[Vision2020] Michele, Here’s the Bell

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

------------------------------
May 29, 2013
Michele, Here’s the Bell By GAIL
COLLINS<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/gailcollins/index.html>

If Michele Bachmann leaves Congress, does that mean the end of the Light
Bulb Freedom of Choice Act? That was pretty much my favorite Michele
Bachmann piece of legislation.

“President Bachmann will allow you to buy any light bulb you want,” she had
vowed during her campaign for the 2012 Republican nomination. Nobody got
into the issue of repressive lighting efficiency standards in quite the
same way.

That presidential race was pretty much the peak of Bachmann’s career.
Remember her high point, when she swept to victory in the Iowa straw poll?
Which was followed by the low point of coming in sixth in the actual Iowa
caucuses. And calls for the abolition of future straw polls.

Now it’s all over, apparently. On Wednesday, while touring Russia and
unavailable for comment, Bachmann released a
video<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-nV4AGV50I&list=UUoSBDMdSyQVQHKH5PBw-69Q&index=1>announcing
that she would not run for re-election in 2014.

“I will continue to work vehemently and robustly to fight back against what
most in the other party want to do, to transform our country into becoming.
Which would be a nation that our founders would hardly even recognize
today,” Bachmann told the nation. As only she could.

Her announcement had a strange, perky quality that drew instant comparisons
to airline safety videos. Although it went on for more than eight minutes,
Bachmann was vague about several critical points, such as why she was
quitting. She was far more specific about what was *not* propelling her
out. Definitely not the fact that the guy who nearly beat her last time
around has announced that he is running again. And totally for sure not
reports that the F.B.I. is investigating her campaign finances.

“My future is full, it is limitless, and my passions for America will
remain,” she said over cheery background music. She could very easily have
been telling us that in case of loss of cabin pressure, we should put on
our own oxygen mask before aiding other passengers.

So farewell to Michele Bachmann, a politician who had a great faith in
average folks — readily quoting their opinions to the nation as if the
information had just emerged from the labs of M.I.T. A woman at a debate
complained that a vaccine against H.P.V. caused mental retardation, and
Bachmann instantly announced the news on network TV. Ditto with the inside
scoop from a Japanese man who assured her that in his home country, people
who criticize the government aren’t allowed to get health care.

In honor of her departure, Michele-watchers around the country rolled out
their favorite Bachmann quotes. Mine was her contention that the theory of
evolution was disputed by “hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of
them holding Nobel Prizes.”

We may not see her like again. Or, if one shows up, we may decide not to
pay attention.

A long-running adieu (she’s not really going away until the end of 2014) to
a woman who worships the founding fathers — who, she once informed a
Republican crowd, started off the Revolution with a shot “heard round the
world” in New Hampshire. Patriots like Washington, Jefferson and Madison,
who would never have wanted to live in an America where there were census
forms or high-protein cafeteria meals. (“Where in the #Constitution does it
say the fed. government should regulate potatoes in school lunches?” she
Twittered.)

The most interesting question about Bachmann is how she and Sarah Palin
came to be the two most high-profile women in the Tea Party. Neither one
has ever had a real political organization. Palin didn’t like being
governor enough to finish the term. Bachmann has been a terrible
legislator. Women in Congress tend to be good at working with others.
Michele Bachmann is good at talking on her cellphone during meetings.

They certainly have intense personalities. But you have to wonder if the
secret is that, by political standards, they both look extremely hot. And
if it’s their appearance that made them such stars, is that for the benefit
of the Tea Party men or the Tea Party women? Ronnee Schreiber, a professor
at San Diego State University, who studies gender and politics, says the
women in the grass-roots Tea Party she’s interviewed kept focusing on how
the pair “looked so feminine and dressed so ladylike.”

Whatever Bachmann’s secret, it isn’t really working anymore. Her career
jumped the shark when she and a few colleagues demanded that one of Hillary
Clinton’s top aides be investigated as a possible Muslim extremist trying
to infiltrate the government. The aide, Huma Abedin, is married to former
Congressman Anthony Weiner, and I think I speak for the entire country when
I say the poor woman has enough problems to deal with in the real world.

Meanwhile, the Tea Party caucus Bachmann founded in the House has lost its
traction. In the Senate, right-wing newcomers like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz
have captured the limelight from the congresswoman from Minnesota who once
won the Iowa straw poll.

And sponsored the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act. Can’t forget about
that.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20130530/1321d4e2/attachment.html>