At this point in the process, the Republican Presidential race is a bit like an unwanted pregnancy — it’s going to take 9 months until we find out who’s going to emerge from the bloody mess, and in the meantime, everyone involved going a little crazy.
Mitt, for example, seems to be crumbling around the edges. The other day, he pretended that a waitress in New Hampshire grabbed his ass at a photo-op (warning: creepy video), and then told a local businessman in New Hampshire, “I will probably be back in four years. Only this time it will be a larger group and I will probably have Secret Service.”
Crazy Shelley is already nuts. For example, she thinks teh ghey is going to kidnap her:
A few dozen people showed up at the town hall for the April 9 event, and Bachmann greeted them warmly. But when, during the question and answer session, the topic turned to gay marriage, Bachmann ended the meeting 20 minutes early and rushed to the bathroom. Hoping to speak to her, Arnold and another middle-aged woman, a former nun, followed her. As Bachmann washed her hands and Arnold looked on, the ex-nun tried to talk to her about theology. Suddenly, after less than a minute, Bachmann let out a shriek. “Help!” she screamed. “Help! I’m being held against my will!”
Arnold, who is just over 5 feet tall, was stunned, and hurried to open the door. Bachmann bolted out and fled, crying, to an SUV outside. Then she called the police, saying, according to the police report, that she was “absolutely terrified and has never been that terrorized before as she had no idea what those two women were going to do to her.” The Washington County attorney, however, declined to press charges, writing in a memo, “It seems clear from the statements given by both women that they simply wanted to discuss certain issues further with Ms. Bachmann.”
Update: I see Sarah had already posted that last bit.
cleek
alas, SNL is out for the summer. they could have a lot of fun with that stuff.
13th Generation
What is it with Republicans and the homophobia? MB is terrified of being trapped in bathroom with two other women? Methinks thou doth protest too much.
alwhite
@13th Generation:
It plays well to the base & their desperate need to be the embattled, set-upon, good guys holding the world together against the arrayed forces of darkness.
Batshit Bachmann made her bones on abortion & homophobia as a State Rep. What scares me about her now is that she seems to have gotten smarter. She disappeared for a few months & has come back toned down a ton. She no longer makes those wildly outrageous Palin-like statements of wingnuttia. She is not as stupid as she acts (unlike Palin) and probably can fool a large percentage of low information morans.
Joseph Nobles
Was it fear of homosexuals Michelle was feeling? Or fear of being in a room with two people making sense?
WereBear
Shrieking about being in a bathroom with two other women… so does Bachmann not get out much?
Actually, it’s a basic brittle ego to me. I can’t be disagreed with ever!
Sounds like a scary Mom, actually.
13th Generation
@alwhite:
It just seems to me that the ones who are most vocal against homosexuality are the ones who have the most to hide. This is probably more true for the male side of the equation, but there always seems to be this underlying fear.
It’s not rational. (Yeah, yeah, I know.)
bkny
the morning joe frat pack is treating bachmann as a serious contender. brokaw rolled out reagan’s corpse for a comparison how this plainspoken midwesterner surprised everybody by slaying the party poobah choices.
oh, and donnie deutsch is a douche.
arguingwithsignposts
Clearly lot up for a lot of retail campaigning, that Bachmann.
And talking theology with her? ugh. It’s a wonder the ex-nun’s head didn’t explode.
13th Generation
Just sayin’.
Keith G
I don’t think so. Romney is picking up CW cred. He is their only present, institutional, choice (depending on Huntsman’s ability to raise mad money).
Yeah, many hate Romney, but they hate Obama more, and the Black soc-ialst must be defeated at all costs.
mistermix
@Keith G: I think we need to wait until at least the second trimester to see if Mitt is viable. Huntsman and Perry could just as easily be the “serious” choice.
JPL
If the economy doesn’t improve, Bachmann could win.
Keith G
@mistermix: It is way early, indeed. Hence the fun.
I live under Perry’s charms. He will never survive a rigorous, competitive campaign where a critical mass (but not a majority)of the audience will think about what a candidate says.
Chris
Unless you count “Help! I’m being held against my will!” after seeing two women walk into the women’s bathroom.
Shrillhouse
That Romney video isn’t quite as disturbing as the “who let the dogs out?” episode, but it’s close…
Chris
Teenage drama queens with persecution complexes who feel the need to invent imaginary attacks in order to reap the attention from them.
I mean, you expect this from colorful rank-and-file members, maybe even professional slimers like Breitbart, but from the presidential candidates? Really?
Han's Solo
We have a long haul between now and election day, does anyone really think Bachman won’t self destruct long before then?
I hope she manages to put down the crazy juice and leave her crazy pants at home; we need her. If she wins the Republican nomination it won’t just mean a victory for Obama, it will mean a HUGE victory that forces the GOP to reorganize.
In my opinion America needs at least two political parties. Right now we have one party, the Democrats, and one insane clown cult, the Republicans.
Chris
@Han’s Solo:
This.
Been said many a times, but let’s have two parties: the Democrats, and a left-wing party. The Dems can “conserve” all that’s good about the status quo, while the lefties offer ideas to improve on it.
(Yeah, I know, it’s not in the cards, but a feller can dream).
Redshirt
Wait, this really happened?!
Talk about IOKIYAR – imagine if a Dem candidate acted like this? I can see the endless days of Fox coverage wondering – just hypothetically of course – if such a spineless, cowardly, freakish reaction is appropriate for a Presidential candidate.
But, given the (R), obviously the Nun needs to be waterboarded and locked up, stat.
Wag
Just for the record, the Bachmann incident described above happened in April 2005, not April 2011. I suspect Ms Bachmann vets her audiences MUCH more carefully now than she did back then. No way in helll that she’d get anywhere near a possible lesbian now.
arguingwithsignposts
@Wag: It should not surprise me that the Daily Beast would report something that’s six years old. I should also expect our FPers to point out the age of the incident, since I’m damned sure not going to give Tina Brown any clicks.
R-Jud
@Han’s Solo:
I’d say we have two-thirds of a party, personally.
bemused
Calling Mitt a half-wit doofus would be too kind.
Cacti
If the first debate was any indication, Romney’s the chosen one and everyone else is just angling for the VP slot. He’s the only one who polls well against Obama, so it makes sense.
They’re also being careful because the guy has several weak points, including…
His well-documented history of reversing positions based on what’s popular at the moment, his background as a slash and burn vulture capitalist, and his life-long membership in a pretty weird religion (he’s the grandchild of polygamists).
The fact that nobody’s touching these very exploitable facts seems to suggest they’ve already tacitly decided Romney is the guy.
beergoggles
The way bachmann’s husband sashays, he should be on RuPauls drag race. I’m guessing he’s another failure of a reparative therapist that has never managed to cure himself.
Linda Featheringill
@mistermix:
:-)
Excellent choice of words.
NamelessGenXer
Abort them all.
Oh, and if Diebold and the Bush Supreme Court® install Batshit as Christofascist Dictator, let us hope that it is not one of her daughters who is found dead in some back alley in a pool of blood with a coathanger sticking out of her.
catclub
@Chris: “maybe even professional slimers like Breitbart,”
Newt Gingrich sprang to mind.
Tsulagi
@Wag:
Sure, and in the past six years Bachmann has stayed the course. As one of the co-leznappers (not the nun) noted of Bachmann in the linked story…
Exactly. That’s what makes Crazy Eyes so special. She’s not one of those pretenders like Newt or Multiple Choice Mitty, or a boring challenged bagger like Palin. Bachmann is the real deal.
jrg
@NamelessGenXer:
Fuck that. Stupid people learn the hard way. I suspect that’s how it’s always been.
You can tell an idiot 100 times not to put a hand on a hot stove, but they’re not going to believe you until they try it… Particularly if they think you’re part of a conspiracy to deny them some awesome experience by telling them it’s painful.
amk
Nailed it mistermix. Perfect analogy.
aimai
I bow to no one in my dislike and disdain for Michelle Bachmann and all her policies. That being said I think that we ought to grasp that low level political figures like her, and this was early in her career, can have a very hard time dealing with direct democracy and the shift from anonymous citizen to totally nonymous? oh, lets say infamous, public figure. I see nothing wrong with two women walking up to talk to me in a public bathroom about a political issue–or maybe I do! There are all kinds of rules about how and when you accost someone. I’m emphatically not saying that these two women did anything wrong but I am saying that there’s a very fine line between citizens speaking to their representatives and the representative feeling harrassed and even threatened. What is totally fair in a public setting–from the back of a hall to the speaker, might seem a little freaky if it came over or under the bathroom stall**, or while Bachmann is trying to touch up her livid complexion and fix the human skin over the lizard skull.
aimai
**Bathroom Stall…bathroom stall…why on earth didn’t Larry Craig charge the undercover cop with trying to assault him with his sexuality?
NamelessGenXer
@jrg:
D’oh! my bad. Make it
“let Rick Perry stage a pray-a-thon (only $5k per head – cheap!) that it is not one of her daughters… “
Joey Maloney
@aimai: But this seems like part of a pattern, together with the incident where she literally skulked in the bushes to hide from? spy on? a gay rights demonstration in Minneapolis.
Kathy in St. Louis
Guess she learned about picking on little nuns at the Oral Roberts University School of Born Again Law.
Just the kind of stunt is would expect from this crazeeee. She’s all about how tough she would be as president, then the first thing unusual event, and she’s pulling the helpless woman bit. Just another reason not to like her.
Damned at Random
She’s curious about teh gays, but her religious upbringing has made her terrified at the same time. The browser history on her laptop should be very revealing
Brachiator
A Skepchick blog post puts the recent GOP debate into sharp perspective:
There are then a number of quotes from the candidates on separation of church and state, abortion, gay marriage, all typical GOP stuff and kinda sad. One little tidbit from Michelle Bachmann is interesting:
Italics mine. I think Bachmann should be questioned on this last part in more detail. I get vibes here that she would interfere with families who want to take a dying loved one off life support.
Nemesis
tweety is simply engorged at the mere mention of BacKKKmanns name.
Media is desperate to create a horse race between the rational, conservative Obama, and the bat shit crazies on the right. Eyeballs are required for ratings. Truthiness need not apply.
BacKKKmann has in fact been acting more rational and together in public. But lest we forget, in order to win Iowa and SC, her inner hate machine must be on display for all to see.
Redshirt
@Brachiator: I’m sure she’s pro-death penalty, but hey, that’s “pro-life” too, right?
JCT
@Brachiator:
There’s no question about this, TP has a good list of Bachmann “fun” :
Yes, well, maybe if we followed Crazy Shelley’s advice about health care and funding, Terri Schiavo might look “healthy” in comparison to the rest of us who aren’t wealthy enough to afford health care on Ryan’s death coupons.
chopper
help, help! i’m being repressed!
BeccaM
A video of Michelle Bachman shrieking like that and running away from someone simply trying to engage her in a conversation would almost certainly end her presidential ambitions. And possibly her political career.
Ah… sweet daydreams…
Kathy in St. Louis
BeccaM @42
You have far more faith in the intelligence of the Tea Partiers and the national press than I.
bryan rasmussen
I am sure I have seen this video on the internets! I uh, was shocked and appalled by the disgusting things on display which I did not watch.
Triassic Sands
Any video with Chris Matthews is going to creepy — really, really creepy. He’s one of the creepiest guys around.
TenguPhule
Mandatory Mass Abortions please!