Michele Bachmann’s New Normal: Damage Control

Michele Bachmann came out of the last G.O.P. debate of presidential hopefuls smelling like a rose having favorably impressed the national media with her serious demeanor and lack of excited partisan rant. Presently she finds herself in a dead heat with Mitt Romney among Republican voters in Iowa and with neither Rick Perry nor Sarah Palin currently in the race, Bachmann will surely gain momentum from her Tea Party backers. Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks says that Romney has created a political vacuum which Bachmann has easily filled. However this newly enhanced stature and popularity among America’s ultra-conservatives presents a particularly vexing problem for Michele Bachmann. That problem has nothing to do with Bachmann’s conservative views and everything to do with her penchant for publicly misspeaking and confusing and conflating important historical facts. The net result of all of this is the prospect of having to engage continually in damage control due to her past gaffes, pratfalls,misstatements and misinterpretations of American history.

As far back as the 2008 elections, while appearing on Hardball with Chris Matthews, Bachmann had made such wild eyed claims that candidate Barack Obama was anti-American. To wit: “CHRIS MATTHEWS: –so you believe that Barack Obama might have anti-American views? BACHMANN: Yeah, absolutely I– I– I’m very concerned that he may have anti-American views. That’s what the American people are concerned about.” Moreover, Bachmann went on to say that so many members of Congress could be considered “anti-American” that a media investigation of the institution was more than warranted. While such absurd statements were easily dismissed at the time as Bachmann was nothing more than a solitary Congresswoman parroting far right talking points, today those very words have now come back to haunt her.

Since 2008 Bachmann has amassed a track record of misstatements ranging from where the American Revolution actually started to assuming that the founding fathers had eliminated slavery during the framing of the Constitution to claiming that before the inauguration of President Obama America had a one hundred percent free market economy and that presently the federal government controls almost half of it. Apparently this sort of misstatement is nothing new, when Michele Bachmann was in the Minnesota Senate she claimed that by eliminating the minimum wage “we could potentially virtually wipeout unemployment.”

This past Sunday Bachmann appeared on CBS’ Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer and Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. On both programs, Bachmann was forced to engage in damage control so as to address her earlier comments about Barack Obama being anti-American as well as other glaring gaffes. Asked by Schieffer about Obama’s anti-Americanism: “So what does that mean, congresswoman? Did you mean he was unpatriotic, that he didn’t love this country?”; Bachmann answered:” I don’t question his patriotism. I think what’s most important is how has the President performed? I think quite simply, the President has been wrong in his policy prescriptions for the country, that’s really what is important right now because we’re in serious times and we’re in trouble.” Schieffer went on to ask:” Well, would you wish you’d put it a different way when you said he had anti-American views?” to which Bachmann replied: “Oh, sure, there’s a lot of things I wish I would have said differently, of course.” Considering the exchange between Schieffer and Bachmann, it’s obvious that the candidate’s damage control techniques are now in place and being employed so as to deflect the mistakes of the past from the present business at hand.

However it was on Fox News, a venue that one would consider more than friendly to conservative candidates that moderator Chris Wallace leveled the most damaging blow of all: “Finally, let’s talk about Michele Bachmann because — and you say — it’s interesting. You say that the people saw in the debate and saw you as a serious person. I don’t have to tell you that you have — the rap on you here in Washington is that you have a history of questionable statements, some would say gaffes, ranging from — talking about anti-America members of Congress — on this show — a couple of months ago, when you suggested that NATO air strikes had killed up to 30,000 civilians. Are you a flake?” While Wallace would later publicly apologize to Bachmann, the fact remains that even serious commentators on the right have questions about Bachmann’s past misstatements and gaffes and when you combine that with the savaging she can expect from the left and from her political opponents within the G.O.P. it’s impossible to see a Bachmann candidacy that isn’t characterized in a large part by a continual damage control program that seeks to protect the candidate from her own self inflicted mistakes.

However, when one surveys the American political landscape one comes to the conclusion that no amount of effective damage control on the part of the Bachmann campaign will even matter in the final analysis. Summarizing the commentary of Kathie Obradovich of the Des Moines Register, “Bachmann plays very well with the very right wing elements of the Iowa Republican Party but she can’t secure the nomination without the more moderate elements within the G.O.P. Moreover, Bachmann can’t hope to win the general election without the support of independents.” Presently Bachmann polls very poorly with the wider electorate and she is unlikely to overcome that favorability deficit when the media and her opponents are constantly reminding the voters of her past gaffes, pratfalls, misstatements and misinterpretations of American history.

Steven J. Gulitti
6/28/2011

Sources:

Hardball with Chris Matthews, October 17, 2008http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27297028/ns/msnbc_tv-hardball_with_chris_matthews/t/hardball-chris-matthews-friday-october/

Bob Schieffer, CBS Face the Nation; June 26, 2011http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/ftn/main3460.shtml

Chris Wallace, Fox News Sundayhttp://www.foxnews.com/on-air/fox-news-sunday/transcript/rep-michele-bachmann-talks-earmarks-obamacare-and-gay-marriage-sen-kyl-debt-talks

PollingReport.com: http://www.pollingreport.com/A-B.htm#Bachmann

Kathie Obradovich on PBS News Hour 6/27/2011: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/

The Great G.O.P. 2010 Windfall That Wasn’t

What was supposed to be one of the great windfalls to the Republican Party resulting from the 2010 elections was the redrawing of election districts to the benefit of the G.O.P. Now apparently this big advantage has been mitigated by a number of factors. According to political commentator Jennifer Steinhauer:”Republicans took so many seats from Democrats in 2010 that there are not many left to change hands through redistricting. As a result, Republican leaders are focusing on making sure that incumbents, especially their 87 freshmen, end up defending districts with even more Republican voters than they had in the last election, with the hope of ensuring that they maintain control of the House for the long term.” Moreover, Michael McDonald, a senior fellow and redistricting expert at the Brookings Institution observed: “The overwhelming success of Republicans in 2010 actually poses a problem for them. They can’t go much farther than they are, but that doesn’t mean they can’t use redistricting to shore up their incumbents and those who seem most vulnerable.”

Beyond the aforementioned, the increasing demographic shift towards a population made up increasingly of people of color bodes ill for the G.O.P. Again quoting Ms. Steinhauer: “Compounding the Republicans’ problem, much of the nation’s population gains have been among Hispanics, who have tended to vote Democratic, or in areas where voters tend to be less friendly to Republicans. Strict federal laws concerning areas that are dominated by minorities will also be an obstacle for the party in some states. For the first time since the Voting Rights Act was enacted in 1965, a Democrat controls the Justice Department, which enforces the law, during a redistricting year.”

Another factor complicating things for Republicans is that by creating election districts so fully packed with Republican voters, the G.O.P. may actually be increasing the amount of primary fights that go along with each election: “Then there are states that have not lost or gained seats. In many of them, boundaries are likely to be moved in the name of shoring up incumbents for the party in power. Consider Minnesota, where Republicans are trying to protect their freshman congressman, Chip Cravaack, by making his deeply Democratic district less so. In some cases, including Mr. Cravaack’s, efforts to shore up marginal districts for Republicans could have an unintended effect, because having more Republican voters increases the likelihood of a primary fight. The more the district leans right, the more the concern for the incumbent becomes the primary challenge said Chris Jankowski, president of the Republican State Leadership Committee. But the broader Republican strategy is to maximize gains for your party within the extent that law allows.”

Thus what was considered to have been a great windfall for the Republican Party in 2010 may have the net effect of doing nothing but complicatining the Party’s electoral mechanics. In the end the G.O.P. may have been sorry for gaining what they had wished for in the first place.

sjg
6/13/11

Source:

For Republicans, Redistricting Offers Few Gains; http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/us/politics/12redistrict.html?pagewanted=1&emc=eta1

Is Iowa’s Political Influence on the Wane?

A few recent articles on the subject of the Iowa caucuses, citing the influence of evangelical Christians in the process, suggest that the traditional Iowa caucuses may be losing much of their influence in the presidential selection process. Moreover, their fundamental role may be changing in another important way as well. Quoting Michael Shear of the New York Times: “But there are signs that its influence on the nominating process could be ebbing and that the nature of the voters who tend to turn out for the Republican caucuses — a heavy concentration of evangelical Christians and ideological conservatives overlaid with parochial interests — is discouraging some candidates from competing there… Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, announced Thursday that he would skip the state’s Republican straw poll this summer, saving his resources — and lowering expectations — for the state’s caucuses next year. Earlier in the week, Jon M. Huntsman Jr., the former governor of Utah, conceded that he was likely to skip the Iowa caucuses altogether, noting that his opposition to ethanol subsidies makes him unpopular in a state where support for the corn-based fuel is all but demanded… In addition to his stand on ethanol, Mr. Huntsman, who served in the Obama administration as ambassador to China, says he believes in global warming and has not embraced the Tea Party movement like some of his rivals. And like Mr. Romney, Mr. Huntsman is a Mormon, a religion viewed with wariness by some conservative Christians. At the same time, the implosion of Newt Gingrich‘s campaign this week, with the resignation of his entire Iowa staff, could take Mr. Gingrich, the former House speaker, out of real contention in the state’s contest.”

Thus the question that arises is to what extent is the penchant for socially conservative issues among the Iowa caucus crowd at variance with the more pressing issues of the economy and fiscal rectitude which have now come to dominate the national discussion? That’s not to say that social issues have faded completely from the political scene, it’s just an acknowledgement that presently they have been relegated to the back burner. An analysis of polling results over the past year on what constitutes the primary concerns of the American people reveals scant evidence that social and moral issues bulk large in the minds of the electorate. None the less, the fixation among Iowa caucus goers with issues of a socially conservative nature appears to have had a net negative effect on the importance of the traditional Iowa caucus process. Doug Gross, a Republican activist and former nominee for governor bemoaned this very development back in March: “We look like Camp Christian out here. If Iowa becomes some extraneous right-wing outpost, you have to question whether it is going to be a good place to vet your presidential candidates.” What also has many Republicans worried is that the controversy arising between fiscal and social conservatives may serve to do nothing more than muddle the G.O.P.’s message as it seeks to defeat Barack Obama.

There is however, an interesting side effect from the potential demise of the Iowa caucuses among conservative front runners and that is that it allows second tier socially conservative candidates like Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann to gain a little breathing room and possibly some much needed momentum in propelling their candidacies forward. However, that windfall of newfound or added momentum will probably only last so long due to the fact that social issues are currently out of vogue having been swamped by issues of economy and fiscal responsibility. Thus the unique nature of Iowa’s socially conservative evangelical Christians within the larger national electorate may have had the net effect of altering the very role that the Iowa caucuses play in the politics of presidential elections.

S.J. Gulitti
6/11/11

Sources:

With Abstentions, Iowa Questions Political Role

Iowa May Turn G.O.P.’s Focus to Social Issues

PollingReport.com: Problems and Priorities
http://www.pollingreport.com/prioriti.htm

Gingrich’s Presidential Campaign Capsized By the Winds of Folly

Back in March of this year in an article on the Gingrich presidential campaign, “Newt Gingrich’s Dream, Driven by the Winds of Folly?”, I posed the question of why Newt Gingrich would even bother to seriously consider a run for the Oval Office. Now apparently his campaign staff has come to the same conclusion and left Gingrich and his hopes adrift with their en masse departure. Not only are Gingrich’s top operatives leaving him flat, many of his state level operatives have likewise jumped ship.

Bedeviled by conservative criticism for calling Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform plans, “right wing social engineering” and his $250,000 plus jewelry tab at Tiffany’s, it appears that Gingrich’s latest two week vacation to the Greek Isles was enough to convince his staff that this guy just isn’t for real. All of this led MSNBC’s Chris Matthews to opine that Newt Gingrich is simply in the 2012 race for his own self serving publicity and that he was never a serious contender to start with.

The unfortunate aspect of this for the Republican’s is that in only acts to heighten the farce and buffoonery that has thus far surrounded the formation of the field of G.O.P. presidential hopefuls. Now in addition to the historical gaffes of Bachmann and Palin, Rick Santorum thinks that American troops landing on D-Day were somehow fighting to make a future decision about health care reform. We have Donald Trump, having once dropped out of contention, now saying he may re-enter the race as a third party candidate. Not to be left out of the fray, Rush Limbaugh’s has effectively written off the Romney candidacy with a hearty “bye-bye” due to Romney’s admission that he believes, to some extent, in global warming. Last but by no means least, Herman Cain is saying that any Muslim on his staff would have to swear a loyalty oath if he were elected president. And, as if it really would even matter at this point, Newt Gingrich is saying that he will be launch his campaign anew in Los Angeles this coming Monday.

Surely at a time when Barack Obama is struggling to keep his presidency on course, with his poll numbers wavering back and forth about the fifty percent mark, one would think that the Republicans would be queuing up for a knock out blow. Instead what we are witnessing is a G.O.P., formerly famous for internal discipline, careening towards 2012 in disarray.

SJG

6/9/11

Sources:

Newt Gingrich’s Dream, Driven by the Winds of Folly?
http://open.salon.com/blog/steven_j_gulitti/2011/03/04/newt_gingrichs_dream_driven_by_the_winds_of_folly_1

Gingrich presidential campaign implodes
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/gingrich-senior-aides-resign/2011/06/09/AGN77VNH_blog.html

Santorum: D-Day Troops Fought For Health Care Freedom;
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/06/santorum-d-day-troops-fought-for-the-ryan-plan.php

Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann Rewriting American History

At some point all one can do is laugh at both Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann when either of them suggest that they might run for president. I mean after all, if you legitimately want to be this nation’s chief executive, you might first want to exhibit a modicum of understanding of the basics of American history. Ironically, for all of the advice that these two shinning lights regularly offer the American people, and their allusions to the founding fathers, their grasp of American history leaves much to be desired.

Quoting Jonathan Martin and Kendra Marr of Politico: “Michele Bachmann’s suggestion that the Revolutionary War began in Concord, N.H., rather than Lexington and Concord, Mass., marks the third time in recent months that the potential GOP presidential hopeful has committed a puzzling gaffe about history and current affairs. Addressing a crowd of Republicans at a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire Bachmann stated that, “You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world at Lexington and Concord.” Oddly enough, Bachmann made a similar statement just days before the Manchester gaffe, at another fundraiser: “It’s your state that fired the shot that was heard around the world, you are the state of Lexington and Concord, you started the battle for liberty right here in your backyard.” All of this coming on top of Bachmann’s misunderstanding of the role of the founding fathers as it relates to the problems posed by the existence of slavery at the founding of the republic. Again to the Politico article: “For Bachmann, who leads the House Tea Party caucus and champions a return to the Constitution, to get such basic facts wrong about the country’s birth is revealing.” What it reveals first and foremost is Ms. Bachmann’s complete and total lack of intellectual heft to even aspire to run for the presidency, let alone a seat in Congress.

Not to be outdone by her sister Tea Party darling, Sarah Palin has now chosen to redefine Paul Revere’s midnight ride. To wit: “He warned the British that they weren’t going be taking away our arms, by ringing those bells, and making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed.” Again the variance with historical facts is just too much to ignore and too comical to overlook. Having been caught in yet another public blunder, Palin tried to talk her way out of her latest self inflicted disaster only to make matters worse: “Here is what Paul Revere did. He warned the Americans that the British were coming, the British were coming, and they were going to try take our arms and we got to make sure that we were protecting ourselves and shoring up all of ammunitions and our firearms so that they couldn’t take it. But remember that the British had already been there, many soldiers for seven years in that area. And part of Paul Revere’s ride – and it wasn’t just one ride – he was a courier, he was a messenger. Part of his ride was to warn the British that we’re already there. That, hey, you’re not going to succeed. You’re not going to take American arms. You are not going to beat our own well-armed persons, individual, private militia that we have. He did warn the British.” Well perhaps Sarah Palin was just trying to make up for her previous self inflicted fumble, her latest definition of what the Statue of Liberty actually represents, a soliloquy in utter incoherence for anyone who had heard it: “This Statue of Liberty was gifted to us by foreign leaders, really as a warning to us, it was a warning to us to stay unique and to stay exceptional from other countries. Certainly not to go down the path of other countries that adopted socialist policies.” Again, like Bachmann, Palin has done nothing but reaffirm the public’s belief that she just doesn’t have what it takes, intellectually, to aspire to the Oval Office.

So there you have it, two of the Barack Obama’s harshest critics, both of whom have been toying with the idea that perhaps they could do a better job of running the country, yet all the while continuing to exhibit not a lick of basic knowledge as to what their own country is all about. Now if that’s not a ringing endorsement for either of their potential candidacies, then what would be? More to the point, if this is the caliber of leadership that we can expect from two of the Tea Party movement’s biggest stars, how can we ever take the movement seriously as an alternative to politics as usual. Apparently at this moment we can’t.

SJG

6/6/11

Sources:

For Michele Bachmann, a pattern of getting facts wrong
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/51179.html#ixzz1OXzpEnxZ

Sarah Palin on Paul Revere’s ride: ‘Hey British, we’re coming’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/richard-adams-blog/2011/jun/06/sarah-palin-paul-revere-british

Sarah Palin At The Statue of Liberty
http://www.stripersonline.com/forum/thread/804395/sarah-palin-at-the-statue-of-liberty