UPDATE: (Too many interesting questions and comments in the thread to this diary. Please don't think I'm ignoring you if I don't get to your question right away, I will read everything and answer any questions to me as best I can, today.)
This is from alternet, so it's not going to have as much influence as the New Yorker or Rolling Stone pieces on Bachmann's roots in the extremist and religious right.
But you have to read it, if you want to understand why the American right is currently "so crazy, so extreme." (The link is below.) This explains where a lot of 'that Bachmann nut stuff' chronicled in the New Yorker and Rolling Stone comes from. Surprise! It comes from the national conservative evangelical right, as I've been telling reporters here in Minnesota since before she was elected in 2006.
By the way: Ryan Lizza should get a Pulitzer for that New Yorker piece. He deserves it. Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone also deserves some kind of award for being the first to "blow the whistle" on Bachmann's craziness--the first to go to print with an extended piece in a national publication.
Awarding the Pulitzer to Lizza would give the cowardly morons who write for Minnesota's political media--a collective heart attack. They would have a collective careerist heart attack, suddenly realizing that they passed up the "it's all about me and my career" chance of lifetime. They were here, from the beginning, with people pounding on their doors to give them the same story that makes the cover of national news magazines--and they turned it down, repeatedly, as a matter of policy!
(Stay with me after the jump, I'm on a roll today.)
(CONTINUED)
If Lizza got that Pultizer, they would realize how contemptible and stupid they are--even as would-be opportunists! That would give them a collective heart attack, clutching their chests, all at the same time. That would be news.
Because nearly all that Lizza did, was to print a bunch of stuff that has been made available to Minnesota political journalists for years--for free! On this blog and others! Since 2006! I've been doing fucking comic books about it, for years--a format that even a Minnesota newspaper editor could understand--comic books with citations to this stuff that the New Yorker and Rolling Stone are running, right now!
But Lizza deserves the prize because he supplemented that "free factual stuff that bloggers provided" with some fine original political reporting of his own. Then he dressed it up with some of that restrained but rich image-laden "New Yorker" writing style. And he produced a story that's winning plaudits in the media, right now! A true story, a relevant story, a hot story!
And Lizza actually looked stuff up! He looked at the stuff Chris Truscott and I collected for our book on Bachmann ("Michele Bachmann's America," now available on amazon.com, $7.99.) Again: any idiot in the Minnesota political press could have printed this story himself at any time--right before Bachmann's campaign announcement would have been optimal, if it's all about some sniveling little Minnesota journalist keeping his job or making a name for herself as a serious reporter.
All that "hot story" information, in the lap of the Minnesota political press. Wouldn't touch it, practically every name reporter in the state passed up a chance to cover the hottest political story in Minnesota--and earn him or herself a ticket out of fly-over land, a national rep, entry into the big leagues. Enjoy the next winter, guys, you'll still be here.
Anyway: if you want to know where the crazy shit that drives Bachmann comes from, read the link at the bottom of this page. It's a piece by Frank Schaeffer. You don't know who he is, do you? Well you should. He's been on TV, talking about the nature of the Christian Right. And his dad (deceased) was one of the people who indirectly helped to determine the composition of the current U.S. Congress and your state house.
But no one paid very much attention when Frank Schaeffer talked about the origins of the movement that made Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry and Mike Huckabee into viable presidential contenders. (I guess there's a lot of people on Street Prophets who know who Schaeffer is, but they're relegated to Street Prophets.) Maybe now that Bachmann is on the cover of Newsweek and the New Yorker and Rolling Stone, people who are interested in why American politics "is the way it is"--will pay more attention to what Frank Schaeffer tells them about where these candidates come from.
The leaders of Christian Right smile when the media doesn't cover them, and they cry when you read about them. The negative attention that Bachmann is currently drawing to her mentors on the ultraright--is something that those guys will not like. Part of the power that this group enjoys depends on avoiding regular media scrutiny.
LINK:
http://www.alternet.org/...
Here is the truth, again, presented to you (possibly years) before it trickles up into the New Yorker and Rolling Stone and the New York Times, etc...
If people know about the Dominionists and Reconstructionists at all, they tend to think that they are comparatively marginal figures in American politics--that couldn't be further from the truth. People with these views--the people who act in concert with other conservative evangelicals who would like to repeal every development in Western thought since the Renaissance--have formed a cooperative political association with very powerful conservative evangelicals and very influential secular conservatives and Republicans.
Do not make the mistake of thinking that because "what these people believe, is marginal--these people must be marginal." That is a huge mistake. That particular mistake in thinking ("these nuts are irrelevant, a relatively minor concern that only preoccupies single-issue political religious activists") contributes to the loss of control of the US Congress to tea party nuts. That huge mistake in thinking permitted the entry into office of a conservative president who wrecked the US economy and led us into a disastrous and unnecessary war and hot wars in the Middle East that are likely to go on for decades after the death of bin Laden.
Here in Minnesota, the local affiliates of the same organization continue to dominate the GOP, encourage the local tea party types--and made vital political organization and media contribution to the loss of the state house. That's what this organization does. In the book about Bachmann I co-authored this summer (and here on the blogs, for years) I've argued that this organization is in effect a third major American political party, one that rivals the Republicans and Democrats.
It is called the Council for National Policy. For decades, it has avoided sustained media scrutiny and has thrived as a result--it has the power to make no-name Bachmann into a presidential contender, and it has the power to effectively veto GOP presidential candidacies.
Because its membership is not limited to Dominionists or Reconstructionists. Grover Norquist of the Taxpayers' League; Wayne La Pierre of the NRA--so, so many of the usual suspects on the ultraconservative side who aren't normally associated with the Christian Right--they're active members, are cooperating inside this organization to introduce these crackpot candidates into our local, state, and federal governments. (Rick Perry and Tim Pawlenty are CNP favorites--it's not just Bachmann, it's... a political party.)
Major professional media coverage of this organization, the Council for National Policy, is the next logical step in this story. I hope that professional media will take that step, and introduce this de facto third major party into the American political narrative, correctly placing it beside the Democratic and Republican parties.