Newsweek/The Daily Beast this week have an article on religious extremist and Tea Party queen Michele Bachmann. The piece looks at some issue Bachmann surely will not like - e.g., her hypocrisy in condemning government programs and spending even as she and husband "Marcia" Bachmann suckle at every government teat they can find be it federal funds for Marcia's bogus "ex-gay" clinics or farm subsidies. It's not a pretty picture, but then neither is the extremism and bigotry that represent Bachmann's principal stock in trade. Here's a sampling of the article's review of Bachmann's hypocrisy:
One is overcoming the perception of hypocrisy. Democrats—and some of Bachmann’s Republican opponents—have noted the gulf between her rhetoric and record. She earned a federal salary as a lawyer for the IRS (an agency despised by the Tea Party), for example. Pressed on whether she took Americans to court to force them to pay back taxes, she answers carefully. “Our employer was the United States Department of Treasury. That’s who paid my salary,” she says. “And the client that we represented was the IRS.”
Bachmann owned a stake in her father-in-law’s farm that received more than $250,000 in federal agriculture subsidies between 1995 and 2008. She says that money all stayed with her in-laws. In Congress, she tried to secure more than $3.7 million in federal earmarks for her district—the kind of pet projects she has blamed for excessive spending. And she railed against Obama’s $800 billion–plus Recovery Act as wasteful, then signed a half-dozen letters seeking stimulus funds for local projects.
But far more damaging than the charge of double standards may be the growing realization among Americans of just how radical the Tea Party movement really is. The willingness of its most committed members to risk national default for the sake of achieving its political goals has no doubt contributed to the dramatic rise in the number of Americans who view the movement unfavorably. In a New York Times/CBS News poll published on Aug. 5, 40 percent of respondents described their opinion of the Tea Party as “not favorable”—up from 18 percent in April 2010.
There’s no telling if Republican primary voters will reward such intransigence. Even within the Tea Party itself, Bachmann is a polarizing figure. Many—especially in Iowa, with its high percentage of evangelical Christians—respond rapturously to her combination of antigovernment fervor and religiously inspired moral traditionalism on issues like abortion and gay marriage. But others are more consistent in their distaste for governmental meddling.
Other criticisms of her candidacy point to what she’s done since arriving in Washington. “Her record in Congress is…great remarks and great speeches, but in terms of results and accomplishments, nonexistent,” says former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, whose presidential campaign has the most to lose in Ames. Bachmann dismisses the critique, hoping to convert a strong showing in the straw poll into momentum among voters and fundraisers elsewhere.
Things get really interesting, however, when Bachmann is asked about the - in my view - utterly fraudulent "Christian counseling" clinics she owns with the lisping, mincing "Marcia" Bachmann or the issue of gay marriage. As Andy Towle notes, reporters who ask very relevant questions on thses topics Bachmann seems increasingly to seek to retaliate against offending reporters and news outlets:
Michele Bachmann has made a habit of avoiding inquiries about marriage equality and her husband's homophobic professional work. The Republican presidential candidate dismissed one Iowa news station's questions about her husband's ex-gay clinics, later stonewalled a reporter from that same channel and then dodged related questions at the National Press Club.
Now it appears Bachmann has done the same thing to New Hampshire's Concord Monitor, via Politico.
Bachmann cut off an interview last week as she was being asked a question about gay marriage and emphasized that she is focused on rebuilding the economy and repealing federal health care reform. "I'm not involved in light, frivolous matters," she said. "I'm not involved in fringe or side issues. I'm involved in serious issues."
The reality, of course, is that everything about Bachmann is fringe and frivolous and but for her extremism and the following she has among those untethered from objective reality one would want to simply dismiss her. That would be dangerous, however, because she is the face of the growing insanity among the GOP base and the Christianists.
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