Former McCain adviser Mike Murphy has a major sad about Michelle Bachmann:
My guess is that she’ll get some real attention and potential a decent number of voters in the Iowa caucus, raise enough money through the mail and on the internet to have a basic campaign operation and steal some attention from the more serious candidates at the debates. The White House political staff will enjoy a few big belly laughs. That is about it. Her campaign, like Trump’s, is about ego and nothing else. There is no patriotism, of the Tea Party variety or any other, in that. There was a time in the Republican Party, before the chaos of the Internet, cable TV howlers and all the rest of the modern campaign circus when pragmatic political bosses would labor silently and effectively to prevent train wreck candidacies like Michele Bachmann from sprouting up and distracting attention from the very serious business of nominating the party’s Presidential candidate. No more, alas.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Bachmann or Palin would be only marginally more destructive to our country than Burkean nice guy Tim Pawlenty. Yes, I say that because any of the three would be incalculably damaging as president, but that doesn’t make what I’m saying any less true.
GOP insiders don’t like Bachmann because the hurts their brand, not because she hurts the country. Personally, I’ll take crazy with a crazy face over crazy with a veneer of seriousness every time.
Valdivia
Totally agree. The ‘serious’ people like Bobo and Chunky Bobo just want the veneer of sanity not the positive engagement with actual sane policy. Which is why better the crazy with the crazy face then the Trojan Horse.
Mixed metaphors and all!
Guster
Would they be even marginally more destructive?
I imagine they’d be marginally less effective, and substantially less impressive to the Beltway, which would make them less destructive.
jibeaux
Bill Maher apparently has a bit about how governing with Republicans is like trying to be roommates with meth addicts. That’s pretty much the analogy I have been searching for for a long time.
MikeJ
Mike Murphy? He was just a hired hand, workin’ on the dreams he planned to try.
But on topic, people have run on a platform of “the party bosses keeping the little guy candidate out” for centuries. The spokespeople for the party bosses have always said, yes, we need to keep the rabble and the nutters out. And usually the party bosses have been right, at least about choosing the more electable (if not the better) candidate.
Bachmann is the perfect reflection of the Republican party. She’s loonier than Canadian money, and the Republican establishment will just have to accept that most of their base is too.
Steve in Iowa
Word.
General Stuck
Any republican would be a disaster as president these days. They have seemingly erased any potential from one of their own acting in any way contrary to the current party line, that was written and is updated daily through a consortium of right wing radio talkers, bloggers, and tea party branetrust.
If Jesus Christ dropped in for a go at the POTUS as a republican, he would have to clear any miracles performed with Limbaugh, and signed off by Sarah Palin.
And on another note. The Nooner gives the mother of all concern troll articles today in the Wall Street Journal on the Libya matter. All of the wingnuts are chewing their legs off trying to mock Obama into oblivion for daring take on their top issue. Think Obama puzzy on steroids,
Joe Beese
As if anyone ever ran for President out of a sense of patriotism.
Surely this kind of bullshit is meant for the rubes.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Tequila sunrise? Really? At least you could have gone with Warren. Sigh.
But, your point is a good one nevertheless. Openly crazy is infinitely preferable to nuts with a thin veneer of civilized solemnity, like TPaw.
Valdivia
@General Stuck:
Yes saw that. She is getting slaughtered on twitter because she cheerleadered Iraq to death. I also saw that Krauthammer has finally found a military operation he doesn’t like!
Ija
He hankers for the day of smoke-filled back room filled with white men deciding what is good for the country.
This paragraph reads so much like a parody of right-wing thoughts written by a dastardly liberal. Alas, it’s not a parody.
Zifnab
Sure, when you compare Michelle Bachmann to Newt Gingrich or Bob Dole or George Bush or Mitch McConnell or Ronald Reagen – from a policy standpoint they’re all coming from the same place.
But don’t look. Just feel. Doesn’t a Ronald Reagen Presidency feel better? He was so big and tall and strong. The kind of aged Greek God who just sends a shiver up your leg. I don’t know what it is about Bachmann, but she just doesn’t seem to have the same effect on the Chris Matthews crowd.
Guess we’ll have to settle on starbursts.
Joe Beese
Money quote:
.
Word.
Superluminar
Stupid DougJ, Michelle Bachmann isn’t Real, she’s just a CIA plant to coveniently get liberals to be against the Tea Party, which there are no good arguments against.
jibeaux
@Ija:
Wow, that is pretty awful. Ms. Bachmann, should you see Tonya Harding coming at you with a crowbar, you should probably run. It may be Mike Murphy’s “silent but effective” campaign prevention plan…
General Stuck
@Joe Beese:
So, after mind melding with Quaddafi, you are expanding your horizons by jumping in the Noonan Clown Car. Impressive Beese, but please renounce Stalin today, or people will talk.
maya
To heck with all of this nonsense. Looking through my wardrobe I’m having a hard time figuring out what to wear to the Second Coming.
fasteddie9318
@Superluminar:
Baud
I will undoubtedly repeat this ad nauseum until the 2012 elections but it’s worth remembering:
That is all.
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known as Kryptik
Feh. Not even this. Your Bachmanns and your Limbaughs are still invaluable to the Right and the GOP, precisely because they make the crazy with a serious face seem all the more palatable by comparison, even when they essentially say the exact same fucking thing.
NonyNony
No, they wouldn’t. They would be marginally less destructive than Tim Pawlenty.
Pawlenety knows how to work the press. Pawlenty knows how to “sound reasonable”. Pawlenty knows how to look like he’s considering all of the options in a “fair and reasonable way” before coming down with his wingnut decisions. In short, Pawlenty can fake it.
Neither Palin nor Bachmann have this talent. Both of them would bring out an adversarial press that would surpass what Clinton had to deal with and hasn’t been seen for Republican presidents since Nixon. Palin would do it because the Villager press would treat her just like they did Clinton – as someone out of her class who is just in town to “mess up the place” – not because they disagree with her policies, but because the classism is thick and their disdain for people who step outside where they “should” be is obvious for anyone who has watched the press for the last few decades.
Bachmann would bring it out because she’s a wild-eyed nutter who actually says what she means most of the time, and given that when you lay Republican policies bare they sound incredibly cruel and heartless – and often crazy – any kind of announcement from the Oval Office would chum the waters up violently.
So I’ve become convinced that I’d RATHER see Palin or Bachmann get the nomination these days – they can’t possibly do MORE damage than a “resonable” Tim Pawlenty or Mitt Romney or whoever could do, nor could they do more damage than Newt or the Huckster or any of the others waiting in the wings. If we’re going to have to live under Republican rule it might as well have an honest Republican face instead of the faux-reasonable one that so many of them want to project.
Petorado
Umm, someone should tell Mr. Miller that patriotism is not politically motivated hatred of your fellow countrymen spun out of racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, and utterly selfish beliefs.
That’s why I think we should abolish the tax system and institute a system of annual membership dues to the Patriotic America Society. That way patriotism could be judged by whether you were a dues-paying member or not, rather than tax avoidance and “draining the beast” somehow being a measure of loyalty to true American beliefs.
A Farmer
She’ll keep Leno and Letterman in material for a while. Yes, the entire GOP is crazy, but at least you can see crazy in her eyes.
It isn’t that she doesn’t realize she has no business running for president, it is that she can raise millions of dollars that boggles my mind. There are a lot of people out there who either have a sick sense of humor or they have no business writing checks.
Joe Beese
@General Stuck:
One of the advantages of not being a party loyalist is that you can recognize wisdom even when it’s being hypocritically peddled by opportunists.
BGinCHI
He say “bug,” I say “feature.”
rec
I still fail to see how George W. Bush was any less clownish than a Bachmann or a Palin. The man had stupid incompetent written all over him already in 1999.
But I guess he’s male, so there’s that.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@NonyNony:
This.
The Dubya Presidency has wreaked havoc on this country that we might never recover from. He had the veneer of seriousness and yet he made sure he stocked the gubmint with every wild-ass wingnut you could imagine. And because he had the DC Press Corpse eating out of his palm, he got away with it for far longer (until Katrina) than any other radical president could have even dreamed.
You put Palin or Bachmann in there and yeah, they’ll take the Dubya blueprint and stamp it all over the place. But there will be pushback. Lots of it.
Ugh, let’s hope we’re never faced with this.
General Stuck
@Joe Beese:
I always say, that Beese, he’s all about the wisdom thingy. Carry on Confucius,
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@rec: Classism, pure and simple. W had stupid and incompetent written all over him, true, but he was from the proper class. The very upper, to be blunt about it. Gender is quite immaterial, really.
bemused
@maya:
Ha, good one.
This is one of those days when I just want to sit on the floor and bawl. The amount of insanity increases daily and it’s exhausting. I have moments of terror thinking it’s going to get unimaginably ugly before enough people get shocked into seeing what’s happening in this country.
balconesfault
Murphy made a funny!
GregB
I might just have to get on board the Bachmann campaign volunteer bus here in NH just for the sheer enjoyment of riding a tiger. A mentally challenged tiger missing on leg and an eye, but a tiger nonetheless.
Penon
Jesus H. Capitalism, why do these guys hold morose and forgotten Prussian royalty so close to their hearts?
jibeaux
@GregB:
I think you mean cougar, big guy.
Rawr.
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@rec:
Bush was less clownish if only because he at least had to put on the veneer of ‘Compassionate Conservatism’, which I imagine if he were running today would be completely unnecessary, and he would be free to be as absolutely clownish as any other GOP fuck.
NonyNony
@rec:
Ah let me spell that one out for you:
George W. Bush comes from a long line of aristocrats. Bachmann comes from a divorced family where her mother worked for a living. Palin’s parents were school teachers IIRC.
It’s classism, plain and simple. Bush good because his daddy could afford to buy him into Yale and had buddies who needed companies to run into the ground. McCain good because his daddy was an admiral and he married a beer heiress. Palin and Bachmann bad because they actually have accomplished what they’ve managed to accomplish on their own merits, and not because daddy was rich enough to buy them success.
(And reading the above you might think that I have more respect for Sarah Palin than I do for George W Bush or John McCain. And in fact that is the case – I don’t like Sarah Palin. I would not want her to be president. I would not want her anywhere near government. But she has accomplished more through her own ability without having success handed to her than George W Bush or John McCain ever have. So yeah, I’ve got far, far more respect for the woman some folks like to call a “Snowbilly” than I do for a good-sized chunk of our ruling elite…)
Zifnab
@A Farmer:
It’s the new cult of personality. You had Jim Jones in the 70s. Scientology in the 90s. The Tea Party and the Glenn Beck nuts are just the latest in a long history of American suckers.
shortstop
We’re still pretending that an arrogant, pathologically angry old luddite who consistently displays a staggering lack of knowledge on his “signature” policy issues, who pulls stunts like “I’m suspending my campaign” and “Let’s nominate this dumbass woman and we’ll poach the Hillary vote,” and whose entire legislative MO is now “Whatever Obama’s for, I’m agin it” was a serious candidate?
bemused
As Governor, Pawlenty did a ton of damage to Minn.
When he was Majority Leader, he said this in April 2001, “Children who are victims of failed personal responsibility are not my problem, nor are they the problem for our government”.
He’s always been a lowlife piece of crap.
NonyNony
@shortstop:
Whose pretending? He won the Republican nomination and he garnered almost 46% of the popular vote. He was also treated far more deferentially and seriously by the media than most of the rest of the candidates in the field on either side of the aisle.
Why? Because he was a rich old white dude whose admiral daddy helped him become a fighter pilot and who liked to throw BBQs for reporters using his wife’s money. That’s all it takes to be a “serious” candidate in US politics these days.
Zifnab
@NonyNony:
But she really hasn’t. I mean, I can spot you Mayor of Wasilla. But she was picked for Governor by her political peers. And she was picked as VP to run with John McCain. The rest of her “success” has just been cashing in on her media hype. But even that wasn’t “her” doing. It was the doing of the hard working Joes at FOX’n’Friends, Clear Channel’s All Limbaugh All The Time, and the rest of the right wing noise machine.
Sarah Palin was anointed. She didn’t earn her position any more than Bush or McCain. She just came from humbler backgrounds.
Fe E
@bemused:
Exactly. I hated T Paw wayyyyyy before he became governor, and I knew we were in for 8 shitty years. Plus, can somebody explain to me why is is said to be “likable” or “nice?”
He always struck me as the sarcastic class clown who got a lot of mileage out of coming up with clever put downs for the kid with bad asthma or Downs’ syndrome.
Violet
Ah, yes. The Serious Business. What a Villager.
RalfW
Two comments:
1. Pawlenty is much more dangerous, because he doesn’t have the vacant stare, just the vacant policies.
2. La Bachmann was the selected Google banner ad at the top of BJ just now for me. I clicked, so ya’l will get your .000002 cents, and she’ll probably have to pay teh Googlz several times that. During 2007-8, I constantly got McCain ads on 538 (oh how I miss the real 538) and I dutifully clicked each day, sometimes several times a day. I hope my pain led to 538/BJ gain.
ppcli
That’s what I thought too. But then I found out he had been a POW, which I hadn’t heard before. That changed everything.
reggieT
wtf does “Burkean” mean? I always see that here…
GregB
@jibeaux:
Got me with a LOL there pal.
Turgidson
@Zifnab:
Rather than being born on 3rd base and thinking she hit a triple like W, she started at home plate like most people, but bunted up the 1st base line, and ran straight to 3rd instead of 1st and claimed THAT was a triple.
Yeah, it’s almost baseball season and that analogy kinda sucks. Oh well.
Comrade DougJ
@reggieT:
See the B section of our dictionary.
celticdragonchick
@GregB:
Same here. I might just hang on to my otherwise useless GOP registration here IN NC just to keep the fun rolling along…
bemused
@Fe E:
He’s been described as personable too which makes me want to scream and gag at the same time.
I don’t know if you watched him around, the time of the unallotment flap, when he announced cutting healthcare to the poor. I was just stunned watching him. He looked like he was absolutely enjoying himself, practically beaming. I actually felt sick to my stomach.
He’s a snake and as nasty mean as they come.
Incoherent Dennis SGMM
If Bachmann came from an old New England family with a wealth of connections and a shit ton of money, Mike Murphy would be getting starbursts while writing long puff pieces describing her as a “maverick” and “a breath of fresh air.”
Fe E
@bemused:
Yeah, I pretty much had that in mind when I wrote my first response. He’s always so glibly happy when delivering bad news to people who are already hosed.
I mean I know THAT’S a likable trait–to any sociopath. Which the right wing seems to be full of.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Valdivia:
Krauthammer was for it, before he was against it. Like Newt.
Triassic Sands
With the Modern Republican Party, the more effective a politician is, the more damage he or she could do. Clownettes Bachmann and Palin are both inept and depending on the make-up of Congress during a Palin/Bachmann administration (regime might be a better word), the damage they could do might be significantly limited. Domestically, someone less inept — Pawlenty? — could pose a much greater threat by virtue of successfully pushing the GOP’s gawdawful domestic agenda.
On the global front, the danger of either a Bachmann or Palin presidency is incalculable — is there any limit to how much damage either one might do? Would military leaders simply refuse to follow orders or resign should one of the Idiot Queens get all Strangelovey-dovey on us?
The prospect of any Republican president in 2013 is too horrible to contemplate.
Yutsano
@Triassic Sands:
At this point, nahgunna happen. Even with the economy sputtering and things like wars flaring up Obama is STILL running in the 50% approval range. And no Republican is coming close to his popularity. Add in what they will have to do to win the Repub nod and it looks pretty good for Team Democrat. Which is also why I’m not fretting as much over the Senate as other folks.
NonyNony
@Zifnab:
And right there you’ve already agreed with me that she’s accomplished more by herself without the lift from family connections than either George W. Bush or John McCain did.
You can go back even further – she got a college degree by herself. Sure it took her something like six times to do it and without anything like a stellar GPA, but no one was standing behind her pressuring the college into handing her a “Gentleman’s C” or making sure that the cutoff at the bottom of the class for pilots included the admiral’s son.
And she managed to get a job as a sportscaster without family connections. Sure most of that probably had to do with her looks and her bubbly personality not any actual merit (though perhaps looks and bubbly personality count as “merit” to TV news talking heads), but at least she got the job on her own, and not because daddy’s friends had a sports team that needed to be run into the ground for tax purposes.
bemused
@Fe E:
I ran into my local Rep right after seeing that. When I told him how shocked I was that T-Paw looked so happy and enjoying himself. I had to laugh when my Rep said he could think of better ways to have fun.
It’s all just a game to them, winning and singlemindedly destroying the opposition, no matter what the collateral damage is for others or even themselves. Wonderful traits for public service.
Sociopaths is right.
thalarctos
@General Stuck: My favorite line:
Really, Peggy? Why do you think that is?
Shoemaker-Levy 9
Either of them would be immediately surrounded by establishment hacks if she got as far as the nomination, and the last time the GOP had a complete idiot in the White House the policies were those of his neocon advisors, not anything he himself ran on. I think you’re right, they’re worried about PR damage, not policy damage.
Chris Grrr™
@A Farmer: Oh please, oh please let those checks keep coming. Every dollar wasted on Bachmann or Palin or Real ‘Murkin Sheriff Joe will keep the crazy 27% occupied.
Jamey: Bike Commuter of the Gods
There was a time in the Republican Party, before the chaos of the Internet, cable TV howlers and
all the rest of the modern campaign circusamoral fucknozzles like Mike Murphy…Fix’d
Howlin Wolfe
@NonyNony: Don’t forget the bbq and tire swing!
Jeffro
The comments section for Murphy’s piece are hysterical.
(not afraid to get out of the boat once in a while ;)
It is going to be soooo hard not to be overconfident going into Nov 2012, no matter who they put up or how bad the economy is. They (the Republicans) just cannot help but share their innermost thoughts at every turn…and that is good, good news for Dems.
Bruce S
I think it’s terribly unfair to Edmund Burke to call TeePaw “Burkean.” Also probably more than a bit unfair to actual nice guys to call this hollow panderpuss of smiley-face cynicism a “nice guy.”
Just saying…
BombIranForChrist
This:
Yup.
Chet
@NonyNony: This.
It’s like in ’08 when another Villager, Kathleen Parker, suggested that the GOP should stop marginalizing itself by kowtowing to the evangelicals. From the Repubs’ standpoint that’s damned good advice, but if you’re any kind of a progressive you want to scream at the wingnuts not to listen to this RINO.