I will admit that I cannot stand Michele Bachmann. She typifies what's wrong with today's GOP and she also shows what's wrong with allowing Christofascist nutcases in taking over a major political party. The irony is that while she viewed herself as a GOP/Christianist champion, some believe that her exodus may actually help the GOP. The Party certainly doesn't need a high profile idiot advertising just how insane the GOP has become. A piece in Politico looks at Bachmann's decision not to seek re-election and how it helps the GOP:
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) — the tea-party firebrand facing investigations and a daunting reelection race — abruptly announced on Wednesday morning that she will not seek reelection to a fifth term.
Her move marked a spectacular fall for a congresswoman with a bull’s eye on her back every congressional cycle: Less than two years ago, she won the Iowa straw poll and was briefly regarded as a serious contender for the GOP presidential nomination.
With Bachmann’s departure, the tea party’s voice in Congress will dim. She is the movement’s third big-name figure in recent months to leave Congress — Jim DeMint of South Carolina resigned from the Senate in January to take over the Heritage Foundation. And in November, Florida Rep. Allen West, another conservative bomb thrower, lost reelection.
Ironically, the retirement may improve Republicans’ chances of holding Minnesota’s conservative 6th Congressional District, which broke for Mitt Romney by nearly 15 percentage points in 2012. Democrats had Bachmann at the top of their target list after she barely survived reelection last year. The Democrat who came close to defeating her, Jim Graves, was gearing up for a rematch.
In Graves, she was up against an opponent who came within 5,000 votes — or 1.2 percent points — of unseating her last November. Graves, a wealthy hotel company executive who poured $250,000 of his own funds into the 2012 contest, released a poll last week showing him with a narrow lead over the congresswoman.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which provided Graves with little help in 2012, had indicated that it planned to get behind the challenger aggressively in Round Two. Though Bachmann would have had an enormous war chest, the defeat of West — another tea party hero with a national following and big money — showed that such figures are not invincible.
The congresswoman’s decision comes as a shock to Republican officials, many of whom thought she was taking serious steps to running for reelection. Early this month, Bachmann began airing TV ads highlighting her role in sponsoring legislation to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care law – an especially early point in the election season for a House member to begin running commercials.
Bachmann’s outsized success with the conservative grassroots was not matched with equal prowess inside the Beltway. In the Capitol, the Minnesota Republican never proved herself a savvy legislative operator, or even a real factor in the rough and tumble of Congressional brawling. She drew her strength from her ability to grab headlines opposing President Barack Obama’s legislative agenda.
I say good riddance. Bachmann embraced bigotry, ignorance and with her husband has peddled "ex-gay" lies in order to enrich herself and her Nellie husband..
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