Because, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, the moral arc of the universe tends to bend in the direction of justice, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is finally leaving office. With her, she takes a legacy of incompetence, hatred, and stupidity that may be hard to match.
In a farewell speech on the floor of the House, Bachmann was heavy on references to Moses (“Moses is given for the full honor of the greatest lawgiver in this chamber”) and cutting taxes (“we hold the power of the purse, we would hold the nation’s credit card…”).
As for why she isn’t running again, Bachmann came up with a reason so obviously fabricated that carefully calibrated “BS” detectors as far away as China probably picked up sizeable readings.
“Our Constitution allows for the decision of length of service in Congress to be determined by the congresspeople themselves or by the voters in the district. However, the law limits anyone from serving as president of the United States for more than eight years and in my opinion, well, eight years is also long enough for an individual to serve as a representative of a specific congressional district.”
Yes. You see, our Constitution does not require congresspeople to serve indefinitely. Nobody said it did. Nobody said Bachmann had to. But she just wants to be clear: legally speaking she doesn’t have to run again. Bachmann, benevolent to her people, has decided that eight years is long enough.
While taken at face value it’s simply one more dumb statement made by a person who made delivering dumb statements an artform, what Bachmann is ignoring here is that she isn’t choosing to leave office. Not really. She’s being forced out by a consortium of factors that all but made her ouster a foregone conclusion.
First, there are the criminal charges. Despite hinting at running for president again in 2016, Bachmann’s last bid did not go well. She was an early contender in the Republican primaries, but was left undone when donors and voters began to realize that she was unelectable. She is unapologetically racist towards Hispanics (America’s fastest-growing demographic), casually suggesting they are disease-ridden and inherently criminal. She hates gay people in ways rivaled only by her colleague Rick Santorum. She is openly condescending about poor people. She also makes a fool of herself almost every time she opens her mouth.
Voters ran for the hills, slowly moving on to other, newer unelectable candidates until finally settling for Mitt Romney. In the meantime, Bachmann’s flagging presidential campaign managed to rack up an impressive amount of campaign violations.
Shortly after the election, the FBI announced that Bachmann and her husband Marcus were currently under investigation for money laundering, wire fraud, and mail fraud. According to David Shuster at the Huffington Post, things do not look great for Bachmann’s defense that she was merely surrounded by incompetent staff and had nothing to do with the fraud personally:
According to sources close to the criminal investigation of Bachmann’s presidential campaign, the FBI has now been given sworn testimony and documents alleging Bachmann approved secret payments to Iowa state Senator Kent Sorenson in exchange for his help and support in that state’s 2012 Presidential caucuses. Ethics rules explicitly prohibit Iowa lawmakers from accepting payments from Presidential campaigns or PACs.
But it gets worse. Bachmann isn’t just a potential criminal (something which is not necessarily a dealbreaker for the Republican voter), she is also almost laughably unpopular in her own state. In 2012, her last election, Bachmann had to outspend her Democratic opponent 12-1 in order to beat him… by one percent. And that was in a district that is blood red. So red, in fact, that the Democratic party hardly bothered to help their candidate, Jim Graves, until the end when it dawned on them that Bachmann could possibly lose. In case a friend ever argues that “voting doesn’t matter,” Bachmann beat Graves by just 4,000 votes.
And as the Atlantic points out, Bachmann appears to have desperately wanted to be reelected. In May of 2013, around the time she would need to start campaigning, she paid for some initial television ads to help kickstart her campaign… then quietly scrapped them.
According to GOP strategists, the party was actively encouraging Bachmann not to run. The UK’s Daily Mail spoke to one, who dryly noted:
“Bachmann has a less than 50-50 chance of winning again, and she knows it,” that GOP strategist said.
“She’s probably bowing out gracefully so the RNC has plenty of time to find another candidate. That way if she ever runs for office again – say, for governor of Minnesota – she won’t have to worry about bridges she burned.”
So as we take in Michele Bachmann’s farewell tour (she’s already hitting up the major networks for interviews), we should keep in mind that she is not leaving on her own terms. She has been ousted by her own vileness. As she puts together a campaign for her inevitable 2016 presidential run, we must never forget why she isn’t still in office in the first place.
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