(crossposted from Buffalo Ridge Blog )
Been working on a post for a while... The theme was how the republican strategy seems to be to retreat to their conservative homelands where they can win enough congressional and legislative seats to block progressive legislation. And failing that, they won't give an inch on their "right" to bully gay kids and amass ample arsenals to make their arrest for such bullying and similar crimes impractical. One could see that strategy in the MN legislature, where the republicans let marriage equality become the law with but token opposition while threaten daylong filibusters that blocked anti-bullying and gun control bills. In congress, gerrymandering has given the republicans veto power via an unearned (a million more voters preferred democratic to republican congress members) majority in the house and threatening to filibuster anything and everything in the senate. Then democratic senators in IA and SD announced they'd be retiring and not seeking reelection in 2014, followed shortly by the SD democrats strongest candidate, Stephanie Herseth, announcing she'll sit out the race. 'Cross the Big Sioux River in IA, Bachmann's soulmate Steve King has been rather shy about entering that race, no doubt still bruised from barely winning reelection in his own conservative dream district in western IA. So we have a political void...
And we now have Michelle Bachmann, cut loose from the responsibilities (not that she ever took them too seriously) of her central MN district, and endowed with a leftover multi-million dollar campaign war chest and the ability to raise millions more. And ever the drama queen, she'll play the whole civil and probably criminal investigation of her as yet more "libral" persecution, as the donations roll in. And heck, how many decades has it been since a congresscritter did hard time? Yup, Michelle will walk...
And where better than to stage her political comeback then in the rabid red republican counties along the Rock River on the Buffalo Ridge in northwestern IA, where Obama lost by 30 and 40 percent margins? Heck, rumor has it that the Bachmann's "Clinic" is getting a name change, and with the improving real estate market surely the Bachmann's can get out of their McMansion in the wrong district. Having collected a million or three selling those properties, the Bachmann's could easily afford a decent sized spread in the conservative "homeland" or northwestern Iowa, far away from those nasty metro gay activists that keep laughing at husband and fashion consultant Marcus. And a lovely base for Michelle's 2014 senate and 2016 presidential campaigns, right smack in the middle of northwestern Iowa's rabid religious republican homeland, from a section sized estate with her own TV studio and a fleet of campaign buses running on untaxed red diesel... How can the Bachmann's resist?
Our small corps of Buffalo Ridge bloggers stand ready to roll out the welcome mat for the Bachmanns in their new home... And then we'll open up a gay bar right next door!