polls.
Is Michelle Bachmann the One? Holy crap – has it come to this?
busboy33 // Jul 21, 2011 at 6:40 pm
Why does she look like FDR in drag?
rbottoms // Jul 21, 2011 at 7:00 pm
Conservatives are always waiting for someone to save them.
r.b.
Grace // Jul 21, 2011 at 7:37 pm
Today’s so-called conservatives are nothing if not authoritarian in temperament, despite all the FREEDOM! talk. They rely on authoritarian daddy or mommy figures who tell them what to think and do, and seem unmoored (to put it politely) without a strong top-down command to herd them. In addition to Obama Derangement Syndrome, they have truly been suffering without anyone remotely resembling a strong leader since George Bush left office. Go to RedState and the wistfulness for strong authority figures like Dick Cheney, John Bolton, etc., is very palpable.
Imagery, buzz-words, and mythology have been heavily used for the past 20 years to shape an emotional narrative that guides the masses in the base. Without strong figures to advance these, the message is decidedly fuzzy. And into the breach stepped the loons. Ron Paul used to be considered by even most far-right conservatives to be a crank, now he’s smack dab in the middle of the GOP mainstream.
And I agree with some commenters above — that cover is positively creepy.
Primrose // Jul 21, 2011 at 10:04 pm
Rep. Bachman isn’t exactly the poster child of a self-actualized womanhood. She married a man she didn’t love because she claims God told her too, (which I still haven’t puzzled out why God should feel it mattered).
Then she chose her choice of law because her husband told her too, also becoming a rep because he said so.
Where’s all this self-actualization?
LISGUY // Jul 22, 2011 at 12:11 am
Just a quick comment about the NR cover art: When they endorsed Romney in 2008, he got similar treatment. The other cover art of an individual that also comes to mind recently was Charles Krauthammer. I’m sure there have been others who have been given the hagiographic cover art before. Get over it. I don’t support Bachman because, as far as I can tell, she doesn’t have any executive experience. President Obama should be example #1 of what tends to happen when members of the legislature are suddenly thrust into positions of executive authority. Bachman, Paul and Gingrich all fall short of this criteria. No need to indulge in Bachman delusion syndrome people. Simply put, say she doesn’t have the experience needed for the office and move on.
marcopolo // Jul 22, 2011 at 8:21 am
The fact that they regularly give their heroes the North Korean look is no excuse. It’s not a feature it’s a bug.
medinnus // Jul 22, 2011 at 7:06 am
She’s a lunatic, but at least, unlike Palin, she’s a lunatic with at least an ounce of integrity who didn’t quit her day job to exploit the credulous.
torourke // Jul 22, 2011 at 9:37 am
Fred,
Incense and hallelujahs? The examples you provide don’t even come close to supporting that thesis. Jennfier Rubin says that Bachmann is not as unserious a candidate as the Left would make her out to be, and takes a swipe at Palin at the same time. How is this worshipful? Let’s compare this quote with the infamous quote of her Washington Post colleague Ezra Klein who wrote this about Obama:
“Obama’s finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don’t even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. The other great leaders I’ve heard guide us towards a better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence.”
Ezra Klein is an atheist.
The NR cover art is of a piece with other covers that they have done on past politicians, and even people who are not politicians (Charles Krauthammer for one). It doesn’t mean they worship these people. And this art pales in comparison to what we saw with the Stalinist-type imagery of Obama (Shepard Fairey anyone?) in 2008.
The example of Andrew Stuttaford (who is not Christian) cuts against your own argument. He provides some context for the claim of her church, says that she has not done well on this issue in the past, and states the obvious that Catholics are not going to agree with Lutherans on this issue. And this is what you consider evidence that NR is “okay” with Bachmann’s church on this issue?
A little more thinking, and a little less sneering next time Fred.
Redrabbit // Jul 22, 2011 at 10:08 am
Bachmann will be discarded just as Palin was. The teabaggers are perpetually angry, and they demand absolute purity and adherence to rules that are incoherent, at best.
When you look for a perfect savior, then no one will ever measure up, especially when you invest so much emotion in to that individual.
The entire approach the teabaggers have to choosing ‘leaders’ and other inspirational figures is inherently unstable, because they will never be satisfied with anyone they pick, and will always be looking for someone new to inspire them when their current picks fail to measure up to their bizarre expectations.
torourke // Jul 22, 2011 at 10:24 am
I agree that Bachmann will amount to nothing, but if you think that conservatives have some sort of monopoly on worshipping candidates, holding them to unrealistic expectations, and then throwing temper tantrums when things don’t go your way, then I’m left wondering where you have been for the last three years.
tom78212 // Jul 22, 2011 at 12:24 pm
Rep Barney Frank described Bachman best: “[she] is invincibly ignorant.”
jjv // Jul 22, 2011 at 2:21 pm
Well, so far she has run rings around Huntsman. How can this be?
StarSpangledSpanner // Jul 22, 2011 at 3:20 pm
Hi Liar.
Why did you lie about the American ambassador not turning up at the unveiling of the Statue to Reagan?
As was pointed out to you the Ambassador did turn up and in fact gave a glowing speech about Reagan.
Why do you lie in your pieces, why did you not retract your lying piece and why did you not apologize for misleading your readers.
Do you lie by habit or persuasion?
LFC // Jul 22, 2011 at 3:32 pm
Hey Torourke, do you really want to compare videos on this topic? To compare people saying they’re inspired by Obama and want to be better, versus the crazy Christian people who want their religion to rule our nation? Do you REALLY want to go there?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxdt_f0hwUg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNvnLFgH5BU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIOD5X68lIs
Lonewolf // Jul 22, 2011 at 3:39 pm
By my count, three Republican contenders are running because God told them their destiny was to become President. So, which two have actually beed seduced by Satan?