We seem to be approaching "closing time" in the GOP nomination saloon. A couple of days ago I wrote a comment about how Bachmann, Huntsman and, I don't know, one of the other clowns--didn't file for the Virginia primary.
This morning a top story on Google News notes that Gingrich and Perry aren't going into that primary either. (In their case, the problem was failure to obtain the necessary number of signatures.)
"Closing time/you don't have to go home...
But-you-can't/
Stay/
Here..."
"I know who I waaant to take me home..."--ok, I'll stop now, but you see the point is...
(CONTINUED)
...time's running out. And the big money is being sewn up, and no matter how many mindless followers you still attract--you can't run any kind of credible presidential effort without the big money. These candidates and their cults trot around polls, and our political media promotes and prints the polls and the wacky rhetoric and emits the hot copy...
..but if you can't even get the support or organization necessary to get on the ballot in Virginia a few months from now: well, then maybe the band has stopped playing its last set and you are hearing the bouncers' footsteps approaching, my friend...
As for me and the Bachmann updating stuff...in the words of Richard Nixon, let me make this perfectly clear.
Michele Bachmann's career, national political influence, and relevance is not necessarily over because her White House bid fails. People who think that are (in my opinion) ill-informed or political dummies.
Even if she fails to capture the White House or enter a Republican administration as vice-president or policymaker--she can continue to be a significant influence on the American political agenda and the GOP. Just like Joe McCarthy, but without Joe McCarthy's high profile, career-ruining, downfall. If she continues to play her cards right, her national backers in the Christian right can use her: as a demagogue in Congress, as a conservative pundit, as a conservative evangelical leader.
In one or more of these capacities (and so long as she keeps her national fanbase and the good will of her political masters in the Christian right) she can influence the political agenda that affects us all. Just as she has done in the past few years--with all the tea party crap, the Fox media propaganda, the religious right propaganda aimed at conflating the authority of Jesus with political conservatism.
So I'm going to continue to write (elsewhere and yes, right here) about her misadventures--so long as she's relevant to our politics, no matter what happens to her White House ambitions.
Just making that clear; because people here and elsewhere have been telling me since 2003 that I should stop writing about her because it's not helpful and because she's not worth anyone's attention. Those people were wrong then, and they're wrong now.
Since before 2006, it was the intention of the national Christian right to build this obscure little hater, liar and paranoid into a national political brand. That happened, and their power to make that happen is deeply relevant to the contemporary American political process (whether critics of Bachmann understand that or not.)
By summer of 2011, their attempt to put this particular political puppet into the top ranks of government had failed. Bachmann was discredited, and I'm proud to say that what I wrote and researched and published here and elsewhere over the years and got into the national media and political blogging world played a small part in the failure of her presidential bid.
And now that the word is out in the media (not just the Olbermann/Maddow/Jon Stewart media, but what is laughably called the "serious" political media)...the brand is seriously damaged. Last year I was thinking that she might make it on to a ticket as a veep nominee. Because of all the incredible Chritian right and tea party momentum she would add to, say, a Romney candidacy at the top of the ticket.
Less likely to happen that ever, because of the revelations about her character and indoctrination that finally got national attention this year. Romney, if he prevails, still needs those Bachmann constituencies to mount a credible effort against Obama. But he (or any other eventual Republican candidate) can now do better than Bachmann in terms of picking a candidate who can deliver those constituencies. This year, the Bachmann brand probably acquired too much negative baggage--beyond the liberals and progressives who've always detested her.
Still: national brands, once built, are valuable. Bachmann continues to be a hero to millions of conservative evangelical wingers who can make or break Republican elections. So long as she continues to serve the Christian right (as she has done since the late nineteen-seventies) her reputation within the strange, deeply hypocritical, cynical and paranoid world of the Christian right will keep her relevant in national politics. Joe McCarthy could never be president, not even when he was at the height of his career...but he was always deeply relevant, right up to the day he was censured.
And by the way: no matter what happens to this national kook demagogue in the presidential contest, she's still my congressional representative, still representing hundreds of thousands of Americans in Congress. How about that?
Happy holidays! Merry Christmas!
LINK:
http://www.cbsnews.com/...