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After finally getting around to reading more of Matt Taibbi's fantastic profile of Michelle Bachmann, I wanted to take a moment to repeat something I've written about once before.
While I find a lot of Bachmann's history and character to be disturbing and dangerous – the going to get us all killed type in a literal sense – I'm drawn more to what the existence of the Bachmann's of the world says about the people who make their rise to power and celebrity possible.
This passage from the profile perfectly illustrates my point:
Bachmann won a fairly independent district by an eight point margin. In her runs for Congress, Bachmann discovered — or perhaps it is more accurate to say we all discovered — that a total absence of legislative accomplishment and a complete inability to tell the truth or even to identify objective reality are no longer hindrances to higher office.
The end of that should be rewritten so that it more accurately says "...a total absence of legislative accomplishment and a complete inability to tell the truth or even to identify objective reality is no barrier to getting votes from most Republicans, and some supposed independents."
While one could debate the reasons why Democrats don't vote for Bachmann, it ultimately serves no purpose because it doesn't speak to why Republicans are willing – excited even – to vote for a serial liar who has never actually accomplished a single stated goal in her entire professional political career.
It can be politically advantageous to become the "party of no", as Republicans have shown over the past few years. Republicans used this rhetoric against Democrats in inappropriate situations while they were in power but then made the rhetoric into reality after 2006. This is not an exaggeration. The GOP set an all-time new record for filibusters after the 2006 election and nearly matched that record again after 2008. The new record was double the previous total, to truly understand the scale of GOP obstruction over the past four and a half years, and to give some understanding to why our government hasn't accomplished jack @!$%# during that time.
When I say this level of obstruction is unprecedented, I mean it. Going from 60 filibusters per session to nearly 140 when the old record was in the 80s is truly unprecedented.
By making government dysfunctional – even if it means harming the country in the process (fanatics will happily tell you that harming something or someone in order to save them is completely justified, right up until the verge of causing death and possibly flying right past it, and could even be considered a good thing) – Republicans can turn and run on that during their campaigns. Look at how dysfunctional Washington is, look at how it never listens to youn anymore. We can fix that because only we truly love and understand our country. Never mind that Republicans are the reason nothing ever gets done, and forget that the GOP often ignores the will of the people as much – if not more often – than Democrats do. Far too often the public doesn't care who @!$%#ed it up, they just want someone to fix it. Republicans realized that and have been running on a Scorched America policy ever since. While they are out of power, the worse they can make things here, the more they'll have to point their fingers at.
That's disgusting, reprehensible and often self-defeating behavior. When Republicans regain power and things don't actually get better, the country remembers why it threw that bunch out onto the street in the first place. But it's coldly calculated and strategically sound in the short term.
What Bachmann has done is taken the "party of no" to the next level much in the way that Elena Kagan did, making a career out of harnessing the opinion of others to push the machine forward without taking a solid stance on anything when it come times to take action for herself.
But all of that is besides the point. What concerns me is the willingness of conservative voters to propel an empty suit radical like Bachmann to state office, the U.S. Senate, and possibly the presidency, knowing full well that she's a bald-faced liar who has only taken a single firm stance for or against a single issue in her entire life.
When conservatives complain about career politicians, this is actually what they are talking about.
There are certain things that most people can agree about regardless of ideology, things that boil down to common sense. Nobody likes liars, even though we possess an innate ability to tolerate deception from people we admire and identify with. But every person should have a built-in limit for bull@!$%# beyond which even the most agreeable politician becomes toxic to the political system and our way of life. Our tendency to exaggerate everything into extremes aside, Michele Bachmann is one of those people whose forked tongue is visible so often that even die hard conservatives in perfect ideological synergy with the Senator should reject her over a less ideal match, simply out of self interest. Because even they should understand that her inability to tell the truth will one day @!$%# them over when it comes to unkept promises.
Increasingly, that's just not the case with modern conservatives. They've become so obsessed with issue and ideological purity that practically no offensive trait would put them off a candidate that tells them exactly what they want to hear. People as individuals are susceptible to this behavior regardless of all other things, but not in numbers great enough to send Bachmann to the White House. In order for that to happen, this behavior must consume an entire ideology from the ground up. There is little about Michele Bachmann that sets her apart from other GOP candidates when it comes to issues: cut taxes, ban gay marriage (both issues are opposed by a majority of Americans), etc. Just about anything you can get from Bachamann you can also get from Herman Cain, Mitt Romney, and even Donald Trump.
All things being equal, it'll be what people don't like about one candidate that ends up pushing them towards another. Considering the current field, Bachmann should be driving away almost everyone. When issue purity drowns out all other concerns, then a serial liar should be the last person you'd support, because you can't possibly know if their support of your issues at all costs is genuine.
So while Michele Bachmann reminds me more of the Taliban than she does an American statesman (or stateswoman), I'm less concerned with her than I am the transformation and radicalization of the Republican Party to a lockstep army of zombies that cares more about issue purity than the issues themselves – and the consequences of that bheavior -- and their increasing willingness to ignore terrible and dangerous character traits in favor of simply hearing what they want to hear.
