Well, true, this is a lot like the treatment Sarah got. But there’s an extra angle to this. This attempt to portray her as almost paranoid is grist for the “flake” meme (and this is just a pet theory I have), which is part of a larger just-in-case strategy to be deployed if Bachmann should secure the GOP nomination, a trap play. She has a mentor, John Eidsmoe, who can be portrayed as the conservative version of Jeremiah Wright, proslavery, pro-theocracy, etc. Distortions, of course, but Daily Beast’s Michelle Goldberg is already out there outlining the basic themes of the strategy:
They are clearly going with a general narrative (“flake, extremist, paranoid”) that will play into this endgame stunt (tapes of some controversial Eidsmoe remarks surface just weeks before the election, for example) or something like it. So if I were Bachmann, I’d be thinking about preempting this somehow. Because if this comes up too close to the general election, she may not be able to do effective damage control in time.
I want Sarah to win, but I also want a fair fight.
I guess controversy dogged JFK because he was shot.
Bizarre how this is reversed.