if she's mad as a hatter (and i agree that she is), what does that say about the people who elected her?

What does it say about Sean Hannity, who offered up nothing but praise for her viewpoints.

And by that, what I mean, an orderly revolution -- where the people of this country wake up get up and make a decision that this is not going to happen on their watch.

Uh... isn't that exactly what we did last November, when we voted Obama into office?

This woman terrifies me. She is clearly insane.

No Steve, someone is not going to get hurt. Someone is going to get killed. That's the way things are done in this country.

She seemed to also say that America is right now the only free country in the world, meaning that the UK, Canada, and all of our western allies are just a bunch of enslaved tyrannies.

Defendants have to meet some mental competency standard before they can be tried in court, right? Why don't members of Congress have to meet the same standard? Is there some way we can request an evaluation?

There's a tipping point for persons with mental disorders and I think Michelle Bachmann is getting pretty close.

Of course, Glenn Beck flew past that marker years ago.

It surprises me that people seem to regard Bachmann as some unique sort of loon heretofore unseen in right-wing politics.

How soon we forget the late Helen Chenoweth. I lived in Idaho while she served in Congress, and I can tell ya, that woman was meshuga.

This is simply a continuation of the wingnuttery at the McCain/Palin campaign appearances. While I have the think that the USSS is on top of things, why isn't anyone in the MSM pointing this out? It's only a matter of time before someone calls in to CSPAN's show when a Republican congressman is on and calls President Obama a fascist. Oh, wait. . .

But I worry it's more than that. Incendiary rhetoric like this leads strange people to do strange things.

You mean like shoot up a Unitarian Church?

. . . have to think. . .

Someone should ask her for the exact Jefferson quote. Bring the dog whistle down a few kHz.

Unfortunately, when we ended our 40-year fascist coup d'etat, it wasn't the result of military defeat of the fascist forces and their consequent loss of any public respect or support, as happened in Germany in 1945. Thus we are dealing with a situation similar to what was feared might happen in 1945, with the Nazis retreating to their "Wolf's Redoubt" in the Alps, and a long-term guerilla war.

When you have loonies like Hannity and Beck talking about a civil war, and large numbers of unhinged righties with large numbers of weapons in their garages, the potential for civil unrest as a result of the morons being whipped up by the likes of Hanny, Beck, Limpdick, and Bachmann the
Bozo, is a very real possibility.

Unfortunately, since our side has eschewed any connection to the military for the past 40 years as they have, there's a possibility the morons might well win such a fight.

She may be 'mad as a hatter'. She may be 'completely off the deep end'. She may be totally insane.

But that doesn't stop The Gay Jewish NeoCon (Drudge) press from featuring a link to a http://briefingroom.thehill.com/2009/03/26/bachmann-bill-would-ban-global-currency/ article about her bill to stop Obama from changing to a global currency. And, if you read the comments on that article, you will find that 90% of them think she must be wonderwoman.

Just because Michelle Bachmann is a lunatic does not prevent her from having a large following of other lunatics.

Republicans, it's time to lower the temperature. In the midst of multiple crises, America deserves more than hollow, partisan rage.

I respectfully disagree. If this is the insane course they've chosen to travel, that's where they should go. It's free speech and their right, even if it is breathtakingly stupid.

There are no adults left in the Republican Party. Why pretend like there are?

Bachmann is an extremist, and her rhetoric is so counter productive, it smacks of unAmerican sentiment. When she advocates working revolutionarily against Marxism, she is demostrating unequivocally her madness, or just basic lack of understanding of what the real democratic world is all about. Either way, her whackiness will be tolerated and she will be ignored as is the way of my American society where is seems people like Bachmann are merely exercising their Constitutional rights to be stupid!

In my own snarky way, I will from now on think of Rep. Bachmann as Rep. Michelle "McMurphy" Bachmann, as she doen't seem to know how to stay inside the boundaries of mainstream reality! -Kevo

But what I find especially interesting is that her paranoid delusions are so detached from obvious truths. If Bachmann wanted to complain that a 39.6% top rate was the epitome of Marxism, she'd be just another conservative.

If that's true, then all those "other conservatives" are also detached from obvious truths. Unless it's an obvious truth that this country was Marxist for the entire duration of the Clinton administration (including the 6 years when the Marxist Republican Party controlled Congress and could have done something about it).

I guess "going Gault" for two weeks didn't do the trick. The serial nonsense of the wingnuts is really kind of comical. Everyone knows they don't really mean it. It's performance art. It's a ritual display of feathers. She'll go home, crack a beer, and watch herself on CNN.

Now, think about how weird *that* is.

In the midst of multiple crises, America deserves more than hollow, partisan rage.

Did you really expect anything other than '90s anti-Clintonism on steroids? The modern Republican party is literally deranged. The party is primarily made up of of loons who, when I first became politically aware in the early '60s), were dismissed as nuts on soapboxes even by most conservative Republicans (who would now largely be derided as RINOs) of that day--John Birchers, anti-flouridation nuts, and crusaders against Social Security. This lunatic fringe is now the party, and the media (even the non-FOX, CNBC porions) prop them up by pretending they are sane.

Let's face it. If Bachman and Gregg were Dems, the headlines accross the country would be "Dems Divided over Conversion to Euro!"

Can someone please explain to me why this isn't seditious and bordering on treasonous? Why isn't there an investigation going on, and an indictment in the works? Free speech and the First Amendment are all well and good, but remarks like this go beyond the pale.

Can someone please explain to me why this isn't seditious and bordering on treasonous? Why isn't there an investigation going on, and an indictment in the works? Free speech and the First Amendment are all well and good, but remarks like this go beyond the pale.

Because you can judge a society on how well it treats its mentally ill. So we're the best society ever--we put them in charge, and make sure they get great health care and cushy pensions.

Please, Michele - start an armed rebellion! Since the side with the Air Force always wins, y'all would be charcoal briquettes by lunch, and we would be shed of a great swath of irredeemable wingnuts in one fell swoop! (And no, there are not enough God Boys in the Air Force to flip them to her side. In fact, it would be a good opportunity to smoke out and hang those fuckers, too.)

She may be totally insane. But that doesn't stop The Gay Jewish...

I'm missing the relevance here.

Can someone please explain to me why this isn't seditious and bordering on treasonous? Why isn't there an investigation going on, and an indictment in the works? Free speech and the First Amendment are all well and good, but remarks like this go beyond the pale.

Good question. Especially given that as recently as 2006, someone was investigated for sedition for WRITING A LETTER TO THE EDITOR...

VA nurse's letter to newspaper prompts sedition probe

By The Associated Press

02.08.06

Sen. Jeff Bingaman asked Veterans Affairs Secretary James Nicholson for a thorough inquiry into his agency's investigation of whether a VA nurse's letter criticizing the Bush administration amounted to "sedition."

The agency's human resources office ultimately cleared her of any wrongdoing, but Bingaman, D-N.M., said yesterday he was concerned that the VA investigated Laura Berg of Albuquerque in the first place.

I agree with Breezeblock above. Someone is going get killed.

People forget that the Oklahoma City bombing was in the heat of the Gingrich "revolution" and first screams for impeachment. The Daily Oklahoman and most regional papers and stations were shouting about federal employee "leeches" and "socialism" right up to the murder of 168 of those federal employees, veterans, and children.

The assumption was the "Daily Disappointment" would finally get a Pulitzer but, no, the editors of the worst major newspaper in the US could not put their heart into saying good of the dead or ill of the bombers who shared the editors world view.

I know she's no Hitler, but people used to laugh at him, too.
She, Beck, Hannity, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, and other rightie talkers, are fueling the flames. Do they really know what they're doing? Probably not. To the latter, they drive rating's and personal profit's. She, though, bless her idiot soul, seems to believe that she can be some sort of spokesperson for the madness.
All that this right-wing 'movement' needs is a charismatic leader. FDR worried about Father Caughlin from the right, and Huey Long from the left.
I don't see that leader yet (she's too stupid and unhinged). But, that doesn't mean that he/she isn't out there.
So, please don't laugh - people have already died for this madness in that church slaying. This might be a harbinger of what's to come. I hate to say it, but I practically guarantee it. The madness may be about to each epic proportions and boil over.

And we are only 2 MONTHS in!

The hysterical, detached from reality rants and the dangerous attempts to undermine President Obama, in my opinion, make the 90's and the 'Arkansas Project' look tame in comparison.

And we are only 2 MONTHS in!

Not to mention the audacity of these shameless, lying hacks to spew this BS when Obama is trying to clean up the crap sandwich that these very people put us in.

Can't someone ask Bachman why a free market doesn't demand a single currency? Surely being able to trade everywhere without being controlled by the evil money changers (as the bible says) is the epitome of free trade.

Or is she saying that the dollar isn't good enough to be a global currency? Wow, she's unpatriotic!

;)

Don't misread this. Bachmann is the symptom of the problem not the problem per se.

The real issue resides in the fact that there is a Sean Hannity and his million strong audience who see the world in the same distorted way as Michelle Bachmann.

If the economic situation seriously deteriorates, all that is missing is a bunch of charismatic leaders. How do you think the brownshirts came about in Weimar Germany?

I'm sorry, but here's the part I can't get past:

We are headed down the lane of economic Marxism

Or maybe she means "economical Marxism" -- Marxism on the cheap... :)

If they play their cards right, Bachmann and associates can have their "orderly revolution" in November of 2010.

Good luck with that.

Mark my words: there will be more than one attempted "soft coup" against Obama during his 4-8 years in office.

I don't mean tanks rolling in the streets or car bombs or anything.

But there will be a steady campaign of corporate media/financial pressure, coupled with intimidation if not outright violence from organized wingnuttery, to force him to back down or else render the country ungovernable.

This will make the Clinton Wars look like pattycake.

I hope ActBlue has a page up for the Dem challenger in Bachmann's district for 2010.

It's not too soon to be contributing.

You'd think an elected official would have a little more faith in the system that got her elected.

She nuts. I'd still like to see her and Katherine Harris bump tacos though.

This is a perfectly logical extension of the 'going galt' meme we all enjoyed so much last month. They tried the whole petulant 'if you don't play my way I'm going to take my basketball and go home' thing, only to discover (I think to their shock) that we all would really rather play soccer anyway. When your threat to leave is greeted by a collective 'have fun with that' you get pissed and walk off muttering about getting even.

I work in a bar. A friendly place, mostly locals, unpretentious. Buy when the drunk groups come in on weekends, a common threat is to leave, if someone doesn't get their way. I hear 'well, I'm going to leave then, and my friends will too, and we're never coming back' at least once a week. You know what? Not only do their friends rarely leave with them, that's exactly what I was trying to do, get you to go away and stop bugging everyone else. When I see bachmann, this is who I think of. If you can play by the rules, we're happy to have you. Otherwise, just go away.

There is an ActBlue page set up for the Dem challenger (who ever it is) to Bachmann.

http://www.actblue.com/entity/fundraisers/21748

Michelle Bachmann represents a district including Anoka, the Coen brothers' hometown. Will Bachmann do a cameo appearance in their next movie?

If "tyranny" means following the results of the election of November, 2008, then the people of Minnesota's 6th District need to rise up and throw down this tyrant!

Viva la revolucion!

I'd still like to see her and Katherine Harris bump tacos though. -citizen_pain

Consarnit. I just ate lunch. :X

I've been worried about this since the campaign when the Palin/McCain crowds were calling out vile threats. The audience Bachmann is playing to are as unhinged as shes is. Someone pointed out the killings at the Unitarian Church in Tennessee this past year, which is an excellent example of what can happen. Even worse, of course, would be armed militias. And there are plenty of them in my part of the country rarin' to go when called, I'm sure

>"international currency. Then we have no hope of standing on our own as a sovereign nation..."

Wonder if she knows how the current 'Federal Reserve' system is structured. That the US currency is controlled by a cabal of international banks.

(Sadly enough, the above is basically the way it is... )

Mad as a Hatter, indeed...And Michele Bachmann does it all with that sort of air of detachment, that vacant smile--she truly seems to believe what she is saying and yet also seems to have no clue as to what she is saying...it really is Alice in Wonderland bizarre.

First, the Missouri and Villanova wins ruin my NCAA bracket. Now, Bachmann ruins my "Benen Bracket" for the nuttiest Congressperson. King has all but been eliminated; no one can come from this far behind.

Second, I am not comfortable with calls for investigation for sedition. Call me a First Amendment zealot, but its still just speech. I'd hate to see it prosecuted even if it has the capacity ultimately to push some listner over the edge.

Third, what I do think should happen is a little intervention by the Secret Service. No, they really have no pull with the Limbaughs and Hannitys of the world, but a little closed door meeting with the House Republican Caucus to suggest perhaps a little lowering of the temp might have some impact.

Mainly, however, I think Bachmann has secretly replaced all of her advisors with some of our old favorite regulars at CBR (hi, JKap and JRS Jr!) who had conspiracy theories about things like a single worldwide currency. The funny part (in that gallows humor sort of way) about all of this is that the MSM doesn't call her on it almost surely because they, too, don't understand that the reference to a different reserve currency does not literally mean that we'd quit using American dollars.

Michele Bachmann was my state rep when she first entered elected office.She will NOT be confused with any facts and has no intention of actually representing her constitutes. Belive it or not, Bachmann is quite charismatic to those with extreme right sensibilities. She also has a martyr complex a mile wide. If MN CD6 remains as it is now, she will most likely remain in congress. So, sit back, make some popcorn and enjoy the show. Like the old saying goes, I use to be offended, now I am just amused.
Oh, she also seems to be pretty suseptible to psychic/ occult attacks and is quite paranoid about them, for those so inclined.

What progressives need to truly understand (and effectively expose) is how deep Bachman's strain of wingnuttery truly runs on the right. Several months ago I went to a local event sponsored by a conservative talk radio station here in Denver. The featured speaker was Hugh Hewitt whose show is featured on the station. (Don't ask, suffice it to say it was a favor for my wife) During the Q & A following Hewitt's remarks one by one the questioners stepped to the microphone and made statements or asked questions about immigration, taxes, Iraq, etc. no less nutty than a typical Bachman rant all to the muttered approval of the crowd. The only thing that distinguishes Bachman is that she managed to get herself elected to Congress.

An "orderly revolution"? What exactly does that mean?

Is she referring to the elections in 2010/2012?

Or does she mean the general population rising up to overthrow (peacefully, of course) the federal government, like the People's Power Revolution in the Phillippines and the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia?

Does she even know?

Shocking. Crazy people believe crazy things.

Hutu radio. Did she ask here constituents to sharpen their machetes and look for anyone without a valid drivers license?

An "orderly revolution"? What exactly does that mean?

Is she referring to the elections in 2010/2012?

Or does she mean the general population rising up to overthrow (peacefully, of course) the federal government, like the People's Power Revolution in the Phillippines and the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia?

Does she even know?

Posted by: 2Manchu on March 27, 2009 at 2:39 PM

Nope.

But in all seriousness, shouldn't a call to the Secret Service be made?

I don't expect anything from Michelle Bachmann, but her speech is incendiary and very, very likely to incite violence.

I think this is something that has to be nipped in the bud.

Going Gault?

If that means trying every restaurant in the Gault Millau guide, I'm for it.

First, the Missouri and Villanova wins ruin my NCAA bracket.

Serves you right. You should have been thinking about the economic crisis instead of filling out that silliness. You probably hit the talk-show circuit, too, slacker.

An "orderly revolution"? What exactly does that mean?

She heard about the Czech Velvet Revolution and took it to mean a nicely dressed and accessorized overthrow. She plans to maintain her jarringly insincere smile throughout the coup.

http://www.infowars.com/obamas-stimulus-plan-is-about-debt-owed-to-bankers-not-government-socialism/

http://www.infowars.com/un-imf-back-agenda-for-global-financial-dictatorship/

Thomas Jefferson:
“God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is
wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts
they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions,
it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. …
And what country can preserve its liberties, if it’s rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure.�

Somebody really deserves a bitch-slap! Bring it on Michele, I got a culture war for your little revolution that you aren't going to believe. The woman should be in custody in a mental health facility. So should Hannity and Glenn Beck.

"an orderly revolution -- where the people of this country wake up get up and make a decision that this is not going to happen on their watch."

Hmm...I thought we just did that.

These talk show idiots, like Sean Haircut, need to back off. They are coming pretty darned close to inciting armed rebellion against the government.

I bet Bachmann would vote for another
Herbert Hoover. I voted for Obama and
will the next time. Why dose bachmann
think her vote is more importent than
everyone else,s??? Another GOP nut case!

This wing nut needs to be on a terrorist watch list. She seems to be inciting terror attacks on American soil, therefore she is a terrorist.

It seems that since the culture wars are no longer driving the fundraising and recruitment another hot button issue is necessary to justify the increasingly antagonistic and incoherent. Now that abortion is becoming less of a rallying cry - because both sides are willing to work together (at least we see promising signs)- and gay issues are framed as civil rights, something else must substitute if the politics of fear and division can be maintained. it's an addiction...

Of course the fact that the wingnuts have emptied out the gun shops since Obama was elected should give us all a great deal of comfort.

Hannity and his ilke know what they are doing. We truly are the enemy and I am fine with that. Bring it on.

You mean like shoot up a Unitarian Church?

Or the bombing of a Federal building in Oklahoma City.

Please don't hold her against all of us Minnesotans :) A lot of us are actually quite astute. I'd even get some amusement out of listening to her drivel, if she weren't so scary nutty. She's obviously such a bible banger (and I bet she has a direct line to Him too). I don't live in her district, but I may just have to volunteer for the opposition, just because... and God forbid she ever runs for any higher office.

Regarding Bachmann:

The truly insane have the luxury of casually pursuing nightmares the rest of us work lifetimes to safeguard against.

trex: Quality.

The RepoTaliban needs to continually be reminded that the rest of us know where this gigantic deficit came from, and who started wars in two distant countries, and failed to win either, much less both. A failure that is likely to drag us into a war in a third nation.

Their stand on socalization and nazification of the government is ludicrous in light of their policies of the past 5 out of 7 administrations.

It is just so obvious from their own words that they believe the Republicans rule this country.

Your comment about mad as a hatter got me to thinking. The hatters of old England suffered from mercury poisoning that was somehow involved with felt making or something on that order. Decades ago when I lived in Wisconsin the salmon would run from the Great Lakes up the rivers and people would try to snag them. We were told not to eat more than one serving a week and pregnant women were not to eat any because of the high level of mercury in the meat. Is it possible that this woman has been eating too much locally caught salmon from the Great Lakes? Someone might ask her.

Bachman is such an embarrassment to me and many other Minnesotans I feel the need to explain that she wasn't elected by a majority and can be beaten by a good candidate with a good name. In 2008 it was a three way race. Tinklenburg had the right qualifications and Anderson had the right name and between the two of them they won approx 54% of the vote. MN CD 3 was won by a repub with a third party assist as well and Al Frankin would probably be seated as our 59th Senator, if there hadn't been a 3rd party candidate in that race. I hate spoilers.

Darn that Michelle Bachmann, now I have a song stuck in my head!

"You say you want a revolution,
Well, you know,
We all want to change the world...
You say you've got a real solution,
Well, you know,
We'd all love to see the plan.
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We're all doing what we can. "

But when you want money for people with minds that hate, all I can tell you is brother you have to wait.

Any minute now, I expect Bachmann to be seen with a picture of Chairman Mao, and my head will explode.

Idiot woman. Marxism, at its core, is an economic philosophy with socio-political ramifications:

"Under capitalism, the proletariat, the working class or “the people,� own only their capacity to work; they have the ability only to sell their own labor. According to Marx a class is defined by the relations of its members to the means of production. He proclaimed that history is the chronology of class struggles, wars, and uprisings. Under capitalism, Marx continues, the workers, in order to support their families are paid a bare minimum wage or salary. The worker is alienated because he has no control over the labor or product which he produces. The capitalists sell the products produced by the workers at a proportional value as related to the labor involved. Surplus value is the difference between what the worker is paid and the price for which the product is sold. "
Source:http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/what-is-marxism-faq.htm

Unfortunately, since our side has eschewed any connection to the military for the past 40 years as they have, there's a possibility the morons might well win such a fight.

How shall I say this...

TCinLA, you don't know what the fuck you are talking about.

Foxholes and front lines make Liberals, REMF's(Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers) make up most the retards you speak of.

And, yes, blood will be spilled(and already has) because of idiots. You out there predicting violence are not wrong. Wanna know how to NOT be one of the victims? Stand up to them. Don't cower.

They excavate for weakness...don't give them any...

And mrmakymkay, I don't now whether to call you "Cry Wolfe" or a "Wolfe in Sheep's Clothing." Wait, now that I think about it, they both fit.

Welcome to the modern day American Tory...

Foxholes and front lines make Liberals, REMF's(Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers) make up most the retards you speak of.

Hubby wants you to add the launch crews sitting in silos to the 'retard' list and actually maintaining the massive killing machines makes liberals.

Sorry to disappoint those who read political news for the same reason others watch horror movies -- for the frisson -- but of the three 'nightmare scenarios' presented above, two are -- as of now -- pretty damn unlikely.

One definitely is possible, the 'lone nut' (or nutty group) causing an Oklahoma City or worse. That IS a serious danger, and it brings up some questions I'll save for a minute or so.

But the others aren't unless thimgs changed considerably. Forget "The Return of the Hitler Zombie." Weimar and Democracy itself were not ever popular in Germany after WWI. (We forget this was, if not an 'imposed Democracy,' pretty close to it.) Nor was the Government ever able to compete with or control the various violently anti-Democratic forces on both right AND left. (It wasn't the Government against the Nazis, it was the Government caught between the Nazis and the Communists -- both of whom used 'street fighting' as ways of building support.)

Furthermore, we forget that any one of us have access to far more information than anyone had then -- and we are -- over all -- much less gullible than people were then. Bush was light years away from being a fascist -- at least partially because he was much more a 'follower' type than a leader -- as unpleasant as were his attacks on the Constitution. But he's out of office, and so are most of his more egregious followers -- and it didn't take a revolution to unseat him. Democracy worked and continues to work -- imperfectly, of course since the very idea of 'perfection' is anathema to Democracy.

Similarly the fears of a corporate 'soft war' against Obama might have been true if the Republican Party retained a shred of intelligence. But seriously, most corporate leaders are neither stupid nor wingnuts -- there arfe exceptions. Imagine yourself the head of a generally successful corporation. Okay, you've cut a few corners, enjoyed the 'deregulation' era, yes, but you now have a choice. (And you aren't reading about the problems in the economy in the papers, you are seeing them every day.)

Who would you feel safer with -- and businessmen value stability over almost anything else? An intelligent -- if liberal -- adult who may make you 'clean up your act' in some ways and might raise your taxes a little and curb your wilder excesses? Or the clueless adolescent dimwits that are all the Republican Party has left?

If there were an intelligent Republican alternative they might get some support, but who is going to put their future in the hands of a party which features -- on the sane side -- Mark Sanford and Mike Pence, and goes from there to Bachman-Palin territory, or who treats "Joe the Plumber" as an authority on anything? No, corporate power may give the 'Blue Dogs" support, but they aren't going to chop Obama down until there is an alternative.

But, going back to the 'lone nut' scenario -- a lot of us protested government surveilance of liberal groups, groups which we knew were 'harmless.' (But the paranoid eejuts in government probably didn't know for sure.)

Now, how do we feel about government surveillance of rightwing groups -- groups with a much higher record of violence, yes, but for only some of them? And before you answer, imagine you are an Agent in Charge of a specific region, you have, maybe, thirty groups that are radically right-wing. Twenty-five are 'harmless debating societies,' five are at least potentially dangerous. How do you tell them apart? And, assuming that you believe both in civil liberties and in the danger extremist violence can cause to society, which side do you err on?

Hubby wants you to add the launch crews sitting in silos to the 'retard' list and actually maintaining the massive killing machines makes liberals.

Dammit! How in the fuck am I supposed to argue with that!!! Point taken...

And by that, what I mean, an orderly revolution -- where the people of this country wake up get up and make a decision that this is not going to happen on their watch.

note to dingbat bachmann: the revolution just happened, its called the elections of 2006 and 2008 where the people rose up and "threw the bums out".

It would be a mistake, however, to see Bachman as some outlier freak instead of what she really is, which is only a more obvious representative of what is going on now within the conservative movement. There is a reason that publishers have reissued Richard Hofstader's 50 year old essays on the Paranoid Style in American Politics, and why it is being quoted so freqently, as George Packer does today in New Yorker. Read Hofstader's description of what happend to the convervative movement when Goldwater was defeated in 1964 and you will find echoes of the same reaction today in a defeated GOP that if anything has become more defiant, more extreme since Obama took over.

Instead of looking for the reasons for their defeat as professional politicaisn do, or finding lessons they could learn for their next try, conservatives blamed a morally decadent nation and looked for others to blame, mostly moderates and liberals in their own party who stabbed them in the back. Conservatives like Bachman are not really interested in winning elections, they are members of a creed, so the art of compromise employed by professional politicians is a sign of weakness or disloyalty to them.

If you think Bachman is an anomoly ask yourself why Republicans reacted so violently to the Democratic insinuation that Rush Limbaugh was their leader, yet none of them were brave enough to cross him. This is the same Limbaugh who said that politics is like a football game, it's about our team winning and their team losing. It is not about policy, he said, it's about "conservative principles" that are inviolate and never-changing. Just like a religion. Newt Gingrich says pretty much the same thing -- the road back to power does not entail reaching out to those who do not agree with you. It entails "getting back to core conservative principles" -- the purity of which is supposed to attract those who currently do not agree with you because, I guess, they think you have abandoned the principles that at one time you both shared.

To understand where the GOP and conservative movement is mentally it may be useful to go back in history, perhaps to the South before the civil war when it too felt power slipping away from it as its slave-based traditional, feudal society was being overtaken by the polyglot, pluralist and industralizing north. All sorts of constitutional theories were being spun to preserve Southern power, the most famous of which was John C. Calhoun's idea of "concurrent majority."

We study Calhoun's ideas today for the lessons they teach about protecting minority rights against the "tyranny" of majority rule. But what Calhoun was really hoping to create was a constitutional justification for minority rule -- specifically, the continued dominance of the Southern plantation elite over the federal government.

When the South felt their power slipping away they decided to destroy the country rather than be a subordinate party within that nation. The South did the same thing to the Democratic Party in 1948 when Truman desegregated the military, abandoning the Dems to form the Dixicrat Party. The South has alway been the home for third party movements because it refuses to be part of any institution that it does not directly control.

Today, 21 Republican senators come from the South, more than half. Without a vote they have essentially amended the Constitution to require that 60 votes are now needed in the Senate to pass any piece of legislation. The filibuster is only a Senate rule and tradition. It once was used only for extraordinary occasions, touching on what Senators believed were fundamental rights. Now the filibuster is a routine piece of lawmaking, perhaps because the Republican Senate caucus is also the Southern caucus.

The record number of filibusters we've seen since Democrats regained control of Congress is nothing more than the resurrection of John C. Calhoun's idea of concurrent majorities in that nothing will get done unless every interest, every region, every party has affirmatively agreed to it. This is a recipe for minority, not majority rule -- for the rule of the Southern Bourbon elite, not the larger democracy -- precisely the stalemate by minority veto that first caused the founders to gather in Philadelphia to write the Constitution in the first place.

Bachman is a certifiable nut. But she is also a representative nut.

Hey, Ted Frier. I'm Southern born and bred but a progressive Democrat. I just have to point out for fairness sake that the last time I looked Minnesota was not part of the Old Confederacy. The South doesn't have a monopoly on wingnuts.

gingerpye

Point taken. I have my own connections to the South but you are right I was appealing to stereotypes. Necessary ones, I think, in order to show that Bachman isn't some lone kook but connected to an identifyable tradition in our politics with long antecedents. But you are right that the South is home to a progressive tradition as well as its more recognizable reactionary one. I've just been struck since Obama has taken office by the extent to which the GOP has been acting like Calhoun's South before the Civil War -- a region and a party losing influence and being marginalized but refusing to accept the verdict of history and the People which they show in their willingness to bring the government to a halt or go to war rather than accept the fact that they are now in the minority and not in control. I probably did paint with too broad a brush to capture that idea.