Bachmann For President? Now That's Scary!

By James Donahue

It struck me that Senator John McCain must have slipped a few gears when he picked Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his Vice-Presidential running mate in 2004. That the flighty and obviously illiterate Palin has blossomed since then as the darling of the Republican party, drawing crowds and a following where ever she appears, and is seriously considered as a GOP Presidential candidate for 2012, is scary.

Even more frightening is the realization that Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachman also has stepped into the rung as a serious candidate for the Republican nomination for the nation’s top job.

If we thought Palin was illiterate because of some of the lame comments she has made since stepping into the limelight, take a good look at Bachmann. We wonder if this woman graduated from the eighth grade.

Bachmann seems to be constantly making news because she is constantly making controversial and illogical statements about just about everything she talks about. Imagine what it would be like if she somehow became our president and thus a world spokesperson for America. If we thought George W. Bush was an embarrassment when he was caught on public television giving German Chancellor Angela Merkel an uninvited back rub during a G-8 summit dinner, or inviting Russian President Vladimir Putin to a hot-dog roast on his Texas ranch, imagine the depths of improper protocol where someone like Bachmann might take us.

This woman obviously flunked her grade school history lessons. She was caught recently declaring that the founding fathers of the United States worked “tirelessly to end slavery. “ When given a chance to correct herself during an appearance on Good Morning America with George Stephanopoulos, Bachmann dug herself an even deeper trench.

When Stephanopoulos challenged the original statement, she answered: “Well if you look at one of our Founding Fathers, John Quincy Adams, that’s absolutely true. . . He tirelessly worked throughout his life to make sure that we did in fact one day eradicate slavery.”

Stephanopoulos, who obviously knows his American history, corrected Bachmann again. “He wasn’t one of the Founding Fathers,” he said. “He (Adams) was a president, he was a Secretary of State, he was a member of Congress, you’re right he did work to end slavery decades later.”

Yet another very bad guffaw by this woman was the declaration during an interview with Fox News in Waterloo, Iowa, that she was proud to be in the town where the well known actor John Wayne was from. But Bachmann was a little off on that. Waterloo is really the birthplace of serial killer John Wayne Gacy.

These blunders happened after Bachmann officially declared herself a candidate for the presidential nomination. Her reputation as an outspoken Congresswoman with a reputation for saying relatively nutty things has been well known before that.

Following are some of the Bachmann quotes that should make most readers scratch their heads and seriously question if they really want to consider this person as a candidate for the most powerful job in the world. The quotes also may help people understand how she stands on many of the political issues of the day and the strange way her brain works.

“If we took away the minimum wage – if conceivably it was gone – we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.”

“The big thing we are working on now is the global warming hoax. Its all voodoo, nonsense, hokum; a hoax.”

“Carbon dioxide is natural, it is not harmful, it is a part of Earth’s lifecycle. And yet we are being told that we have to reduce this natural substance, reduce the American standard of living to create an arbitrary reduction in something that is naturally occurring on Earth.”

“I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and found out: Are they pro-America or anti-America?”

“I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back.”

“I don’t know where they’re going to get all this money because we’re running out of rich people in this country.”

“If we look at American history, between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the Census Bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations at the request of President Roosevelt, and that’s how the Japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps. I’m not saying that that’s what the Administration is planning to do, but I am saying that private personal information that was given to the Census Bureau in the 1940s was used against Americans to round them up, in a violation of their constitutional rights, and put the Japanese in internment camps.”

The only thing that Bachmann and Palin have going for them in this race is their looks. Both women are easy to look at. And that appears to have become a major ingredient for voters to use in selecting the men and women they want to fill political vacancies in high office. Television, the Internet and high quality photography used in the print media has seen to this.

We have often thought that if Abraham Lincoln had sought the presidency under the glare of television cameras, he would never have been elected. While he has gone down in history as one of our greatest presidents, he also ranked among the ugliest.