The G.O.P.’s Bachmann Problem

By CHARLES M. BLOW

The current intramural squabbling on the right is just too delicious for words. At least for nice words.

Senator John McCain called the far-right darlings Senator Rand Paul, Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Justin Amash “wacko birds” earlier this month. (McCain later apologized for that burst of honesty and candor.)

Ann Coulter used her Conservative Political Action Conference speech to take a shot at New Jersey’s governor, Chris Christie, who was not invited to speak this year. Coulter quipped: “Even CPAC had to cut back on its speakers this year, by about 300 pounds.” What a lovely woman.

Also at CPAC, the half-term ex-governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, took a whack at Karl Rove, challenging him to run for office himself. “Buck up or stay in the truck,” she said with her usual Shakespearean eloquence. Rove shot back that if he were to run and win, he’d at least finish his term. Ouch.

Donald Trump took to Twitter recently to call the conservative blogger Michelle Malkin a “dummy” who was “born stupid.” It’s hard to know whom to side with when two bullies battle.

But all this name-calling, as fun as it is to watch, is just a sideshow. The main show is the underlying agitation.

The Republican Party is experiencing an existential crisis, born of its own misguided incongruity with modern American culture and its insistence on choosing intransigence in a dynamic age of fundamental change. Instead of turning away from obsolescence, it is charging headlong into it, becoming more strident and pushing away more voters whom it could otherwise win.

Andrew Kohut, the founding director of the Pew Research Center, pointed out in The Washington Post on Friday that the party’s ratings “now stand at a 20-year low,” and that is in part because “the outsize influence of hard-line elements in the party base is doing to the G.O.P. what supporters of Gene McCarthy and George McGovern did to the Democratic Party in the late 1960s and early 1970s — radicalizing its image and standing in the way of its revitalization.”

And too many of those hard-liners have a near-allergic reaction to the truth.

A prime example is Michele Bachmann, the person who convened the Tea Party Caucus in Congress and a Republican candidate for president last year.

She burst back on the scene with a string of lies and half-truths that could have drawn a tsk tsk from Tom Sawyer.

PolitiFact rated two of her claims during her CPAC speech last Saturday as “pants on fire” false. The first was that 70 cents of every dollar that’s supposed to go to the poor actually goes to salaries and pensions of bureaucrats. The second was that scientists could have a cure for Alzheimer’s in 10 years if it were not for “a cadre of overzealous regulators, excessive taxation and greedy litigators.”

She also said during that speech that President Obama was living “a lifestyle that is one of excess” in the White House, detailing how many chefs he had, and so on.
The Washington Post gave that claim four Pinocchios, and pointed out that “during last year’s G.O.P. presidential race, Bachmann racked up the highest ratio of Four-Pinocchio comments, so just about everything she says needs to be checked and double-checked before it is reported.”

And in a speech Thursday on the House floor, she said of the federal health care law:
“The American people, especially vulnerable women, vulnerable children, vulnerable senior citizens, now get to pay more and they get less. That’s why we’re here, because we’re saying let’s repeal this failure before it literally kills women, kills children, kills senior citizens.”

Factcheck.org pointed out that her “facts” didn’t match her hyperbole.
Last year The Washington Post quoted Jim Drinkard, who oversees fact-checking at The Associated Press, as saying, “We had to have a self-imposed Michele Bachmann quota in some of those debates.”

It’s sad when you are so fact-challenged that you burn out the fact-checkers.
People like Bachmann represent everything that is wrong with the Republican Party. She and her colleagues are hyperbolic, reactionary, ill-informed and ill-intentioned, and they have become synonymous with the Republican brand. We don’t need all politicians to be Mensa-worthy, but we do expect them to be cogent and competent.
When all the dust settles from the current dustup within the party over who holds the mantle and which direction to take, Republicans will still be left with the problem of what to do with people like Bachmann.

And as long as the party has Bachmanns, it has a problem.

from: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/23/opinion/blow-the-gops-bachmann-problem.html?src=me&ref=general

The fringes of each party would be divine comedy, if it weren't for the fact that they vote on important issues.

"Politics is the best show in America. I love animals and I love politicians, and I like to watch both of 'em at play, either back home in their native state, or after they've been captured and sent to a zoo, or to Washington." Will Rogers

We live in a time where most people only like to hear their own opinions, so who cares about lies.

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1979 Black on Black, 300CD (sold), 1990 Black 300SE, Silver 1989 Volvo 780, 1988 300CE (vanished by the hands of a girlfriend), 1992 300CE (Rescue).

Mr. Rogers shows that its been the same for all time.

Well it would not be good to have 2 Political Parties the same as the Democratic Party either.
From a disgruntled Democrat.

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84 300D, 82 Volvo 244Gl Diesel

7 parties would be better.

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1979 Black on Black, 300CD (sold), 1990 Black 300SE, Silver 1989 Volvo 780, 1988 300CE (vanished by the hands of a girlfriend), 1992 300CE (Rescue).

Anybody thinking that more than 2 parties is a good idea needs serious education...

Looking at the original post, a lot of what the "fact checkers" called BS on Bachmann was actually true, with some items speculation and could go either way. A fact checker for a liberal organization which is out to destroy the opposite side (i.e. AP) has little credibility.

Check out Jake Tapper who jumped networks and is now spouting off about how the Swift Boat Veterans lied about John Kerry. Tapper was the fact checker at ABC at that time. Trouble is, his own reporting at the time contradicts what he says now: in 2004 he interviewed eyewitnesses on the missions Kerry claimed to have taken enemy fire say they did not take fire.

And anybody who does NOT think Obama is milking the tax payer with his vacations and golf trips is an idiot.

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MB-less

Well call me an idiot then. Cause lets take another presidential family for example, Bush, who spend far, far more on vacations! 80 trips to his ranch? There is 20 million right there, ONLY for the flights. Not even counting added security, etc. We could get into the numerous golf trip expenses or how he used his ranch as a "work place" to hide expenses. (as so many business owners do when taking an out of town trip)

Mind you, I dont have an issue with the above. It is what it is.

I DO have an issue when ignorant people try to blow things out of proportion when they are WELL within the norm and not an exception by any means because they read one story and dont bother to fact check first.

Get educated!

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1991 560 SEL / 185k miles
1992 750il / 17k miles - project car

Why don't you educate us, Herrn Vage.

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1979 Black on Black, 300CD (sold), 1990 Black 300SE, Silver 1989 Volvo 780, 1988 300CE (vanished by the hands of a girlfriend), 1992 300CE (Rescue).

Most voters, if they were asked ,would say yes to a third party ,I cant imagine anything getting solved with the 2 loggerhead parties weve got now running this country.A Washington bloated ego machine would turn into a versed new plotted direction of this countries compass,we have lost direction in both senses of the word.

If it would happen the Republican party would split in 4 to 5 different parties and the democrats in 3 or 4. And the better the economy go's those parties will move to the center with 2 christian parties on the far right and a green party on the far left.

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1979 Black on Black, 300CD (sold), 1990 Black 300SE, Silver 1989 Volvo 780, 1988 300CE (vanished by the hands of a girlfriend), 1992 300CE (Rescue).

We have 4 parties here; Conservative, NDP, Liberal and Green. The way things are set up, the Conservatives formed the government with the NDP as loyal opposition, which means they can be opposed to government pollicy but still be loyal to the country. As a rule, the loyal opposition isn't generally considered to be anti-Canadian. You say something against the President in America, or any other sacred cow, and you could end up being labled anti-something before the words leave your mouth. Anti-America seems to be a common handle.

The mix of political parties works just fine here. some countries have several or more parties that form governments so it can and does work.

Not if they were all almost the same.

Actually, I don't know because in some Governments they have so many Parties that they have a good deal more trouble than our Government does in moving forward on Legislation; they can't easily put together a majority.

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84 300D, 82 Volvo 244Gl Diesel

After the election a lot of comments came from online posters about how the Republicans needed to improve or change in order to receive more votes in the future. Republicans responded with comments such as they were perfect, they didn't need any help, why should I take advice from a Lib, etc..... The number one comment was: Stop the lies. You are not fooling anyone and you are only revealing what a hopeless low-life you really are.

So the Republican Party did their own post-mortum on the election and found that what everyone had been offering for free on line they were able to pick up for only several million dollars.

The reaction from every Conservative I have talked to since has been they do not intend to change a single thing from what they did last time around. I favor this approach myself, but I think my reasons for this are different from theirs.

What's that thing Conservatives say? What do you call someone who does the same thing over and over expecting a different result?

Too many of the Conservative leaders are nothing but parts of a Clown Show where they try to hurl the most creative insults at the Democrats. This is always good for a laugh, but among Conservatives this passes for leadership. Hurling insults solves problems?

The only good thing about all of this is that the problem will eventually take care of itself. The talk show routine can only handle so many leading lights, and eventually even Conservatives will get tired of paying these folks to tell them over and over that they are right.

Although, now that I think about it...... Nope. They probably won't.

I think here the Parties other than the Democratic and Republican Parties seldom get elected but do manage to draw support away from the Republican or Democrats and that has an effect on who is elected in those Parties.

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84 300D, 82 Volvo 244Gl Diesel