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I think the spirit of one Joseph McCarthy has been found, and it comes wrapped in just as much us-against-them spirit that rolling yourself tightly in Red, White, and Blue can come to offer.
Michelle Bachman, Republican representative of Minnesota's 6th district, welcome to the national stage!
Follow up:
There's conservatives, there's right-wingers, there's wingnuts, and then there is Bachman. In the event you did not watch that entire video, I'll cliffnote it for you.
Michelle Bachman was a guest on the on-again off-again Conservative MSNBC show Hardball (currently in an off-again phase) talking about the recent McCain/Palin allegations that Barack Obama is a terrorist in Senator's clothing. The newly-popular talking point is that Obama used to hang around with not-really-famous domestic terrorist Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground, a name that up until this election cycle I thought was the name of a really cool weather-related website. The way those on the right are parroting that man and that group you would have thought he tried to destroy the Statue of Liberty or something along those lines.
What were the Weathermen actually were able to do?
- Cause about $35,000 in damages during riots (of up to 300 people) in Chicago in 1969 (which pales in comparison to any number of other riots during the period in scale and damage)
- One crude pipe bomb at a San Francisco police station in 1970, which unfortunately killed one person
- One failed attempt at a townhouse in New York City that wound up killing three of their own members
- Another crude bomb at a New York City police station in 1970
- A womens' restroom at the Pentagon in 1972
So aside from the Pentagon bit, which actually took some amount of skill, pretty much any street gang in any major American city today could have that rap sheet taken care of and then some as a matter of course in a year (replacing bullets for pipe bombs, sadly - and with deadlier effect). Anyhow, to hear Bachman prattle on about the amazingly bad terrorist organization that was the Weather Underground, you would have thought that they came this close to destroying America as we know it. Obama's crime in all this? Being alive at the time (age 8) this was going on, and serving briefly on a college board with a then-reformed Bill Ayers - decades later.
With a campaign that las lost on every single major issue in front of the American people today, unfortunately, this is all the McCain campaign has to run its surrogates out there on, which leads us to things like this epic interview.
Bachman also throws out the scary language that is designed to fire up the base and scare others into voting for them: liberal, leftist, liberal liberal LIBERAL!
What took Bachman from mediocre surrogate of a desperate campaign to idiotic infamy was the call, on a live television show, presumably with thoughts that have been festering in her head for a while, to have the media do for the country what the late Senator McCarthy did for us, and that is to say to put us in a constant state of fear of not knowing who the 'enemy' is:
What I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out if they are pro-America or anti-America.
It is remarkably hard to out-dumb that, and for the same of the public discourse I really hope attempts aren't made to do so - but with people at Palin rallies already crying out for the death of Obama before he is even elected, I have to fear that it is going to get worse as time goes on.
On the bright side, it would appear that people are not all that interested in being feared to death anymore, and the majority of people in this country that support the Obama candidacy are also tired of being called anti-American for their beliefs. As of this writing, Bachman's Democratic opponent for her House seat has nearly raised half a million dollars in donations since that outrageous interview - half a million dollars in less than two days. Not bad for rallying up the wrong troops.
This campaign is bringing out the best and worst that America has to offer, unfortunately for the latter. Bachman is just the latest and most verbal of the loud, angry minority of people who don't want an African American to become President and are looking for any reason whatsoever to discredit what at times must seem like an unstoppable force.
With any luck, the surge of donations to Bachman's opponent - Elwyn Tinklenberg - will translate to votes in a couple of weeks, and another purveyor of one of the worst political periods in this country's history will be sent packing.
All you need is hope.
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