I’ve pretty much resigned myself to a dull Republican primary, to Mitt Romney debating Tim Pawlenty, while Bobo gushes about their Burkean restraint. This won’t just be boring, it will also be exactly what Karl Rove wants. That’s why I’m excited about Michelle Bachmann.
Jon Martin, one of the few Politico reporters whose wisdom I respect, lays out a convincing case that Bachmann is, if not truly in it to win it, at least in a position to change the dynamic of the Republican primary. I think he’s right in that she could raise a lot of money and eat up a lot of Fox time.
I want the Republican party to put its craziest foot forward in the primaries. The teatard governors in the midwest have already damaged Republicans’ 2012 political prospects and Bachmann can only hurt them more.
mclaren
Or maybe Bobo will swoon over their primal scent.
KG
If Bachmann is in, then I have to believe that Palin is out. No way they both run.
I can’t see her being anything more than a fringe candidate, but if nobody actually runs, then she can pick up some votes. I’d still put my money on Huckabee
Egypt Steve
As soon as I find out where to send it, I’m sending Bachman $100.
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik
You want crazy, Doug?
If the early caucusing in Iowa is any indication, the GOP election looks to feature the demonization and call to abolish public schooling wholesale as a major issue.
MikeJ
Nick Gilder is running?
So young to be loose and on her own
Young boys, they all want to take her home
She goes downtown, the boys all stop and stare
When she goes downtown, she walks like she just don’t care, care
Anne Laurie
DougJ, this post needs the “Bachman Turner Diaries Overdrive” tag.
I agree she’s probably gonna make a “serious” run for — at the least — the Repub VP slot, now that Palin’s overplayed her ‘starbursts’ act with the Media Villagers.
Comrade DougJ
@Anne Laurie:
Thanks, I knew there was one I was missing!
skippy
mike j beat me to it.
nick gilder reference for the win.
i swear comrade doug j you have the best headlines in blogtopia and yes i coined that phrase!
Omnes Omnibus
@MikeJ: Gawd, I haven’t heard that song in years.
cleek
i’d have far more faith in this kind of dismissal if 2010 didn’t decisively prove that pandering demagogic idiocy is a winning formula for massive electoral victory.
plus… anyone think the economy is gonna turn around in the next 12 months ?
me either.
JPL
Imagine if you will a primary between Palin and Bachmann……………..hmmmm
Now imagine if we actually had journalists covering the Palin, Bachmann primary………………nice.
The Dangerman
“Hot Child”; isn’t that what Swift proposed modestly?
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
Ooh I can’t wait to see that deranged look in her eyes during the debates. I wonder which camera she’ll choose to stare at. Thanks people of Minnesota! The only thing that could make this better would be Orly Taitz running, but then she wasn’t born in the US. Sigh.
Comrade DougJ
@cleek:
Because of the great victories won by Miller, O’Donnell, and Angle?
Anonymous At Work
A true Charlie-Foxtrot primary season should help teach the GOP about closed primaries and about stacking their schedule up with certain groups.
Spaghetti Lee
@cleek:
An unknown quantity is more popular than a known one. And the teabaggers are working hard to make themselves known in the worst kind of way. We’re already seeing the backlash, and because they have no brains and no self-control, it will only get worse.
Parallel 5ths (Irish Steel)
Palin, Barbour, Huckabee? All off the table?
Gingrich? Crazy Uncle Ron Paul? With his batshit mob of zealots, he’s not going away quietly.
I think there will still be plenty of fun to be had.
Suffern ACE
@Comrade DougJ: Well that’s 11 electoral votes.
Hunter Gathers
Romney and Pawlenty won’t be able to really compete until they go Full Metal Birther. It’s going to be the signature issue of the primaries. Policies be damned. Whoever comes up with the best ‘Barack Hussien Obama has a deep dark secret that he doesn’t want you to know about’ ad will win the whole damned thing. The TeaTards don’t want boring debates between two has beens who won’t win the states that they used to govern. They want fire and brimstone; they want the type of rhetoric that burns paint off the walls.
I’m of the opinion that the GOP establishment has written off the White House next year. The real action is in the Senate races. If the GOP can pick up 4 seats, they can turn Obama into a lame duck the day after the election. A GOP controlled Senate means that Obama will accomplish nothing in his second term, and guarantee a President Marco Rubio in 2016. Then we get ThunderDome.
A splendid time is guaranteed for all.
Valdivia
Totally OT but I did not want to drop this link in a dead thread. Please behold the ‘art’ of Saif Ghadaffi. I think the images capture exactly the kind of sycophancy bread from dictatorship. The reverential look that the guests adopt looking at those horrid paintings is worth a thousand essays on the nature of delusional tyrants.
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/03/24/the_paintings_of_saif_al_qaddafi
Now back to the delusions of our wannabes in the Rep party.
scav
We’re going to need to come up with a list of solid clues to reliably distinguish the (R)epub primary season from some over-the-top monstrous hybrid Chimera of a unilateral world-wide-wrestling match with a celebrity ridden reality show where people get voted off for showing residual attachment to anything resembling mere reality.
Parallel 5ths (Irish Steel)
NYT on Santorum:
.
Uh, I don’t know if name recognition is exactly his problem.
Valdivia
Also, too. I hate you DougJ! I have that song stuck in my head now/ scurries off to play it or to find a way to un-ear-worm it….
The Dangerman
@Hunter Gathers:
Agree on the former, but if they aren’t careful, a blowout could flip the House back. It’s pretty obvious the Republican House hasn’t done shit on the economy.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
I wish I could get excited about this, but someone who means a great deal to me just sent me this fucking mises.org link with the subject line “good read.” So I’m kind of otherwise occupied wondering why life is worth it this year.
Zifnab
I thought The Trump would at least have been an entertaining time. And there’s always Santorum. Sweet, sticky Santorum. I think you’re selling this election short, DougJ. There will be lulz. Hang in there.
Common Sense
I think Herman Cain has a hell of a good chance to be the nominee. I suspect that it’s going to be a very divided primary and the guy says the right Teatard slogans while also being subservient enough to his corporate overlords to not scare them off. Being black is a nice plus for him too. “I’m not racist. Look, I support a black guy.”
MikeBoyScout
Further debasement of our political discourse in to Daily Show and SNL skits is not a good thing, no matter how funny.
This batshit crazy woman needs help, not encouragement.
pattonbt
While a huge part of me wants the craziest possible Republican primary possible, it also scares me. While I believe Obama has a pretty solid shot at being re-elected, I always know that if things suck people will easily vote “for the other” guy even given demonstrable insanity of the candidate.
So it’s a “be careful what you wish for kind of thing”. Sure the circus could be epic, a train wreck for the ages, but the consequences, no matter how remote, could be dire.
Omnes Omnibus
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Well, for what it’s worth, I assert my right to rock and roll.
Corner Stone
@The Dangerman:
Feature, not bug.
The Dangerman
@Corner Stone:
True, they have no intention of helping the economy at all, but there are a lot of voters out there that will be real unhappy with their lack of action. Couple lack with an epic ass kicking at the top of the ticket if they nominate the wrong person, well, it could flip a bunch of districts.
pattonbt
Slightly OT (and posted in a thread down below), but a perfect gathering for our resident Joe trolls……
http://wonkette.com/441287/an-evening-with-the-joes-the-greatest-meeting-of-minds-in-conservative-history
Corner Stone
@The Dangerman: Honestly, if D’s don’t make significant gains in OH, MI, and WI in 2012 this country is toast. If the latest buffoonery doesn’t keep some eyes wide open then nothing ever will.
(If Mitch runs for President then we’ll see no gains in IN, otherwise I’d hope to see some action there also.)
trollhattan
Did anybody else see the Dana Loesch person on Real Time a couple weeks back? She’s evidently a Missouri teabagger and while she didn’t think much of Palin, was quite excited by the Bachmann possibilities. Nope, nothing crazy to be seen here.
Anyway, there might be enough True Believers to give her a Ron Paulish run, which is just what the party needs.
tkogrumpy
@Corner Stone: This country IS toast! I’ve been scraping the carbon off for years now.
Steeplejack
@Valdivia:
Don’t know if this is any better, but I turned to Sweet, “Love Is Like Oxygen.”
Actually, I think it is axiomatic that an earworm can be removed only by a worse song. If someone could find a cure for that, he or she could make millions.
ETA: Jeez, my apologies. I didn’t realize this was a long version of the song. Hell, I didn’t know there was a long version. And yet I cannot turn it off.
Valdivia
@Steeplejack:
Ha! I love love love that Sweet song. Brings back childhood memories!
Thanks.
There is some web site called unhearit, that pita a definitely worse song in your ear. Also, RadioLab the wnyc show had a short episode on earoworms. It was excellent.
Valdivia
Since I cannot edit (damn phone) let me add that the fact that I love that song just proves that my iPod holds my shame :)
trixie larue
I know that these folks are wingnuttia in general. I just can’t make the mistake of thinking there is no way these idiots would ever be elected. I really hope that I am wrong. But I really never thought Nixon, Reagan, Bush I (not as bad as Bush II) could possibly get elected for president.
I really hope I am wrong.
“Good night. And good luck to you all.” (Murrow)
Steeplejack
@Valdivia:
Your secret is safe here at Balloon Juice. We are nothing if not discreet.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
I met Michele Bachmann back in about 1993 when she was setting up her New Heights Charter School in Stillwater.
From day one, she was skimming the cream off the books. The school’s stationery bill tripled after the first month, mainly due to the number of boxes of pens and pencils and paper that would come in one door and go straight out the back into Michele’s station-wagon. It bought an extra bus, which spent most the time parked outside Michele’s house, when it wasn’t ferrying her enormous brood of children and foster children to ballet classes and gridiron matches. She would sneak into the staff room, steal a box of chocolate biscuits from the storeroom and then sit and eat the whole lot at one sitting, leaving all the packets on the floor for someone else to clean up.
Directors’ meetings were a veritable orgy of French champagne and caviar. She’d sit there in her big Eames chair (which was, of course, bought by the school, but somehow ended up in her house a few years later), waving a glass of Pol Roger, and declaiming about the “12 Christian Principles” or how “Snow White” was a paganistic, bisexual, group-sex porn film made by the godless elites to harm good god-fearing children.
Denise Stephens and I finally reached the end of our tether when she tried to get the school to open another school in Waumandee in Wisconsin, purely by coincidence on a piece of farm land Michele’s family had been trying to flog off for ten years. That land was so contaminated by chemicals that any dairy cow that stepped onto it would curl up its tail and drop straight down dead.
This was about the time Michele tried to introduce compulsory Creationism classes and ban the school from showing “Aladdin” at the Under-6’s Merit evening. I always suspected that she hated that film because Jafar looked so much like her.
She fronted up to the Board meeting reeking of scotch and hepped up on Ritalin she’d snaffled from one of her many foster-children. Five minutes in, once the crowd had quietened down, Denise stood up and started her speech.
Now, Denise is one of those good Republican women you don’t get very often any more. Rational, sensible, and with an abiding belief in fair play and Christian charity.
Denise slowly and quietly began to outline her concerns, but two minutes in Michele stood up, swaying from side to side, and moving her head from side to side to try and focus her scary snake eyes on Denise. Then she began squawking like a toucan on crack “Are you going to question my integrity?”, over and over again, getting louder each time. I honestly thought she was having a fit, or her brain had just broken.
“Are you going to question my integrity? Are you going to question my integrity? Are you going to question my integrity? Are you going to question my integrity? Are you going to question my integrity? Are you going to question my integrity? Are you going to question my integrity? My integrity? Are you going to question my integrity? Are you questioning my integrity? Are you questioning my integrity? ARE you QUESTIONING MY FUCKING INTEGRITY?”
At last something snapped and she screamed at the top of her voice, “You can’t handle a woman of my integrity. I resign, you fucking atheist bitches”, let out an enormous shriek, pegged her water glass at Denise’s head and ran out of the room still shrieking like a fox that was being waterboarded.
I never saw her again. I understand she managed to get a lot of government subsidies for not farming on her land – not that you could plant a crop on that land without it melting – and then convinced some poor sucker to put his dairy cows onto it.
It seems she’s worked out a much better way to get suckers to pay for her champagne and chocolate binges too.
“Exploratory Committee”, my wrinkled old ass.
scav
@Steeplejack:
My eyebrows just bounced off the tropopause.
nestor
Moderator: Derp?
Romney: Derp.
Pawlenty: Derp!
Barbour: Deerrrp.
Palin: Hurr! Durr!
Paul: A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank.
Audience: [boos and catcalls]
Valdivia
@Sarah, Proud and Tall:
A toucan on crack. That made my night! BTW, did I somehow miss your Trump memories? Wanna make sure I read those.
@Steeplejack:
Mmhhmm. :D
I know, you’all are never gonna mention it again…
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@Valdivia:
I’ve been trying to remember a good story about the Donald. I’m sure I have some, but much of the eighties is a blur, dear, so give me time.
I’m sure his primary campaign will joggle forth something from this old head.
danimal
@Steeplejack: That is a terrible plague of an earworm, and I may never forgive you.
Bachmann will be on the GOP ticket in 2012. Probably as veep, but she is well-positioned to start strong and could steal the presidential nomination if the money boys are too divided or sleepy.
jwb
@danimal: She’s also far more dangerous than Sarah! Princess, because she’s a believer and actually delusional rather than a grifter.
danimal
@jwb: In total agreement.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@danimal: You are frightening me.
Parallel 5ths (Irish Steel)
@Sarah, Proud and Tall: Wait, you have a website! That is rad.
ETA: Too much code in that first post. Apologies.
Morbo
Someone said Running Wild?
Valdivia
@Sarah, Proud and Tall:
I will be eagerly waiting.
Valdivia
@Parallel 5ths (Irish Steel):
I had not noticed the link to her site thanks!
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people): This is a very painful situation for us Minnesotans.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@Valdivia:
I’ve managed to summon something up in the food thread, dear.
Valdivia
@Sarah, Proud and Tall:
Thanks, just read it. Left you a comment on that thread.
alwhite
Batshit Bachmann is the perfect replacement for Palin. She will be the 2012 model, maybe even VP depending on the actual nominee.
But we should all be careful what we wish for. Given the incredible Boy Blunder impersonation Barry has been doing over the last couple of years I don’t see a lot of enthusiasm on the Dem side. I expect a lot of “a pox on both their houses” bullshit from people like Bobo – designed to keep middlin’ union folks on the couch and there still is a fired up teabagging brigade.
Given that Barry will not have the aura he had in 08 it is going to take at least twice as much work to drag his sorry ass back into the White House and prevent an even worse outcome.
niknik
@Sarah, Proud and Tall: Absolutely hilarious
cleek
@Comrade DougJ:
the fact that three GOPers didn’t win hardly makes up for the fact that 70-odd GOP congresspeople did, and the GOP took state houses across the country. all this even though the GOP was running on an impossible platform of “we will protect your medicare from government run healthcare! freedom!” and next year, 20+ currently-Dem Senate seats will be up for election. and the economy probably won’t be booming. and the general public will be no smarter.
rikryah
Bachman and Palin in this…it will be hilarious.
xian
Herman Cain could be the Alan Keyes of ’12
JR
If you’re not seeing the crazy, then you’re not paying attention. As two others have mentioned–and as I’ve been saying for months now–Herman Cain is going to be bringing it like it ain’t never been brought before.
bemused
I’m trying to imagine who Batty Bachmann or The Donald would pick for VP. Would a fundamentalist christianist male want to play second fiddle to a woman? I can’t even imagine who The Donald would allow to share the stage with him. Then again, who would be crazy enough to want to be vp candidate with either of them.
Xecky Gilchrist
Whether the primary season is tame or not, we know we can count on the GOP Convention in 2012 to be a pulsating heap of crazy. I first started paying attention in 1992, when Buchanan gave the speech that Molly Ivins said “sounded better in the original German”, and the conventions have only gotten loonier since.
Bob L
@jwb: Reading about the stuff Sarah Tall and Proud was talking about it sounds like Bachmann has it better than that; she’s a true believer whose also one of the of top 10%. Nothing in the charter school story that wouldn’t get an approving smile for one of our Gaultian Overlords.
Wolfdaughter
@Steeplejack:
As a choral singer of many years standing, and having perfect pitch (blessing or curse depending on the situation), a LOT of my brain is devoted to musical processing. There’s always background music running in my brain. Sometimes I have to “tune in”, so to speak, to know what the “song du jour” is.
Currently a PDQ Bach choral song is running. You can’t go wrong with PDQ Bach, so that’s good. My choral groups run to classical, show tunes, spirituals, gospel, jazz, so my earworms at least are usually decent music.
Advertising jingles are deliberately constructed to be earworms, on the theory (mistaken, IMHO) that because the jingles are stuck in your head, you’ll buy their shit the next time you’re in a market or wherever. I personally don’t base my buying on earworms.
And, although the “Please don’t squeeze the Charmin” ad isn’t musical (thank deity of choice), Mr. Whipple irritated me so much that I’ve NEVER bought a single roll of Charmin. And being that Charmin is on the Koch list of products, I never will buy it.
Chet
@alwhite: Today I went to the barber’s, and the nice sixtysomething lady who’s cut my fair for years started ranting about how gas prices are up and it’s all the fault of Obama for not letting us drill our way to energy independence. An outwardly normal-looking customer the next chair over piped up about how the “Democrat Party” is deliberately raising gas prices so they can shove “Government Motors”‘ new hybrid vehicles down everyone’s throats.
This was all apropos of absolutely nothing at all. One minute we’re making small talk about my barber’s grandchildren, next I’m hearing Murdochian talking points being spouted angrily and at high volume.
I’m going to find a new place to get my hair cut, but it might be a while before I can again be so sanguine about the GOP bringing on the crazy, because I’m not at all certain that we haven’t severely misunderestimated how many of our fellow citizens are all too ready, willing and able to eat Bachmann’s shit up with a ladle.