The New York Times is reporting that Michele Bachmann will not seek reelection next year.
In her congressional race last year, Mrs. Bachmann won re-election by just 4,200 votes out of 356,000 votes cast, beating the hotelier Jim Graves, who was greatly outspent. Mr. Graves recently announced that he would seek the seat again.
“My decision was not in any way influenced by any concerns about my being re-elected to Congress,” she said. “If I ran I would again defeat the individual who I defeated last year.”
That the people of Minnesota’s 6th Congresionial District reelected Bachmann last year after having had the opportunity to witness her complete freakshow of a presidential campaign is a testimony to their idiocy. Bachmann’s retirement will make it harder to win this seat, not easier.
Still, I suppose the demise of Bachmann’s career is a good thing. She is a charlatan and, apparently, a crook, and we need fewer of those things in Congress. The Senate has already been infiltrated by teabaggers like Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul, and they are in the process of turning the upper chamber into a parody of a deliberaive body. I am relieved that Rep. Steve King isn’t running for Tom Harkin’s seat. I am hopeful that whichever lunatic wins the Republican nomination for senate in Georgia will prove too insane for the Georgia general electorate. With any luck, we may be able to look back and see the highwater mark for crazy in the rearview mirror.
“. . . will prove too insane for the Georgia general electorate.”
I’m not sure that’s possible, Boo. But we’ll see.
All is contingent on the very weakened State Democratic organization finding a viable candidate to run. Hasn’t happened yet. But there is a crowded Republican field with several different flavors of the crazy and/or extreme.
Sam Nunn’s daughter says that she is running.
No doubt that it’s a sad day for wingnuts everywhere.
I wouldn’t be so sure this makes it “harder.” Graves is a known quantity now, and came within a few hundred votes of Bachmann last time. I live here. People forget that one reason Graves came this close – despite being outspent 12-1 – was that there was no independent candidate drawing votes away from the GOP for the first time in years. That dynamic is likely to hold, as the independent party has basically collapsed here. So even though the district became slightly redder in the redistricting, the lack of an indie will probably cancel out that advantage.
It’s still a very red district. But the MN GOP’s ability to nominate someone in this district who is not visibly insane may be limited. This is the same party that essentially threw away their senate race against Klobuchar last time around, nominating a libertarian crackpot with no experience whose biggest campaign expenditure appeared to be billboards in rural areas of I-94 featuring the letters “FIRE KLOBUCHAR.” Even if they had no expectation of beating her, they wasted an opportunity to develop a candidate for other races.
And Klobuchar consistently wins this district.
MN-06 doesn’t include almost any of the tony neighborhoods that up-and-comers like to live, either. Minnetonka we ain’t. Who will be their candidate? They’ll have to be a carpetbagger, I’d guess.
So, I remain optimistic. by 2014 the passage of time will have chipped away slightly at the GOP as well, unless something radically changes. Meanwhile, the rest of the state drifts ever-blue.
Stay tuned.
Sort of dumb to make the announcement so early into her term. Now she’s stuck being even more irrelevant in Congress and unable to cash on her status with the teabaggers for another year and a half. She would have been smarter to pull a Palin.
Or to hold off, continue to fundraise, then (probably illegally) tap into that fund as she “explores” other office options for years to come.
Maybe she and her husband just discovered he needs to pray the gay away a bit more. Who knows?
Probably not many legal uses for extra campaign cash that Bachmann would be interested in. Not like the old days when:
Why bother with that when the speaking tour pays so handsomely.
OTOH, Ron Paul knows what he’ll do with his $2 million in leftover cash.
They’re moving to Switzerland.
Oh please let her take her chained emails with her.
So Bachmann’s actual elected position had become such a meaningless appendage to her conserva-celebrity that it wasn’t even worth holding onto any more? Perhaps it was even a hindrance, since she had to keep up “appearances” by wasting time in Boner’s House of Imbeciles, where they keep attendance and have “votes”, haha.
A deeply silly unserious fool and professional ignoramus, and the perfect archetypal American “conservative”, circa 2012. She has her rabid following of conservative white male dopes, agog over their aging mean cheerleader, her fanboyz. She was made for wingnut welfare syndication, which in the short run pays better. But hopefully her team of financial and celebrity advisers have watched the sorry spectacle of Pinhead Palin and have a plan that keeps Michele B blabbering on the top of the wingnut garbage dump for substantially longer.
In the end, what did this appalling clown accomplish in her sorry “career” of public “service”? She mostly points to her new bridge over the Saint Croix river, which will open a largely undeveloped, bucolic section of Western Walkerstan to wealthy plutocrats for a nice second chalet with private airstrip and thus push urban sprawl to its final boundaries.
Other than that, Bachmann was a successful conserva-clown grifter, who’s now likely cashing in for some more Corporate and Christianist payola, the main thing that “conservative” politics is about for most of its parasitic practitioners. A repulsive braindead blatherskite that it is hard to imagine any rational person ever took seriously, but she won every one of her races. The nation she has deeply damaged isn’t done with Bachmann, unfortunately, but at least the Congress is rid of her. A “blessing” (to use Bachmannian blather), however small.
Don’t hold back. Tell us how you really feel!
Honestly, I stand in awe of your command of invective. It is a wondrous thing to behold.
Thanks kindly. She brings out the best in me, haha.
Did you see that she is actually running polished ads this morning saying her decision is not based on the fact that her and her campaign staff are being investigated or because she is going to lose.
Don’t candidates usually just put out a press release or hold a press conference for these things?
I guess she doesn’t trust the lame stream media.
Polished campaign ads that’s kind of suspicious. Seems like the party is helping her. She is not a smart woman cheating on her Christian dominatrix husband has to be very tempting. Lying comes easily to Michele and she would assume the old man does as much fact checking as she herself does.
Ah and announces this during the nothingness scandals. To provide a smokescreen right? Ha she has guilty written all over her! Maybe Marcus didn’t pray enough…
Please let it be a scandal. Oh please please!
Well, when you have an overflowing boatload of campaign payola you can throw a lot of cash around.
I doubt there’s any scandal that’s going to stick to her or that her fan base could possibly care about. She could be convicted of campaign finance violations and it would be a badge of honor and martyrdom to them. Having said that, she’s just spending a little preemptive money to protect her brand and make sure that the wingnut welfare machine knows she’s not (seriously) damaged goods.
Anyone else find it interesting that Michelle Bachmmann (along with the rest of her “Teabagger” caucus)just so happens to be in Russia right at the time when her people essentially announce her retirement. So of course no interviews
I predict the high-water mark of idiocy will occur when Cruz is nominated to be president. The resulting Democratic landslide will serve as a sort of exclamation point for all but the most insane.
Yes, the idea that we have passed the high water mark of American Fascism seems wildly optimistic, especially as we watch the “conservative” movement double down on ever more insane and irrational positions, without the smallest “correction”–other than their phony “outreach” nonsense.
They are rising, not falling. In any event, that is certainly how THEY see things, which is what matters.
Cruz obviously has prez ambitions and is their latest (and most effective) sociopath du jour. We still have our counterpart to the German elections of 1930 and ’32 to come….and I’m far less certain of the result than you.
As I’ve said at DKos, my in-laws are in that district and it is as crazy as any of the rural red areas in the rest of the midwest.