News of this series of Bachmann statements (made during the course of a single interview) was published yesterday. I suppose that by tomorrow morning you will be able to find headlines about these statements in news outlets all over the country.
But we need a copy of this particular Bachmann grand slam for the archives here, so...
Michele Bachmann, from an audio recording of an interview given to an attendee of the GOP Youth Convention, July 22:
Transcript follows...
INTERVIEWER: I may be putting the cart before the horse here, but assuming the Republicans win the House back this next cycle: how do you feel about the chances for a little oversight and a little accountability now that the Republicans would have the subpoena power, how aggressive do you--
BACHMANN: Oh, I think that's all we should do...I think that all we should do is issue subpoenas and have one hearing after another. And expose all the nonsense that is going on. And it's very important when we come back that we have constitutional conservative leadership because the American people's patience is about this big...
...So we have to make sure that we do what the people want us to do because one thing that you should is that the most dramatic story that's happened in the last 18 months is that the federal government - before 18 months ago, the private economy was 100 percent held in private hands. But today 65 percent of the economy is now held in government's hands - either in direct ownership or in control we're talking about. So we got to unravel that and we got to get the private sector back to being private and the government back to being government.
...This is the year - this is it. All of our chips are on November. If we don't get it back and then starve the beast - the House, we have the power of the purse - so we can starve ObamaCare. We don't have to fund any of these programs and that's exactly what we need to do - defund all of this nonsense and then unwind it.
So: you got that? The Republican agenda next year, as Bachmann sees it: take back Congress, defund Obamacare in order to kill it, reverse "the government takeover of 65 percent of the economy that started when the Obama administration came into office"--and devote the entire focus of the United States Congress to a never-ending investigation of Republican political opponents.
These are the priorities: nothing in there about cleaning up the oil spill, nothing in that agenda about the war in Afghanistan, the occupation of Iraq, the war on terror around the world, nothing in there about controlling energy prices, nothing in that agenda about the economy and job creation. Instead: all investigations of Republican political opposition, all the time...the kind of government you see from corrupted "republics" in Central and South America and various failed democracies throughout the world.
Proto-fascism; in this case using the power of law and government to demonize, harass and stop any significant political opposition.
You think she's "just" a nut because she adopts this stand publicly? She's not "just" a nut: as of July 22 forty other members of Congress have signed up to join her Tea Party Caucus (that's up five from the total listed two days ago.) A British newspaper just identified her as the queen of the American right; she's got more money than any other member of Congress for re-election--and that money is being sent in in small amounts by people from all over the country who agree with her.
The agenda she's talking about is nuts, and she is nuts (as I've always maintained)-- but if you think that a nut must be irrelevant in politics simply by virtue of the fact that he/she is a nut: I would direct you to the history books to check out that opinion. Don't tell me that that can't happen here--it's happening here. She's announcing that it's happening here.
This will hurt her, because it will send money into the Tarryl Clark coffers. But it will help her as much as it will hurt her, because she is advocating what tens of millions of Americans believe should happen. They will be proud of her for advocating what they want. Bachmann represents them, and she has the support of a national conservative evangelical machine that is so powerful that it is able to veto Republican presidential candidacies.
If she wants, she can back up on the statements, she can evade or change the subject when she's asked about the statements in follow-up--but it doesn't matter: her supporters and mentors know that she means it. They know that this is how Michele Bachmann would change American government if she and her mentors and supporters are ever given the chance to do so.
What can I say; this is the story, this is why I devoted all these years to covering the career of this particular politician and the political movement that mentored her. It's horrible and fascinating. McCarthy on a pedestal, McCarthy sober and successful, McCarthy proceeding under the banner of Christ, nationally popular and on the rise...
My colleague the Big E wrote a post describing the fracas surrounding Bachmann's announcement yesterday: her attempt to release the names of the members of Congress who'd agreed to join her new "Tea Party Caucus."
As the E pointed out: there was some confusion about which congressmen had actually agreed to join her caucus. It turned out that some of them had not, even though she was reporting that they had.
And so it went, all day yesterday: names were deleted from the Bachmann website, then added: then the entire list was deleted for a while, and then some more names were added as Bachmann obtained the permissions she had claimed to have had. Other names were stricken from the list.
Last night I got the latest Bachmann allegations about which congressional representatives have joined her. The list appears below the jump, as do other aspects of this story.
(CONTINUED)
First, a photo dated May 8, 2010 from a Tax Cut Rally held at the state capitol in St. Paul, Minnesota. Bachmann appeared as a scheduled speaker at the rally, which is hosted annually by right wing radio personality Jason Lewis:
President Obama, depicted as a chimpanzee.
Fast forward to yesterday, July 15, 2010. Bachmann announces her plan to give the Tea Party a permanent policy making presence on Capitol Hill.
(CONTINUED)
Tom Horner (the Independence Party's candidate for governor in Minnesota) and GOP nominee Tom Emmer have been at each others' throats this summer. Emmer's GOP sponsored a complaint against Horner regarding polling data but it was thrown out of court; Horner has charged Emmer's plan to nullify federal laws in Minnesota is a plan to "destroy government."
This is relevant here because (as last remark about nullification might tell you): Emmer is a Bachmann fan Republican, the tea party sort. If Emmer wins, that's the ideology that will proceed from the highest political office in Minnesota.
Emmer's GOP considers Horner a sell-out (i.e. moderate) Republican who joined the Independence Party in order to take moderate Republican votes away from Emmer.
Horner explains his position:
"I have been watching the Republican Party devolve with the rise of Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin," Horner said. "There are issues of leadership in the willingness to pander to the extreme right wing."
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-BP) threatened suicide again at an event in Colorado. She was a guest speaker at the Western Conservative Summit in Denver. She spoke mostly about one of her most constant topics, the government takeover of everything.
"'We are determined to live free or not at all. And we are resolved that posterity shall never reproach us with having brought slaves into the world,'" Bachmann read from founding father John Jay , ending her reading with the statement, "We will talk a little bit about what has transpired in the last 18 months and would we count what has transpired into turning our country into a nation of slaves."
(Colorado Independent)
The last time she threatened suicide was when she urged fellow conservatives to "slit their wrists in a blood pact" to prevent health care reform from passing. In Colorado.
Why does she get so suicidal when she goes to Colorado?
"Shaping up to be the most expensive race in the country?" (See the link below.) How can can that be? Some of you have probably seen Michele Bachmann's Sixth District of Minnesota.
There's nothing "sexy" about this district, in and of itself. It's mostly white as vanilla ice cream, full of hard working Minnesotans and their families, small towns north and east of the Twin Cities...suburban sprawl spreading to create exurbs where there were farms (just twenty years ago)...
...but you can still drive past a lot of pretty farms. And this fall many of them will be sporting Bachmann signs...
(CONTINUED)
Tired of the "suffocating clutches of socialism?" Then why not join Michele Bachmann and Anne Coulter at their five-star accomodations in "Miami's storied Doral Golf Resort and Spa" this September?
Enjoy a Doral "Reveal Peel" Facial Treatment with Anne while you brainstorm ways to stop the federal government from crucifying you, the taxpayer. Or chill as massive muscular masseuses give you and Michele a damn good rubdown while she explains the threat that affordable public access to health care represents to American freedom.
But be careful not to miss your tee time! Don't keep featured celebs Tom Tancredo, "Bible expositor" Chuck Missler and "heroine of the ACORN sting" Hannah Giles waiting. Your foursome can spend quality time warning each other of the coming apocalypse engineered by the far left Dem cabal that's taken over America as you challenge the long fairways, undulating greens, a deep Bermuda rough and a unique assortment of water hazards.
(CONTINUE)
What keeps me up at night is that maybe I haven't explained this the right way. In all the years I've been writing about Bachmann...maybe I haven't explained it "the right way," explained why this is so important.
The short answer: I think I may have left out something in all of the tens of thousands of words I've written on this subject. I may have left out my personal belief that there's about a sixty per cent chance that America is going to go "more the way Michele Bachmann wants it to go" than the way that progressive or liberals want it to go and that this is going to happen in my lifetime.
Yeah: that's what I really think, right now; this summer. The craziest, most irrational tradition in modern American politics could really end up dominating American government. Not just "as bad as the Bush years," worse than that. An unapologetically crazy and irrational worldview, with pre-Enlightment standards for knowledge and wisdom--dominating American politics and media.
(CONTINUED)
If you're diagnosed with a deadly disease, do you want the federal government doing the same kind of job with your pancreatic cancer as they're doing on the BP disaster?
Oh, that's just one reason why Michele Bachmann wants to repeal Obamacare.
Video of unchallenged, free-ranging Bachmann from Newsmax below the jump. The announcer's a piece of work, but that's not the point.:
Anyway, here are the highlights (with the time code):
1:48 the 20 billion dollar compensation fund obtained by the Obama administration from BP is "run by the administration." (By the way, it's not.)
2:54 Obama is trying to take over the oil companies; the cap and trade bill will double the energy bills of Bachmann's constituents.
(CONTINUED)
According to this article in US Today, all you have to do is get into Congress and say something really nasty about the other side--and the dough will just come rolling in...
Politicians' harsh words pull in campaign funds
By John Fritze, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON - In an otherwise courteous Congress, a little brash can bring in cash.
From Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., who shouted "You lie!" during a speech by President Obama last year, to Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., who once compared former vice president Dick Cheney to a vampire, several lawmakers are turning controversy into big bucks for their 2010 campaigns...
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-BP) loves to fearmonger. The G20 Summit in Toronto gives her an excellent opportunity to indulge in a new conspiracy theory. She fears that they are really meeting to set up a "one world government."
In an interview on Scott Hennen's radio show today, Bachmann claimed that the purpose of the G-20 was to "bind together the world's economies." Neglecting the already interconnected nature of the global economy, Bachman declared that "President Obama is trying to bind the United States into a global economy":
BACHMANN: What really concerned me was Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said that we don't want to see one country's economy doing better than another. What? This is the U.S. Treasury Secretary? We don't want to see Zimbabwe's economy do better than the United States? Aren't we supposed to be about the United States and making sure that our economy can be the greatest in the world. If you look at the G20, what they're trying to do is bind together the world's economies. Look how that played out in the European Union when they bound all of those nations economies together and one of the smallest economies, Greece, when they got into trouble, that one little nation is bringing down the entire EU. Well, President Obama is trying to bind the United States into a global economy where all of our nations come together in a global economy. I don't want the United States to be in a global economy where, where our economic future is bound to that of Zimbabwe. I can't, we can't necessarily trust the decisions that are being made financially in other countries.
"So I think clearly this is a very bad direction because when you join the economic policy of different nations, it is one short step to joining political unity and then you would have literally, a one world government," said Bachmann. "I don't want to cede United States authority to a transnational organization." Listen here:
I realize that Republicans don't actually listen to what they say and have no sense of how crazy they sound. I mean, hey, it's working for Bachmann -- her insane ramblings have made her a major player in the Republican party.
Doesn't Bachmann know that the WTO can override American laws already? Didn't Republicans whole-heartedly support the WTO and GATT?
Dudes and dudettes--it gives me no pleasure to pass this stuff along to you; never did. But you must understand that if the Dems take significant losses in November, this is the kind of Republican who will be hailed as a leader of the US Congress:
"We've become indentured servants to the government. That's not what the founders envisioned for us. They envisioned that we would work for ourselves, for our families, grow the nation. The new view that government has of those of us who are citizens is that now we exist to serve government. We need to reverse course so we can get back to freedom."
That is the view of Michele Bachmann, as presented in a film called "Socialism: a Clear and Present Danger." The movie was produced by D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries. If you read these updates regularly you know that I often point out Bachmann's longstanding ties to the American religious right: the national evangelical conservative machine that drives her career and the Republican Party.
(CONTINUED)
Rep. Bachmann asserted that the $20 billion dollar independently-monitored compensation fund created by BP at the request of the White House was the result of "extortion" by the Obama government.
She's spouted other smears relating to the oil spill, but a local Fox News station gave her a chance to walk back that "extortion" charge against the government. Here's what she said:
When asked if she would use different words when she stated what the White House is doing is extortion, Bachmann said:
"In the context of which I was speaking, the government has been doing a lot of overreaching and that was the context of my concern. Government should not overreach in the areas where they have no business."
A sentiment so sensible that it's fatuous, but it's not a withdrawal of the charge of "extortion." It's not even an honest answer to a direct question. It's reminiscent of her evasions and unwillingness to give straight answers to direct questions during her latest encounter with conservative pundit Bill O'Reilly (in video clip below.)
(CONTINUED)
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-BP) continues to catch flack nationally for her unquestioning support for BP. This time Jon Stewart skewers her on The Daily Show.
Republicans have been doing everything in their defense of BP until Joe Barton crossed some invisible line by apologizing to BP for setting up the $20 billion escrow fund to compensate victims of their oil spill. Now they are backpedaling furiously.
Stewart discusses Bachmann beginning at 6:00, but why wouldn't you want to watch the whole thing?
Transcript:
Michele Bachmann will you stand by him [Barton]? You said that this fund was against the constitution and you used the word extortion. You gotta love what Barton did.
[Bachmann clip]: "Noone is saying that this fund shouldn't be set up."
You were saying that. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann was saying that. In fact, she was saying that three days ago ... am I the only one of the two of us who listens to what you say?
Rep. Michele Bachmann's (R-MN) cynical attack politics is getting noticed and debunked by (and surprisingly of all places) Fox News. Bill noted late last night that Bill O'Reilly took her to task for calling President Obama's demand and BP's acquiescence to set up a $20 billion escrow account compensation fund "extortion." Geraldo Rivera got into the act, too.
Geraldo's lead-in takes a while and he starts grilling Bachmann at the 4 minute mark. BTW, Geraldo's indictment of BP and Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) in the lead-in is pretty scathing.
What's going on when the official media outlet for the Republican Party starts attacking it's own? Are they going to try and make a claim that they are actually journalists? Or is there some kind of secret plan that will only become evident later?
Did Bachmann miss a memo from Roger Ailes (head of Fox New)? Has she finally gone too far even for Fox News?
