How Bachmann Can Defeat Obama

In a perfect instantiation of green conservatism, the Gingrich campaign has been fuelling a bandwagon entirely on Newt's hot air. It is nearly midnight, however, and therefore almost time for that bandwagon to turn back into a pumpkin (or rather, lemon), which will leave those conservatives who are a little too focused on the manufactured issue of "electability," and who had almost been persuaded to hold their noses and vote for Gingrich, to return to the drawing board in search of someone who can defeat President Obama. They will (and should) ultimately decide that the answer to their quest was standing before them all along, and that it requires no theoretical compromise after all. The answer is to support a genuine and unequivocal conservative, Michele Bachmann.

For while many of the Republican candidates might be able to defeat the disaster that is Obama, Bachmann would be able to do it in a manner most satisfying for conservatives, namely one which draws attention specifically to the nexus between constitutionalism and the moral tradition of American-style individualism.

Thank you for posting the links. That's what I wanted to see.

Again, I have absolutely no role whatsoever in enforcing or interpreting Free Republic policies. That's why I “pinged” the Admin Moderator. My concern is lawsuits.

You appear to have documented that there are people “whispering” about Rep. Michele Bachmann’s husband being gay. While people can file lawsuits about almost anything, in most cases courts are not going to find it libelous to state publicly that there are people who believe “X” about a public official or public figure, even if “X” is factually false and libelous, so long as it can be proved that some people are actually saying “X.” That's how publications like the National Enquirer get away with what they do. It may be scuzzy, but it's probably legal.

Personally I think the likelihood of Rep. Bachmann’s husband being gay are about equal to the likelihood of the earth being flat, but your links appear to show that some people believe that.

I wish you were wrong, but maybe you’re right. She is just wearing herself out on the trail. I saw her on Fox the last couple of days and her eyes look glazed over from going around the clock. This is not good for her, and when someone really exhausts themself to that point, they make mistakes.

I really like her and wish she would cool it with the presidential run, rethink her place in the political scene, and come out with a senatorial campaign against Klobuchar. The conservatives would align behind her and she could really do us all a lot of good by taking a senate seat back. My goodness, Minnesota has Klobuchar and Franken as their senators, two ridiculous leftist stooges! She really should think about it.

Greetings, NoDems. I've responded by private email as well with more detail. Now that you've posted the links to the whispering campaign against Rep. Bachmann’s husband, I understand the problem a lot better.

I had not seen these allegations until I read your post, and I was seriously concerned that your post could generate a winnable libel lawsuit. However, it looks like the leftists are actually circulating this stuff, and it's my fault that I didn't know about it until now.

This exchange has reminded me that politics really has become a blood sport.

I know things have been even worse at some times in our national history — look at the way campaigns were waged during several periods in the 1800s. However, I think we've hit a new low when Democrats who have no problem with homosexuality or women in politics circulate rumors about the sexual orientation of the husband of a conservative Republican female candidate, knowing that a fair number of traditional conservatives will be inclined to question the manhood of someone whose wife is running for office unless they're obviously 120-percent “he-men” like Mr. Palin.

Barring some sort of real evidence that Mr. Bachmann actually is homosexual, I'd like to say we should ignore the allegations, but unfortunately, ignoring allegations is no longer an option in a world where Twitter and Facebook can circulate things that the regular media won't touch.

I'm right in line with the rest of conservatives who criticize the mainstream media for bias, and I'm glad to see the mainstream media's monopoly on news has been broken. However, now that the traditional gatekeepers of editors and publishers have been removed, virtually anything can gain traction in the blogosphere and that's not necessarily a good thing, either.

When Editor and Publisher magazine did a profile piece on my newspaper, they quoted me saying this: “(Maurina) speculates that long-term, the atmosphere of online journalism will become comparable to that of print journalism in the 1800s when there were numerous competing newspapers in every city.”

Having many voices is definitely a good thing. Capitalism and competition are good things — Free Republic took down Dan Rather and discredited CBS News not that many years ago. But the gatekeepers were there for a reason, and I sometimes wish that it were still possible for nonsense accusations to get stopped by editors and publishers who didn't think it appropriate to dignify garbage accusations with a hearing if they had no evidence to back them up.

The internet is rapidly turning into the same sort of environment that once characterized print journalism of an earlier era. The atmosphere of 1800s print journalism was wild and woolly, and there are reasons that era was known as the heyday of “Yellow Journalism.”

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