Michele Bachmann hides religious extremist views and wins CNN GOP debate, but that’s about to change
I had to laugh after reading the Villagers proclaim Michele Bachmann the winner of CNN’s GOP debate in NH simply because she was able to present herself as somewhat normal. And as many others wrote, she stole the spotlight because she announced on the podium that she was indeed running for President. Wouldn’t any normal person viewing the debate have thought she was already running since she was part of the debate? Michele Bachmann’s star turn Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann came into Monday night’s presidential debate in the Queen City as an unknown commodity. She left it as the most talked-about candidate in the 2012 GOP field. Bachmann stole headlines at the start by announcing that she had filed to run for president — skipping the exploratory phase entirely — and then proceeding to command the stage in the first hour of the CNN-sponsored debate with quotable answers on every question asked of her. The crowd assembled at Saint Anselm College broke into spontaneous applause after several of Bachmann’s answers. And others were impressed that she has 23 foster children. It’s a good thing to be a foster parent, but if anybody in the Beltway Media paid attention earlier, they would have known that and probably reported on it when she started making noises about jumping in the race. She is the head of the Tea Party Caucus in Congress and yet this still seemed to come as a surprise. What we heard from the media since the debate is that she prepared well and had her answers down pat, but what we haven’t heard from the MSM is what her views have beensince she’s been in office outside of bashing Obama. They do know that she shares the same voters that Sarah Palin does. Bill O’Reilly was suggesting that she would make a good VP pick for someone like Romney as he talked to Dick Morris last night because members of the House never get elected as President. Morris agreed with that but only because he believes she hasn’t been vetted yet and there might be downside when the oppo research starts while Romney has already been through that process. That’s the main reason Conservatives hate Romney. The major reason Senators and members of the House have problems running for the Oval Office is because they take many, many votes in Congress which leaves a record that their rivals use against them. President Obama used Hillary Clinton’s vote on the Iraq war as a big tool against her since he never had to take that vote and could later say he would have voted against it. It’s Politics 101. Anyway, Bachmann is as extreme as it gets and it’s not like she’s been hiding it. When she went McCarthy on Chris Matthews and told him that there are anti-American members in Congress and we should investigate them , it became an Internet sensation for lunacy. Before FOX News created the Tea Party, she was considered wackier than Rick Santorum and Dan Webster put together . In other words, she’s the perfect Ralph Reed candidate. The Daily Beast did a little digging into her past and Michele Goldberg wrote up a bio that highlights her extremism: Bachmann’s Unrivaled Extremism Bachmann honed her view of the world after college, when she enrolled at the Coburn Law School at Oral Roberts University, an “interdenominational, Bible-based, and Holy Spirit-led” school in Oklahoma. “My goal there was to learn the law both from a professional but also from a biblical worldview,” she said in an April speech. At Coburn, Bachmann studied with John Eidsmoe, who she recently described as “one of the professors who had a great influence on me.” Bachmann served as his research assistant on the 1987 book Christianity and the Constitution, which argued that the United States was founded as a Christian theocracy, and that it should become one again. “The church and the state have separate spheres of authority, but both derive authority from God,” Eidsmoe wrote. “In that sense America, like [Old Testament] Israel, is a theocracy.” Eidsmoe, who hung up the phone when asked for an interview, is a contentious figure. Last year, he withdrew from speaking at a Wisconsin Tea Party rally after the Associated Press raised questions about his history of addresses to white supremacist groups. In 2010, speaking a rally celebrating Alabama’s secession from the Union, he claimed that Jefferson Davis and John C. Calhoun understood the Constitution better than Abraham Lincoln. Reading Eidsmoe, though, some of Bachmann’s most widely ridiculed statements begin to make sense. Earlier this year, for example, she was mocked for saying that the Founding Fathers “worked tirelessly” to end slavery. But in books by Eidsmoe and others who approach history from what they call a Christian worldview, this is a truism. Despite his defense of the Confederacy, Eidsmoe also argues that even those founders who owned slaves opposed the institution and wanted it to disappear, and that it was only Christian for them to protect their slaves until it did. “It might be very difficult for a freed slave to make a living in that economy; under such circumstances setting slaves free was both inhumane and irresponsible,” he wrote. She’s so nutty that she once called the cops on an ex-nun who tried to talk gay rights with her in a bathroom. TNR believes as I do that she’s the Tea Party darling because she’s melded free market fundamentalism with religious conservatism : Bachmann is a cutting edge religious right conservative, espousing an apocalyptic free market fundamentalism that’s become virtually indistinguishable from the apocalyptic Randian worldview of the party’s libertarian wing. Bachmann spent months addressing Tea Party rallies where she focused primarily on economics. What she’s done like the rest of the social conservatives these days is adopt Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman’s economic theological principles and incorporated them into their many forms of Evangelical Christianity and that will help her in the GOP primary. Here’s a few of her greatest hits since the news media apparently needs me to do some research for them. Michele Bachmann’s economic ideas might be more cruel than Paul Ryan’s Michele Bachmann Pushes Planned Parenthood Sex Trafficking Lie During Ralph Reed’s Wingnut Conference Michele Bachmann blames her reading of articles for getting everything wrong Bachmann’s Iowa Debacle Minnesota GOP invites anti-gay death metal preacher to give opening prayer Bachmann claims NATO killed 30,000 civilians in Libya Michele Bachmann Refuses to Walk Back Gangster Government Comments Michelle Bachmann gives voice to the right’s darkest impulses Michelle Bachmann warns of politically correct re-education camps for young people Congresswoman Bachmann “We Would Do Well To Humble Ourselves Before God!” Bachmann has said Dems didn’t want her to be the first woman President so she was criticized, but here are a few more i nsane rants for your viewing pleasure: Remember when you told Glenn Beck that the census was used to round up Japanese Americans during WWII ? or when you said that health care reform was undesirable because if everyone had access, lines at her doctors’ office would be too long; or when you claimed that “Flying Imams” attended a victory party for Keith Ellison or when you complained about “re-education camps for young people” or when y ou introduced a bill blocking the US from ever joining a global currency .
Michele Bachmann hides religious extremist views and wins CNN GOP debate, but that’s about to change
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on June 16, 2011. Filed under