"Bachmann ties with Romney for first in Iowa straw poll"
The weekend headline caught many in the state-run media by surprise. Bachmann? That tea-party firebrand, Palin-wanna-be, anti-choice, history-twisting House radical?
Yes, Bachmann. The lawyer, small-business owner, farm owner, mom to five, foster mom to 23, homeschooler, pro-lifer, proud constitutionalist Republican House member from Minnesota and head of the House Tea Party Caucus. Smart, compelling Michele Bachmann will announce for president this week in Waterloo, Iowa, where she was born.
Bachmann, 55, began her political career in 1999 protesting the public-school curriculum in her home town, Stillwater, Minn. She ran for school board and lost. It was her last political loss.
She defeated an 18-year state Senate incumbent in the Republican primary in 2000 and went on beat the Democratic/Farm Labor candidate to win a state Senate seat. Bachmann was re-districted after the 2000 Census and had to defeat another incumbent in 2002 to retain a state Senate seat.
She ran for and won a seat in Congress in 2006, the first Republican woman from Minnesota to do so.
She has championed traditional values and opposed Obamacare, the bailout of the "too big to fail" and the "stimulus" that failed to stimulate.
Michele Bachmann is the real deal, a candidate from the Republican wing of the Republican Party.
So the media trashing began in earnest last weekend. "Bachmann took aid From Uncle Sam," screamed the headline in the Los Angeles Times. The subhead gloated, "The Republican fiscal hawk has herself benefited from grants and farm subsidies."
Hypocrisy is a staple charge against Republicans in the state media, and the Times gleefully charges in. "A family farm in Wisconsin, in which the congresswoman is a partner, received nearly $260,000 in federal farm subsidies."
The truth is interesting. The farm subsidies were received from 1995 to 2008 when the farm was owned and operated by Michele's father-in-law, Paul Bachmann, as a family partnership. Following his death in 2009, Michele and her husband, Paul, inherited an interest in the Waumandee, Wis., farm. The farm is leased out to a neighboring dairy farmer who runs a dairy herd on the land. The farm generates income to the Bachmanns reported on her financial disclosure form as between $32,500 and $105,000 for the years 2006 to 2009.
The Times conveniently omits any reference to what kind of "farm subsidy" this farm has received in the past or whether it receives any subsidy at all since the farm has been rented out.
Bachmann famously opposed the 2008 farm bill with what she called "unbelievably outrageous ... subsidies for agricultural business and ethanol growers." With her interest as an owner of a farm that could possibly benefit from these "outrageous subsidies," her no vote sounds to me like a profile in courage rather than hypocrisy.
The Times also slams Bachmann for opposing Obamacare, then taking money from government for the "Christian counseling clinic" she and Marcus own.
Again, the truth is interesting.
Since 2006, Marcus Bachmann, on behalf of the counseling clinic he runs in Stillwater, has applied for and received from the state of Minnesota a total of $24,041 in a series of grants available to all such clinics in the state to train staff to deal with patients with chemical dependency and mental illness. The training is required by the state in order to accept such patients. The grants were partially underwritten by federal money for which the state applied and received over that time.
In other words, the money does not come from, and has nothing to do with, Obamacare and is offered by Minnesota to help clinics achieve the training required by state regulations.
Republican Hypocrisy is the framework of the story. The facts are tailored to fit the framework. It's Obama lap-dog media "journalism" at work again. Well, why not? It worked to marginalize Sarah Palin, didn't it?
Even Chris Wallace of "Fox News Sunday" piled on, asking guest Michele Bachmann, "Are you a flake?" The former tax lawyer with a post doctorate degree in federal tax law from William and Mary School of Law, business owner, farm owner and successful state legislator coolly replied, "That would be insulting. I'm a serious person."
Imagine asking Romney, an unemployed ex-governor, or Newt Gingrich, "Are you a flake?"
I think the attack on Sarah Palin and the very similar attack line now on Michele Bachmann is about hypocrisy all right – the hypocrisy of the feminist left determined to destroy talented, accomplished, conservative wives and mothers who are not only campaigning to lead this country but to lead it away from the suffocating failures of liberalism.
Michele Bachmann deserves respect for her accomplishments and should expect the critical examination all candidates for president should get (but Obama didn't). I don't know if Bachmann will win the primaries and get the nomination. I do know that by running she has made the nomination worth having because she will articulate for all Americans the many reasons Obama must be defeated in 2012.
However, Bachmann did not respond that she has gotten no subsidy money. She said this:
As for the farm, she said it belonged to her father-in-law. "It's not my husband and my farm," Bachmann said. "And my husband and I have never gotten a penny of money from the farm."
Maybe she crossed herself up. But she contradicted her own disclosure paperwork. Not good. And poor preparation.