As you probably have heard, Ed Rollins, the very man who said “I gotta make a choice and go with the intelligent woman who’s every bit as attractive,” has left the Michele Bachmann for President Campaign. His senior deputy heavy hitter David Polyansky is also departing.
I’m pretty sure that this is step three in a three-step sabotage plan that Michele Bachmann herself is blissfully unaware of.
Rollins is a major, big time heavy hitter. He’s the guy who re-elected Ronald Reagan, and nothing bigger than Ronald Reagan has ever happened to the Republican Party. He’s managed several other high profile campaigns as well.
When Rollins first came on board with Minnesota’s own Meshugna’s campaign, it looked suspicious to me. I felt that it meant either Rollins was up to something or had hit hard times, or perhaps that Bachmann’s Tea Party really was the future of the Republican Party. And pursuant to my concerns (taking those with more serious consequences more seriously, despite their unlikelihood, because I think like a human rather than a Utility Curve) I tried to warn people that her campaign was serious. At first people didn’t listen, or they scoffed, but then she started getting double digit poll readings and eventually knocked her fellow North Starian out of the race in Iowa, and they stopped snickering behind my back mostly. About that, at least.
My current thinking is that this was part of a conspiracy to give the Tea Party some rope, then slap the horse, leaving it kicking its feet in the air, all for the benefit of the more mainstream (yet far too conservative and anti-science) core of the Republican Party.
Step one would have been Rollins signing on, giving Bachmann credibility as well as helping to make the campaign work for a while. That happened.
Step three would be what just happened: Pulling out and while doing so, slipping a shiv in the woman’s side at the same time, in this case by announcing that this was now a two person race, neither one of which was Bachmann. That is very unusual thing for a professional campaign manager to mention while departing a campaign.
The second step, the part in the middle, is very interesting if true: That would be putting the edge on Teh Crazy, though I’m sure that in Michele Bachmann’s case, that would be like getting a job shining grease. We are now learning that Rollins is the one who prompted Michele Bachmann to align herself, accidentally, with professional Clown, Multiple-Rapist and Serial Killer John Wayne Gacy. Were some of Bachmann’s other goofs orchestrated in this way? So far this is mere conjecture (as opposed to my larger-scale, over-arching conspiracy theory, which is bold conjecture). We await further evidence to link Rollins’ activity to Bachmann’s campaign missteps. Bachmann has always been good at screwing the pooch, so this may be hard to sort out.
Perhaps time will tell, perhaps not. In any event, you must continue to take Bachmann seriously. For my part, I want her to stay in the race and do well. I’d love to see a Bachmann-Obama match up, just for the sport. Oh, and think about when it comes time for Bachmann to pick a running mate. I’m betting she picks Mr. Bachmann. No matter what, watching that process will be as much fun as watching train wreck, and who can ever turn away from watching a train wreck!? I also want her to stay in the race because I think it might interfere slightly with her remaining in Congress.
But on the other hand, we have to be careful. Many of you are too young to remember how utterly absurd the idea was that Ronald Reagan would be elected president. Even fewer of you are old enough to remember how utterly absurd the idea was that Richard Nixon could be elected president. Don’t make me mention Herbert Hoover.
In case you are just coming on board and don’t know who Michele Bachmann is, there is this:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9bvreW08X0&w=500&h=311]
Did she say “Tinkling down your leg”????
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“Tingling”, not “Tinkling”. Still crazy though.
I’m think she said “tingly”, but it may feel the same way in the end…
Interesting information overall. So many things happen in the background of politics that we have to guess at. We’ll see where this heads to come this spring (when the real candidates will start to get selected).
Sadly, I could see the rethuglicans pulling a stunt like this. The question is who are they really supporting. Palin seems eerily like Bush (air head that is easily controlled by handlers)…Bachmann was one of the few that appeared even crazier.
The phrase ‘fleas abandoning a sinking rat’ seems like a good fit.
Frankly, I think the easiest way to sabotage Michele Bachmann’s campaign is to let people hear her state her beliefs. Once you realize she knows precious little of anything, then you park your vote elsewhere.
The best remedy for a fool is a microphone.
I hope she wins the nomination. Not only will Obama win at a walk, she will evicerate the Republican party with her and the Democrats might just win back the House and increase their majority in the Senate.
And the main reason is that it will be so much fun to watch her implode on national TV over and over and over again.
Interesting hypotheses. I had indeed noticed that some of her gaffes (the John Wayne thing, the Elvis thing, etc.) seemed like they must have been prepared in advance, and I just could not see how that could get through her campaign staff without being caught. Sabotage would indeed explain it…
I still think more likely than not the mundane explanation is the answer. Conspiracy theories are seldom true, eh? But I do see a bit of plausibility in this one. Who knows?
The problem for her is that even if the gaffes WERE sabotage, her failure to figure out who was doing it and put a stop to it says little good about her ability to manage a modern office.
If the gaffes were hers, then she is an idiot, and if they were orchestrated as deliberate sabotage, then she is an incompetent idiot (both for not catching the saboteur and for not catching the gaffes in the first place).
Not much of a choice there, is it?
@cullen wrote “I hope she wins the nomination. Not only will Obama win at a walk…” We said similar things about Reagan in his first presidential campaign. I remember it very well.
Many of you are too young to remember how utterly absurd the idea was that Ronald Reagan would be elected president.
Yes, it did seem unlikely at the time. But this is one of those cases where you take 10c from a dollar and everybody says, “look you’ve got money left, what are you worried about?” And then you do it again and again, until everybody is used to the fact that every time you take 10c from a dollar, there’s money left. And then it’s then tenth time – what happened?
You’re wrong about Nixon though. The old crook was a professional politician to the bone, and he was always a serious runner. He might have won in 1960, but for Richard Daley, and in ’68 Humphrey was a lousy candidate and the Democratic Convention events were enough to alienate any independent.
Modified statement about Nixon: After his Checkers speech, no one expected him to become president. Even him.
I remember the Reagan win all too well. Quick side notes about this is that it was the infamous ‘october surprise’ that helped Reagan win. The hostages were still being held captive in Iran via a deal that the Reagan campaign handlers worked out with the Iranians to hang on to the hostages until after the election in exchange for weapons, etc. Some might remember that the hostages were released on Reagan’s inauguration day.
I read in another story about Rollins leaving that Bachmann is infamous on the hill for her top staff leaving in a somewhat to fairly consistent basis.
Bachmann, and to some extent Palin, Perry and the rest of the right-wing crazy machine, are freak show oddities.
On one hand there is the very human desire to see a spectacle. If it was announced that ‘the Mexican air force is going to crash land in a liquid natural gas facility’ I would try to keep people safe but I would also have someone save me a good seat to watch it from.
If it is going to happen anyway, no matter what you may do, you might as well get comfortable and take in the spectacle. It would be a shame to miss it.
On the other hand what the GOP has done to the US makes Mel Gibson’s snuff film look like a depiction of casual street violence. This has been planned, coordinated, structured, times, and orchestrated over something north of forty years. And, whereas Gibson’s concern is the suffering of but one, this involves hundreds of millions of Americans and billions of non-Americans. The time, toil, mental health, and blood of vast numbers of human beings.
It would be a shame to miss seeing the pivotal points and spectacular action. But, in a very profound way, we are all on the metaphoric planes about to crash. In short order we will be in pain and surrounded by the wreckage of our once great nation and our once comfortable lives. It would be a shame to be so caught up in our workaday lives to miss the wider spectacle. It would be a shame to find ourselves broken and not know how we got there.
So yes, take the time to set back and observe after you have a good laugh, and a cry. “Embrace the horror”.
From the moment she started running for the Republican nomination, I thought she would make somebody a great Vice President. And now I think that’s what she’s in it for. What she needs to do though, is get away from these Republican debates where everyone’s trying to make fellow Republicans look bad. If she doesn’t have to confront anybody, she won’t have to step back from anything in order to be a VP.
Now, I think she’s a lunatic. And I think she’s wrapped up the paranoid-schizophrenic vote, but she doesn’t even need to be on a ticket for that crowd. But as VP she would wrap up the Religious Right vote, the anti-gay vote, and the Government sucks because it’s trying to take away my light bulbs vote. And as such, she’d be a plus for anybody except Rick Perry, who has already made great strides along those lines. So, we’ll see if she drops out soon, citing problems with ‘fundraising’ or ‘time away from my duties as a congressional representative’ but not ‘this process was grueling and inhuman and anybody running for President is probably a pathological narcissist’.
Many people, including my mother, thought that Reagan was done for following the 1976 GOP convention. He was crazy, we thought. We thought that he had shot all his marbles and lost. We were wrong.
Maybe 2012 isn’t Bachmann’s year. Maybe 2016 is.
The recent maxim in politics seems to be, “Never count out anybody who looks good in a hat,” and that keeps Perry in and Pawlenty out. I believe the trend started with Reagan and his cowboy hats.