She just can't help herself
(Larry Downing/Reuters)
There was
a story yesterday about Bachmann apparently lying about attending her own family reunion, which was ... well, just odd, and not just because it was her own mom who
sold her out:
On her victory lap of Iowa yesterday, Straw Poll winner Rep. Michele Bachmann paid repeated tribute to her local roots, and repeatedly mentioned her family reunion that day, citing it as an excuse for her late arrival at a local party event in Waterloo.
But Bachmann's mother and two cousins told POLITICO's Emily Schultheis that Bachmann didn't attend the reunion, though her husband and children did. Her spokeswoman, Alice Stewart, didn't respond to two emails asking for an explanation of the disparity.
So now we've got this as follow up:
Michele Bachmann's spokeswoman, Alice Stewart, confirmed that Bachmann had skipped the family reunion that she said she was attending, but insisted that her comments were consistent.
Stewart, who responded to POLITICO's questions about the incident 21 hours after first asked about it, said that Bachmann -- as her mother and two cousins told us -- had not attended the "big family reunion just North of Waterloo" that Bachmann cited as an excuse for turning up late to a GOP dinner in Waterloo. But she said Bachmann had met with other family members, and denied the candidate had contradicted herself.
So, all right, it was a different family reunion. Not that one. There were two! So she wasn't really lying, you just misheard her, or she meant the family part, but didn't mean the reunion part, or ... yeah, it's hard to even care. There's probably an interesting backstory there, something that will later be on The Learning Channel if they manage to ink the right contracts.
We're all used to candidates lying and candidates using their extended families as props (you know, except for the ones they try to sweep under the floorboards), but Bachmann has at this point gained a reputation for being a candidate/politician with a pattern of lying about all sorts of things, both big and small; she seems incapable of not adding to that list. It seems habitual.