Giving Up on Bachmann

Powerline ^ | 09/14/11 | Steven Hayward

[freespirited]

Up to now I’ve thought Michele Bachman was the most impressive performer in the GOP field, going toe-to-toe with the “big boys” in the field, out-arguing them on several occasions, and introducing serious constitutional arguments that the rest of the field (even Perry) are too timid to attempt. She’s right to go after Rick Perry on the issue of mandating the use of the Gardisil vaccine, along with the issue of “crony capitalism,” both of which get at the issue of a potential president’s sense of the reach and limits of state power. Perry is a mixed bag on this (as is Romney obviously) and he should be pressed hard to explain himself and refine his views.

But her embrace of the wacko idea that the vaccine is dangerous or causes autism, mental retardation, or other risks is simply irresponsible. Is Bachman, Glenn Reynolds quipped, trying to go after the Jenny McCarthy vote? (Glenn also links to Jonathan Adler’s quick take on this, which is the same as mine.)

Bachman passed along with complete credulity the claim of someone who she says came up to her after the debate attributing her child’s mental issues to the vaccine. I’ve heard a few people speculate darkly about whether such a person actually exists, or whether Bachman made it up or is trimming a bit from something she was told another time. You’d think our inquisitive news media would find this person and investigate, or that the person would now step forward (or that other people with similar claims would now step forward). Above all, this is a political mistake as well as a scientific one, as it has shifted the focus from Perry’s use of power to Bachmann’s scientific credibility—a lose-lose for everyone.

Which raises the last point. NBC Nightly News last night went to some trouble to attack Bachman’s views on the Gardisil vaccine. Fine; but why doesn’t NBC or the other major media perform the same service when anti-vaccine quackery comes from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or Jenny McCarthy? No mystery here.

[perfect_rovian_storm]

Here’s the basic gist of Thrombovision:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/39184408/ThromboVision-Timeline-With-Contributions

WSJ wrote an article about the whole emerging technology fund. It’s pretty ugly:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304760604576428262897285614.html?mod=opinion_newsreel

[miss marmelstein]

Oh, please. If Jeanne Kirkpatrick was alive and well today, Conservatives would be complaining that she’s a dull speaker who stares at her fingers when she talks. Sounds odd? I remember people complaining about her habit of looking at her hands while she spoke back in the 1980s! Weird, but true.

If Lynne Cheney was younger, Conservatives would be complaining that she has a lesbo daughter. Shows bad parenting skills.

Margaret Thatcher without the English accent? Shrill! Thin, terrible speaking voice! Crazy eyes! (All of these things were said in the British press by Tories and Labor alike.)

I have a long memory on how women candidates and politicians and diplomats are treated. If you can name some others, I’ll dredge up my memories of what Conservatives and Libs said about them. It’s almost like playing Trivial Pursuit.

[achilles2000]

Your post reads like a bad legal brief. Fine. Crude analysis won’t help Palin or Romney or whomever your candidate is. I’ll be satisfied with Bachmann, Perry, Cain, or Santorum. Palin would also be acceptable, but she hasn’t deigned to run.

[so_real]

Who do you think is the GOP's man they want in the WH?

Their first choice was (is?) Romney. Karl Rove positively salivated over him. We (conservatives) made it abundantly clear that Romney was not our man. The establishment made their rounds of trying to convince us we were in the wrong. They failed. And (iirc) we had discussions right here on FR about the GOP ultimately throwing Romney under the bus at some point and picking a more palatable candidate.

Perry had no intention of running. And he stated so publicly. But the establishment convinced him to run. I welcomed him on board myself, eager to hear what he had to say and see what all the hype was about. I did my homework. It didn't take much digging to come to the realization that Romney is under the bus Perry is now driving.

They are two peas in a pod and both very much the stereotypical country club republican.

[miss marmelstein]

Thanks for the links. Basically, pay to play. We have it here in NJ and it’s wrecked several towns in my area. (Asbury Park, anyone?)

Thrombo Vision has got to be the worst name of any company in the history of the world, lol!

[so_real]

So nothing would have changed.

I disagree on that point. We give Obama and his administration most of the credit for the birth of the Tea Party. But if Obama was the birth, then the McCain candidacy was the pregnancy. McCain had lost the election utterly before the first vote was cast. The old white country club fat cat could never defeat the young suave minority candidate pitching hope and change. McCain chose (wisely) Sarah Palin as a hail-Mary to save his chances. She even nearly dragged him over the finish line ... nearly. But it was the establishment GOP forcing a miserable misrepresentative of "We the People" upon us, and our getting a taste of true representation in Sarah Palin, that gestated the Tea Party movement. Things did change and now we are at a cross roads. Do we go back to the way we were before and allow country club compassionate conservatives to misrepresent us further? Or do we use this once in a lifetime opportunity Obama has handed us on a silver platter to elect one of the "We"? I know my preference.

[xzins]

What I question about Bachmann:

1. The answer about Lexington/Concord being in New Hampshire, and repeated, was bad, but not awful. She could have said, “I misspoke, don’t know what I was thinking.” Instead, she appeared to blame it on her teleprompter. Her reaction has always bothered me. I think she lied.

2. She said in the debate something about little 12 year-old girls, and she said something like “I have little 12 year-old girls” Her biological children are grown and gone. Her foster kids are no longer there. Did she just stretch the truth again?

3. She said some woman complained that gardasil caused retardation. Did she make that up?

4. She said she served as a lawyer in a capacity involving the Federal Reserve and that she was expert in it. She had a few year stint as a tax lawyer for the IRS prosecuting failure-to-pay cases. Did she stretch it again? On the one hand she’s prosecuting a native american because he didn’t report some 30,000 income earned on the reservation, but on the other hand she’s at the lofty heights of the Federal Reserve?

5. I also think she vulnerable if her husband treated their own troubled foster kids and also received large medicaid payments. Were any of those foster children treated by her husband, and if they were did they charge the government for the foster-father treating the foster kids? No one has asked this stuff, but it could get sticky if it looks like the foster kids were part of their income. And how do you stand against these kind of entitlements and use them, too?

6. Bachman has received tens of thousands of dollars of contributions from home school organizations and supporters. Is it “cronyism” when she supports legislation favoring home schooling, since she’s a legislator and not an executive?

[miss marmelstein]

I love your analysis of Gardisil. Something for everyone - which is why Bachmann chose it. As someone who knew absolutely nothing about Perry, this stuff is fascinating. Keep it coming. You’ll get flamed, no doubt, but who cares? I got my clothes burnt off yesterday. Not pretty.

[shield]

What lawyer is...I can’t name one President who was a great President that was a lawyer.

[driftless2]

Bachman had to do something to counter Perry’s rise, but she did it the wrong way. She should have stuck to attacking the real problem, Obama, and how her program would do a better job correcting Obama’s disastrous policies than the other candidates. Smearing Perry basically did in her campaign.

[Hawthorn]

>> I have a long memory on how women candidates and politicians and diplomats are treated <<

Fine. Nothing wrong with that, so far as it goes.

But it seems to me that you're falling into a pattern of circular reasoning:

Step one: You say women politicians have usually (or always?) been treated unfairly both by the media and by conservatives.

Step two: Next you indicate a belief that Bachmann and Palin now are being treated badly by many conservatives, both the pundits and many posters on FR.

Step three: You then seem to conclude -- ergo -- that the treatment now received by Michelle and Sarah is irrefutable proof that women politicians will usually or always be treated unfairly by conservatives, a line of reasoning that merely takes us straight back to your initial observation, and which goes so far as to transform that observation into an unshakeable assumption that can't be falsified by any conceivable amount of evidence.

You certainly have every right to your beliefs, even those beliefs may be based on circular logic.

But we'll just have to agree to disagree, because I don't find your argument the least bit persuasive.

[miss marmelstein]

Well, whenever the word “ergo” starts cropping up in a Free Republic post, my eyes tend to glaze over.

Yes, let’s agree to disagree. I didn’t think I’d change your mind, lol!

[Hawthorn]

>> She said some woman complained that gardasil caused retardation. Did she make that up? <<

You can bet that David Brock and his minionsm, and/or other arms of the MSM, are now scouring the hills and dales of America from sea to shining sea, in a quest to find that very woman!

Possible outcomes:

(a) She won’t be found because she never existed.

(b) She will be found, and she will turn out to be a total nut case — and a dedicated anti-vaccine devotée of Deidre Imus and Jenny McCarthy.

(c) She will be found, and she will be a Ph.D. in immunology and microbiology, who will totally vindicate Mrs. Bachmann.

Gee! I wish I knew how to set up an Internet poll on these outcomes!

[Hawthorn]

>> I can’t name one President who was a great President that was a lawyer.<

1. Thomas Jefferson

2. James Madison

3. Abe Lincoln

Now a few really terrible POTI who weren’t lawyers:

1. Herbert Hoover — engineer & humanitarian

2. James Earl Carter — engineer & farmer

3. U. S. Grant — engineer & storekeeper

4. Woodrow Wilson — political scientist & university prez

Just goes to show ya!

[wmfights]

What I question about Bachmann:

I want to go a different route. What I liked about Bachmann, before she marginalized herself, was her out front criticism of obama and her never ending objection to obamacare. If obamacare is not repealed this country stands no chance of returning to it's status as a vibrant empire made up of people who the govt is subject to, rather than an empire in decline in which it's people are subjects of the govt.

Bachmann was my first choice for quite a while. Clearly losing poll position to Perry has caused her to grab at straws to try and get back into the top tier. I think your criticisms are legitimate. However, I believe the one that will do her in is:

3. She said some woman complained that gardasil caused retardation. Did she make that up?

We expect our leaders to be smart enough to get the facts before they comment.

[perfect_rovian_storm]

I know, it’s awful isn’t it? It sounds like some trashy cable channel or something...lol!

[so_real]

I had to look up Bachmann's "retardation" statement in the post debate interview as I did not hear it first hand :

"There’s a woman who came up crying to me tonight after the debate. She said her daughter was given that vaccine ... She told me her daughter suffered mental retardation as a result. There are very dangerous consequences."

Bachmann relayed a statement made to her and followed it up with a "very dangerous consequences" statement of her own. I agree with that. If you don't, have a look at the injury stories and death memorials at Truth about Gardasil.

[perfect_rovian_storm]

You haven’t read enough bad legal briefs then, because my post was nothing like one.

I’m not doing ‘crude analysis’ to try and help another candidate. I’m doing this to help save the GOP and possibly the country from choosing an corrupt candidate.

[achilles2000]

Perry isn’t corrupt, and posting on FR won’t save the country.

Look, I don’t say that Perry is beyond criticism, but every candidate we have is subject to significant criticisms. No one is “pure enough” for us. Perry is at least as conservative as anybody on the platform. If Palin comes in and hits the ball out of the park, I would be delighted to support her.

[perfect_rovian_storm]

Perry isn’t corrupt

Better be sure before you go out on a limb.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/39184408/ThromboVision-Timeline-With-Contributions

Obama should be investigated for Solyndra, but Perry isn't corrupt, right? These are just two of an entire career's worth of this kind of arrogant abuse of power. It simply will not withstand national scrutiny. You think I'm bad, wait until the Dems and the press cut loose on all this stuff.

posting on FR won’t save the country

LOL...probably not, but Perry's people seem to think FR is pretty important. They're crawling all over the place here, just like Romney's people were back in 2007.

I appreciate your little 'reasonable/moderate' act, but this isn't about purity. It's about ethics. It's about putting a man forward as the standard bearer of the GOP who may well engage in the same kind of cronyism we've seen from Obama, but call it 'conservative'. That is unacceptable.