New MN polling is bad news for the wingnuts

New polling is out by PPP on Minnesota. They last polled the State in June.

• Dayton, Generic Legislative Ballot, SSM Amendment
• Presidential race, Republican caucus 
• Bachmann, Pawlenty, Klobuchar 

Quick summary: Gov. Dayton is popular, Democrats lead by 9 on the GLB, and the SSM Amendment is close.
Gingrich leads the (non-binding) Republican caucus, and loses to Obama by 15. Romney loses to Obama by 10 points. Bachmann and Pawlenty are not popular at all, with Bachmann seeing particularly bad statewide numbers. Klobuchar is a lock for re-election.

Just how bad are Bachmann's numbers? PPP's Tom Jensen reports:

Voters hold an unfavorable opinion of Michele Bachmann by a 34-57 margin, including a 29-59 rating among Independents. 57% of Minnesota voters also say Bachmann should not run for reelection to the House of Representatives while just 37% think she should. 59% of Independents and even 20% of Republicans say Bachmann should not run for reelection.

 So it's bad, then.
Bachmann wins strong approval (85%) from those voters who consider themselves "very conservative", but they are only 16% of the electorate. Those who say they are "somewhat conservative" favour her with a less-impressive 56% support. Pretty weak for your "base". This "somewhat conservative" category holds 22% of the electorate. That's a total of 38% of the electorate with any kind of significant appeal for her. Moderates break highly unfavourably against her by more than 4-to-1. In other words, she has no appeal outside of that narrow conservative demographic.
This doesn't say anything about her chances of holding on to her House seat. The re-districting is still up in the air. Currently, Bachmann is living in the potential new district that includes St.Paul, and she has no hope of winning there. If the re-districting gives her her old district back, then her chances look good. But that district would be an isolated pocket of concentrated wingnuts that Bachmann could have trouble appealing to as time goes by.

One thing is sure: she has no hope outside of that district or in the State as a whole. Moderates, by more than 3-to-1, say she should not run for re-election. 22% of Minnesotans who voted for McCain in 2008 also do not want her to run again. Even worse, a majority of all age demographics say the same thing. And 59% of Independent voters don't want her to run for the House a fourth time, either.
Basically, the State of Minnesota is really tired of her.

The days when wingnuts could pretend that Bachmann is some kind of insurgent truth-teller who would "blow the minds" of the "urban liberals" are GONE. She is a punchline, not an evangelist for the conservative cause in Minnesota. She's done nothing for her district. And, from the St. Cloud Times:

Bachmann missed almost 59 percent of House roll-call votes in the third quarter of 2011, and more than 91 percent of votes in the fourth quarter.

At some point, the MN GOP will realise that she is not the best face for their cause, that she is a liability, and a very expensive candidate that sucks up donations that could be better spent elsewhere. Right now, though, the MN GOP is in the thrall of the evangelical Religious Right, and Bachmann is their poster child.

For the DFL, it is probably wiser not to contest her strongly, and focus instead on regaining the 8th CD from Cravaak, and defending Walz from a very "insider" challenge. Let Bachmann be the face of the MN GOP, and remind MN voters constantly of what the alternative to the DFL is.

As far as Pawlenty:

Q9 Would you support Tim Pawlenty for statewide
office in the future, or not?
Would support Pawlenty for statewide office .. 39%
Would not........................................................ 51%
Not sure .......................................................... 10%

That "would not" figure includes 50% of the 65+ age demographic, 15% of Republicans, 52% of women, 56% of moderates, and 52% of Independents. He only wins about 2/3 of that conservative 38% on this question, which is not strong when looking at your base. Remember, Pawlenty primarily won office by portraying himself as a moderate who down-played his evangelical beliefs. As the Tea Party rose, he transformed himself into a strong 10th Amendment advocate, a vitriolic hater of Obama, and an unquestioning pawn of the Religious Right. Look where it got him. Only 68% of "very conservative" MN voters want him to run for statewide office.

Bachmann collapses both nationally and at home

After reading this story on HuffPo about Bachmann's collapsing campaign, I started to wonder where she would go after it all fell apart.

It's possible that she could make it to NH, but very unlikely. She's not attracting the SuperPACs, and her small-donor base must be getting tapped out. The Tea Party has been waffling about their support for her, and evangelicals seem to be looking "someone else". That's pretty weak, when she is the head of the House Tea Party Caucus and has always been the one willing to say exactly what the most irrational Tea Party adherents want to hear. And her image has always been about as evangelical as anyone can get. I mean, Jesus told her to run for office, after all. Of course, she is also (ostensibly) "from" Iowa, and it's not as if there in no "cross-pollination" in politics between Iowa and Minnesota.

The thing is, Bachmann isn't very popular in Minnesota, either.
Here are three polls from Public Policy Polling on Minnesota voters:

• Obama in Minnesota
• Klobuchar favorability
• Dayton favorability

These polls cover far more than the shorthand titles I have given them indicate.
On the first link, Q12 is a match-up between Obama and Bachmann for President.

Q12 If the candidates for President next year were
Democrat Barack Obama and Republican
Michele Bachmann, who would you vote for?
Barack Obama................................................ 56%
Michele Bachmann ......................................... 35%
Undecided....................................................... 9%

Okay, she'd lose by twenty points in her home state. But Minnesotans still like her, right?

Q5 Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion
of Michele Bachmann?
Favorable .............. 33%
Unfavorable........... 59%
Not sure ................ 8%

I guess they don't like her.
Note that the percentage that would vote for her is almost the exactly the percentage who consider her favorably. In this case, people would be voting for her, rather than against Obama. If she is the "anti-Obama" then why does she not draw a huge number of voters who may be willing to overlook their opinion of her to defeat the "reviled" Obama?

Of course, he may not be:

Q1 Do you approve or disapprove of Barack
Obama’s job performance?
Approve .......................................................... 51%
Disapprove...................................................... 44%
Not sure .......................................................... 5%

If Bachmann gets 35% of the vote, but 44% disapprove of Obama.... Then there's 9% of Minnesotans that dislike Obama, but who would still prefer him to Bachmann. Even winning them over wouldn't keep her from losing.

Let's look at the second link, where we see a match-up with the incumbent Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar and Michele Bachmann:

Q7 If the candidates for US Senate next year were
Democrat Amy Klobuchar and Republican
Michele Bachmann, who would you vote for?
Amy Klobuchar ............................................... 57%
Michele Bachmann ......................................... 37%
Undecided....................................................... 5%

Okay, so Bachmann would lose by 20 points in statewide office. So it's not just that Minnesotans don't consider her "Presidential material", it's also that they don't want her representing the State at all. As a Representative, Bachmann doesn't represent the entire State; only her district.

And that district is a gerrymandered R+7 . That Cook PVI rating of R+7, means that the district tends to vote 7 points more Republican than they do Democratic. Yet it took Bachmann three tries to get a majority (rather than a plurality), and even then did not hit the expected 57%. That is not a strong showing.

But that's not all. The crosstabs are revealing. Bachmann only wins 77% of those that voted for McCain in 2008. And only 66% of those Minnesota McCain voters have a favorable opinion of Bachmann.
That's the base of the Republican Party, and Bachmann isn't scoring that big with them in her home State.

On top of that, the gender gap is appalling in her "favorables". 62% of women have an unfavorable opinion her, compared to 28% favorable. Well over two-to-one. Only 32% of women would vote for Bachmann over Klobuchar, down around her base support of 37%.

The third poll shows that Minnesota is 31% Republican, and "very conservative" voters are only 15% of the registered voters. That's a small base of "very conservative" potential votes, and only half of her own Party. She wins election because these "very conservative" voters are concentrated, not because she has statewide support.

We don't know yet how the redistricting will go in Minnesota. Some say she could lose her district. Others see her as merely weakened. Remember, she only got 46.41% against Tinklenberg. 52.5% against Clark doesn't leave a lot of breathing room. Aside from that, if her campaign collapses, There can be no more pretense that she is wildly popular for "speaking the truth", nor of any hidden Tea Party cavalry that will sweep in and win the day, nor any vast evangelical army that will hold out for the purest candidate and support her to the bitter end.

Basically, the rest of the Republicans in the country don't particularly care for her, and her hard-core supporters seem willing to "settle" rather than go down with her. She's seen as a joke, within her own Party, not just in "elite media circles" and decadent urban liberals as she would like everyone to think. Although it would be nice to see her lose in NH and SC, just so her supporters can't try to resurrect a myth of her hidden staunch support in other areas of the country.

Even if by some political miracle she stayed in past Super Tuesday, that would be ultimately worse. She would have lost then. Losing is the ultimate sin for Republicans, but more so for Minnesota Republicans. The last time the MNGOP gave a loser a second chance was Boschwitz against Wellstone part II. They won't make that mistake again.

The basis of Bachmann's "popularity" in her district, in cultural terms, is like a thumb in the eye to the metro area. Bachmann was supposed to "blow the minds" of all the urban liberals with "the truth", and leave the Twin Cities sheepishly admitting that they had been wrong all along by voting Democratic - even worse, for a Muslim. A lot Bachmann's support comes from "white flight" urban refugees, and anyone who dumps all over the "urban hellhole" they fled from and the mindset that maintains it, is all right in their book.

The collapse of Bachmann's campaign creates doubt in the minds of her district supporters, who are far more accustomed to certainty in thought. She's suddenly not the gorgeous girl that everyone wants to dance with. Instead, she's ended up serving punch and watching the coats. Could it be that those decadent urban libs are laughing at us, instead of being terrified by our awesome heroine Michele? Did we really vote for, and donate so much of our money to, a punchline? Uh-oh.

So what is her other option? To drop out and endorse someone else, throwing her fickle evangelical "supporters" and hesitant Tea Party "masses" over to a winner.

The question, then, is where does she throw that (largely insubstantial and possibly fictional) support? Romney's probably out of the question, but it could help to prop up his "evangelical cred" to have Bachmann's endorsement. It would symbolically sever her from the Tea Party, however. If it didn't, it would de-fang the Tea Party by showing them to be just another Republican constituency that "goes along to get along" and falls in line on command from the "Party elite".

If not Romney, how about Perry? The two constituencies overlap somewhat, but Perry isn't doing considerably better than Bachmann on the national scale. She might be a useful tool for the Perry campaign in the early States, but not so much in the Super Tuesday sweep. And Bachmann's proclivity for saying "interesting" things wouldn't lend gravitas to a candidate that already looks like a lightweight.

Santorum is sinking as badly as Bachmann, and Gingrich doesn't seem like Bachmann's cup of tea. So maybe Ron Paul. She could bolster Paul's evangelical cred and push that Tea Party line forward. On a symbolic level, it could counter the co-option of the Tea Party narrative.

Nationally, Bachmann is doing only marginally better than Paul in the latest polling.
Paul loses 46/41 with 13 undecided when matched up with Obama. Bachmann loses 50/41 with 10 undecided. It's not just about Iowa, after all. Perry also breaks 50/40 with 10 undecided. Seeing a pattern there?

However:

Q11 If the candidates for President next year were
Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mitt
Romney, who would you vote for?
Barack Obama................................................ 45%
Mitt Romney.................................................... 47%
Undecided....................................................... 8%

So Romney can peel off an extra 6 or 7% that the other candidates can't. And that margin of victory is within the margin of error (3.7%) for the poll. That's not a compelling case for "electability" over Bachmann, Paul, or Perry but it's better than nothing.

What those match-ups show is that Bachmann, Paul, and Perry all are drawing from pretty much the same well as far as the general Electorate goes. Among strictly Republican primary voters, Bachmann draws 39% of Perry supporters as a second choice, and only 12% of Paul supporters. Among those that self-identify as Tea Party supporters, Bachmann has 58% favorables, compared to only 29% for Paul and 53% for Perry. And 59% of those Tea Party supporters say they "might end up supporting someone else".

While nationally (primary voters only), Bachmann gets 53% "favorable" from the "very conservative" bloc, Paul only gets only 27%. Both are about evenly matched for the "somewhat conservative" bloc. So it looks as if Bachmann might give Paul a boost from the most conservative segment of the Party, as well as the Tea Party, with minimal redundant support. PPP doesn't break down the evangelical vote in these polls, unfortunately. Bachmann also has a comparably attractive 42/36 favorable breakdown among female primary voters, when looking at Paul's dismal 28/53 numbers. So Paul could maybe get some more female supporters if Bachmann latched on to his campaign.

Unfortunately, Bachmann is the "kiss of death" to Paul's much touted "youth vote" in the primaries. Bachmann is despised, 24/57 unfavorable in the 18-29 age group. Paul pretty much breaks even at 43/38 with that age group on his own. With seniors, it's almost the reverse.
Senior primary voters (65+) hate Paul (25/58), while Bachmann breaks even (41/41). Senior primary voters essentially split between Gingrich and Romney, so Bachmann would be a solid contribution there with her 5%. Bachmann's weak 10% support with the youth vote is not much of a prize for any campaign.

Still, Paul's support is cult-like in its devotion to him. A Bachmann endorsement would hardly scare off support, and would probably bring in Tea Party and "very conservative" voters. Both of these demographics are relatively immune to fallout from Bachmann's "interesting" remarks.

Dare we even dream that Paul goes with Bachmann as his running mate? Paul's campaign has a strong chance of "going the distance", while not necessarily winning the nomination. The same Party apparatus that froze him out of the process in 2008 is still in power, but he has the bare minimum of money and support to make it to Convention....though he will die there.

This would raise the stakes considerably for Bachmann. If she becomes the next Palin and goes down to rejection by her Party, that's a lot worse than dropping out early and being credited with a pat on the head for being a "team player".

She certainly couldn't bring much support in Minnesota in terms of crossover votes in the primary, and her shine with Minnesota Republicans is faded. Only 26% of MN Republicans think she should run for President in the first place, and a relatively few (43%, considering it's her own Party) think she should run for the Senate. Even worse, only 10% of her home State's Republicans think she should run for the House. And 46% of the State's Independent voters think she should run for no office at all. Likewise, 48% of the white Minnesota voters say she should not run for any office. Among all age groups, she ranges from 44-49% saying the same thing.

51% of Minnesota women voters say Michele should not seek any office (including her House seat). Only 10% of the State's "very conservative" voters think she should run for the House. Instead, 44% of the "very conservative" bloc think she should run for the Senate - though she'd lose to Klobuchar by twenty points, as indicated earlier. Delusional? You bet.

2012 could spell the end of Bachmann as an elected official.

Bachmann's "politics of the false dichotomy"

Michele Bachmann has a putative "apology" making its way onto the airwaves here in Minnesota.
The video is here.

In this "apology", she never apologises for anything. This is as close as she comes to an apology:

"I may not always get my words right, but I know that my heart is right, because my heart is for you - for your children, and for the blessings of liberty to remain for our great country."

Nothing in those words apologises for her remarks accusing Obama or fellow Congressional members of being "anti-American". She is instead sticking with her line that she never said what she said; that her remarks were merely misconstrued. Bachmann seems to be saying that she tends to say a lot of crazy stuff, but her heart is in the right place.

And, coming from someone who works for the government, this is bizarre:

"Once again, our nation is at a crossroads, and it's a time for choosing. We could embrace government as the answer to our problems, or we could choose freedom and liberty."

It's hard to see how this fits in with her previous characterisation of Democrats as "anti-American". She questioned Obama's allegiance to the country based on his weak association with Bill Ayers, not because of some "Big Government" agenda. She has always been one of those Republicans that condemns as "treasonous" anyone who criticises the President or the Iraq occupation. She has consistently voted to retain the most onerous parts of the Patriot Act, and has strongly defended the illegal wire-tapping programme. Bachmann has never seen any legislation promoting a police state that she didn't like. And she has seldom failed to impugn the patriotism of anyone opposing more government intrusion and surveillance.

This has always been the basis of her "anti-American" thesis: that "liberals" are, in effect, working for "the enemy". Now, however, she has made a radical shift and claims that 'liberals" are "anti-American" because they want Big Government and are opposed to "freedom and liberty". This isn't an apology, it's a distraction.

Many people have seen Bachmann on television and wondered about Minnesota voters. How could Minnesota have elected this crazy woman?

The answer is her made-to order, gerrymandered district and the weak Democrat who ran against her in 2006.

Bachmann was elected in 2006, at the same time as Keith Ellison was elected to the House and Amy Klobuchar was elected to the Senate. These were both Democrats, and both won by large margins. Ellison is notable for being a Muslim-American; the first in the House. So the idea that Minnesotans are crazy wingnuts should find a full stop right there. Bachmann's district is a long and fairly narrow swath to the north of the Twin Cities metro area. This mostly exurban and suburban district has undergone a profound change in the past twenty years. The long-time rural citizens have seen a massive influx of "refugees" from the urban core. They were fleeing pretty much the same thing: minorities, crime, and the ordinances of the city. They were also attracted by much lower prices for land and much cheaper housing, and the chance to raise their children free of "corrupting influences". They bought themselves long commutes into the urban areas as part of the bargain, and were hard hit by the increase in gas prices.

Mostly, however, these refugees brought all of those "corrupting influences" along with them into their new Paradise of liberty. Huge housing developments crammed people into treeless refugee zones that were not much more spacious than the urban yards they left behind. Property taxes went up markedly as localities had to expand waste-water treatment, roads, parks, landfills, etc. The new residents found their neighbours' proximity distasteful and begin to demand ordinances to deal with the problems of sharing space with farms and with the activities of their fellow "freedom-seekers". Police departments expanded. Strip malls moved in. "Big box" retailers squeezed out the local businesses. What were once friendly communities became mere groupings of individuals jealously guarding their tiny fiefdoms, screaming for the local government to simultaneously "do something" about their neighbours and to "get off our backs".

The inherent contradiction with exurban development is that it requires strong regulation to avoid massive inefficiencies and steep tax increases, while the people you are trying to attract are fleeing increased regulation and high taxes.

The metro area was facing a wave of communities further and further away demanding increased amenities without increased taxes. The Metropolitan Council at last put its foot down and drew a boundary for waste-water and water services. These exurban communities would have to find local solutions to get rid of their sewage, dig local wells, and lay their own water lines. This meant that these "enclaves of freedom" had to enforce ordinances covering septic tanks and drain tiles that simply dumped the refugee's filth into local streams. The alternative was severe contamination of the drinking water. Environmental regulations stopped people from simply dumping waste oil on the ground or draining their radiators into storm drains. Treatment plants had to be built to deal with a massive local increase in waste from the new residents who wanted an urban lifestyle in a rural infrastructure. Landfill space became scarce, and developments were being built closer and closer to them; regulations were demanded for noxious odours and vermin.

Thus, the influx of "liberty-seekers" became their own undoing.

And local politicians were simply not up to the task. These refugees moved into local politics, bringing a simplistic libertarian view and a visceral hatred of taxes. Thus, precious lead time was squandered with stop-gap solutions that made no one happy and merely made more expensive options inevitable. This made it even easier to frame "government" as the "problem". And the interests of the long-time residents consistently lost out to those of the new refugees.

Culturally, the district was a seething battleground of people unable to come together for the common good due to the "get off my back" ideology of the refugees. Evangelical churches made big inroads, due to the refugees' desire to raise their children in an uncorrupted environment. And so the stage was set for Republican domination of the district. The evangelical church communities were organised into political influence groups, and the Republican message of less regulation and "traditional values" found fertile ground. The one thing everyone agreed on was their profound hatred of the "other": racial minorities, immigrants, non-Christians, and those "communist" city folk.

Into this breach stepped Michelle Bachmann.

Strongly evangelical, she claimed that God chose her for Congress. Who can argue with God, after all? If one didn't vote for her, you were then voting against God. Jumping fully on the fading Bush Bandwagon, her election was seen by Party officials as some kind of rebound in a year when Republicans were generally kicked out of office. In spite of a fairly narrow win margin, she behaved as if she had been crowned Prom Queen. She proudly tied herself to the national neo-con agenda and forgot all about her little backwater district. She said all of the right things, sucked up to all of the right people, and voted as she was told to by the Republican Party masters. Bachmann was the perfect drone for movement conservatives.

The voters in her district were completely taken for granted. When gas prices hit these refugee commuters hard, she had a typical and grossly simplistic solution: drill, baby, drill. Regulations were the problem, not her constituents' choice to live an hour away from their jobs or their lifestyles' complete dependence on multiple vehicles. When foreclosures threatened the dreams of these urban refugees, it was the damnable regulations that were to blame. And when the economy crashed, it was again "hyper-regulation" of banks and investment firms that caused it. Meanwhile, she made regular appearances on local Christian radio programmes to keep up the drumbeat of hatred against gays, Muslims, and "baby killers".

While many see her remarks on "Hardball" as her downfall, the truth is that the handwriting was on the wall with the Petters' scandal. Bachmann endorsed a con man with a shady history, and on the strength of that voucher many Christian charities and churches were fleeced on a large scale. Pastors lost their homes, charities shut down, and churches were in a financial crisis.
Bachmann did some public hand-wringing for evangelical consumption, but this was one case where she could not blame regulations for the situation. If Michelle was truly guided by God, how this could immense lapse of judgement have occurred? Faith was shaken, angry people wanted answers, and so Bachmann did what movement conservatives always do: created a distraction.

Never mind about Bachmann's links to the con man Vennes - the real thing we all need to fear is the "anti-American views" of Obama and other members of Congress. She creates another false dichotomy similar to her endorsement by God: if you don't vote for me, people who hate America will gain power. Bachmann is on the job, folks, guarding against excessive regulations and the treasonous elite out to destroy us. That makes you trust her again, right?

Bachmann really said nothing different on Hardball that she hasn't said before to neo-con audiences, or that movement conservatives don't say on a regular basis to each other. It's the Party line narrative: Democrats hate America, they want us to lose in Iraq and in the GWOT, they are guilty of treason, they have a socialist agenda, they hate Christians and God, etc.

Bachmann's real mistake, the one for which the GOP has taken her to task for, was to speak those internal talking points to the masses. To the Republican faithful, Bachmann is merely a big-mouth, not a crazy McCarthyite.

And so she claims she was taken out of context. She claims she never said what everyone can plainly see in the video she said. She denies saying that she thinks "liberals are anti-American", when nobody ever said she did. She said Obama is anti-American due to his "associations with Ayers", and she said that members of Congress should be examined for potential anti-American views - not "liberals".

Then she announces an "apology" in which she frames the issue as a struggle between "liberty" and "government", which has nothing to do with putatively "anti-American views".

If Bachmann loses this election, it will mean that movement conservatism cannot prevail in a district tailor-made for that philosophy. It will mean that her "politics of false dichotomy" are not strong enough to prevail in Minnesota. And it will mean that the neo-cons will lose another pawn in Congress.

Bachmann bites

Michele Bachmann did an interview on "Hardball" in which she said, regarding Obama, "Absolutely, I'm very concerned that he may have anti-American views".

Not content with that, she called for a McCarthy-esque witch-hunt on members of Congress, to determine if they are "pro-American" enough.

"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 are they are pro-America or anti-America."

Chris Matthews gave her repeated opportunities to back down and moderate her remarks, but she continued to stand by them. She was just repeating the standard far-Right talking points, after all. She fully expected a pat on the head from the Party for being such a good parrot. Apparently "everybody knows" this stuff, so who could take issue with it?

Now, however, the media is just a bunch of Big Old Meanies who "misunderstood" her.
The video is here. See for yourself.

"I think the people that Barack Obama has been associating with are anti-American, by and large."

How can you take that any other way than what it says? Especially when you also say, in reference to Obama:

"Absolutely, I'm very concerned that he may have anti-American views"

Michele, you just said that Obama has anti-American views. You said that you were concerned about that. You can back-pedal about his "anti-American views" and say that they just aren't your views, but why would that make you "concerned"?

One can only wonder what Bachmann's proposed "investigation" of Congress would be like.
It doesn't take a genius to see that she is "concerned" about Bill Ayers. So we would likely see an investigation into everyone that each member of Congress has ever worked with, along with PTA boards, charities, and maybe even church choirs. Then we would have to look at everyone that every member of Congress has ever visited, because one of the scary things about Ayers is that Obama visited his house. We could then look at college professors, legislative aides, donors, neighbours, and of course, friends.

Since Obama has clearly and repeatedly expressed his love for America, such declarations will mean nothing to the investigators. Obviously, the truly "anti-American" among us would simply lie. Such an investigation would have to rely on others to "rat out" these traitors, possibly in exchange for clemency. Sadly necessary, if we want to ally Bachmann's "concerns", though.

How else are we to get to the bottom of what has Michele Bachmann so "concerned"?

Sure, it's an ugly job. But can we really afford to have someone in Congress who once went out to dinner with a college classmate without doing a thorough examination of their political views? Surely no "real American" would show up at the home of someone who, for example, thought that the Iraq War was a mistake, even if it was only to drop off a graduation gift for the traitor's child. And wouldn't we all like to know, if it were possible, that the woman who runs the checkout at the grocery store our Representative shops at once failed to put their hand over their heart at a baseball game? Or that one of their old college professors was married to a Muslim?

Seriously, the Republicans have already said that things like failing to wear a flag pin on your lapel is a suspect sign. They have already said that anyone who criticised the Iraq effort was a traitor and a terrorist sympathiser. These are the kind of criteria that would be applied to Bachmann's investigation.

But perhaps I just "misread" her. Perhaps she should clarify what qualifies one as being "anti-American". But I bet she won't.

Bachmann knows that the "base" agrees with her. Her mistake was simply in saying it out loud and on camera, not in believing it. The public isn't supposed to know that, unless you are a loyal Party member and an evangelical Christian, that you are considered to be a cowardly, despicable traitor in the eyes of the far-Right. Bachmann failed to keep that secret.

This is the American equivalent of the Taliban. They think they are the "real Americans", and they get to write the definition of what "American" is.