[Strap in, y’all, as I am about to defend Michele Bachmann…to a point. And Wayne and I seem to be of two minds on the subject, so here’s his take.]
Last week, Truth Wins Out released the results of an undercover operation which showed that the clinic owned by Marcus and Michele Bachmann offers “ex-gay” reparative therapy, which goes against all standards of medicine and mental health practice, and which is harmful to those who are subjected to it. Michele Bachmann has a long, long record of saying completely awful, baseless things about gay and lesbian people. Her husband is on tape referring to gays as “barbarians” who have to be educated. She has called on the media to investigate Congress to determine whether or not members are anti-American. I could go on forever, but if you really need a primer in the insane things Michele Bachmann has done and/or said over the course of her career, go play at the Dump Bachmann blog. Bachmann is not fit to be president of this or any other country.
As we on the liberal side of the aisle have made the case against her, we have used facts, figures, quotes, investigative reporting and analysis to illuminate why Michele Bachmann is unfit for public office. But now the establishment Right has decided that she has to be eliminated from the running, as she is unpredictable and unlikely to kowtow to the desires of Beltway Republicans. And so it was that Tucker Carlson’s Daily Choler website released their own “investigation” last night which showed that…well…
Erm…
According to the piece, Michele Bachmann gets bad headaches sometimes. The piece relies almost solely on unnamed former aides, who claim that sometimes Bachmann suffers from debilitating migraines:
“She has terrible migraine headaches. And they put her out of commission for a day or more at a time. They come out of nowhere, and they’re unpredictable,” says an adviser to Bachmann who was involved in her 2010 congressional campaign. “They level her. They put her down. It’s actually sad. It’s very painful.”
Bachmann’s medical condition wouldn’t merit public attention, but for the fact she is running for president. Some close to Bachmann fear she won’t be equal to the stress of the campaign, much less the presidency itself.
“When she gets ‘em, frankly, she can’t function at all. It’s not like a little thing with a couple Advils. It’s bad,” the adviser says. “The migraines are so bad and so intense, she carries and takes all sorts of pills. Prevention pills. Pills during the migraine. Pills after the migraine, to keep them under control. She has to take these pills wherever she goes.”
The headline to this piece? “Stress-related condition ‘incapacitates’ Bachmann; heavy pill use alleged.”
This has to be one of the shoddiest, most irresponsible, cruel pieces of journalism I’ve ever seen in my life. The people who are named in the piece tend to be refuting the spin of the article, for what that’s worth. I can only presume that the power brokers in the Republican party have gotten together and decided that she has to be dealt with, and they’ve chosen a pretty damn sexist way to do it. Dick Cheney functioned as Vice President for years with a heart that barely works. While the fact that the man does not technically have a heartbeat has provided fodder to go along with the fact that the man’s actions while in office do tend to align with the idea of not having a functioning heart or soul, rare was the suggestion that he simply couldn’t be Vice President because of his condition. I’m almost expecting a follow-up from the Daily Choler alleging that every twenty-eight days, Bachmann has an “episode” which causes her to be quite unfit to deal with, or that menopause is making her too much of a bitch to be president. That’s the level of discourse here, and it’s not surprising to see it from the Right attempting to destroy one of their own.
If Bachmann suffers from debilitating migraines, that’s sad and I feel for her, as a fellow migraine sufferer. If she has to take headache medicine to control or subdue them, that strikes me as pretty par for the course. But there is a greater principle at play here. I would rather have a brilliant, thoughtful, effective President who deals with debilitating migraines sometimes, than a President who, seemingly free from most medical issues, is nonetheless an idiot all day long, every day.
To be clear, Michele Bachmann’s record establishes that she is unfit to be President. Her past history suggests that there is no chance she would be brilliant, thoughtful or effective. Truth Wins Out and other fine media organizations and journalists will continue to expose that record for what it is, just as we will with any other person running for the GOP nomination with a similarly horrific record.
We’ll do it with integrity, as the Left usually does. I similarly expect that this is just the beginning of the Right’s campaign to destroy any of the Tea Party Monsters that they’ve created and now need to vanquish in order that their Beltway priorities are attended to.
Bachmann’s alleged headaches are irrelevant. Her record? That speaks for itself.
