"Pssttt ... I'll bet you can't guess where I hope the door doesn't hit me on the way out!" (Adam Hunger/Reuters)
Tea partiers have
started to notice that there's something weird and cloying about Michele Bachmann:
A tea party group has a surprising and harsh urging for long-time tea party favorite Michele Bachmann: Quit the presidential race.
"It's time for Michele Bachmann to go," reads the first line of a statement from American Majority President Ned Ryun. His group operates in seven states, trains thousands of tea party supporters and is "liked" by over 371,000 people on Facebook.
"Bachmann, the leader of the so-called tea party caucus in the House and the most vocal about her affiliation with the Tea Party than any other Presidential candidate, has consistently presented herself as a champion of the movement and its values," Ryun's statement continued.
"Bachmann has ridden her tea party credentials from obscurity to a national platform like no other."
[...]
"In Bachmann's case, it is clear that the campaign has become less about reform and more about her personal effort to stay relevant and sell books; a harsh commentary, but true," Ryun wrote. "While other campaigns are diving into the substance, the supposed tea party candidate Bachmann is sticking to thin talking points and hanging on for dear life."
Yep. Credit where due: Ryun is clear-eyed enough to see that the relationship between Bachmann and the tea party has mostly been a one-way affair. She surely boosted their cause early on in some way by lending what little "credibility" being one of the craziest Members of Congress entitled her to lend them in support of their agenda. But from very early on, it's been clear that Bachmann's attachment to the tea party has been parasitic.
And because I've always said that reading Daily Kos is like getting the paper a week (or in this case, a month) early, it's with great pleasure that I point out that this is something we've observed here before:
[T]hough Bachmann has done everything she can think of to associate herself with the Tea Party brand (whatever that actually is), she was first elected to Congress in 2006, and her career as an elected official began in 2000, so she pretty clearly predates the Tea Party craze. Attaching herself to the brand has been a decidedly after-the-fact affair, and that's important to note because the same is true for the majority of what became the "Tea Party Caucus" of which she installed herself as head. The first time we looked at the composition of the "Tea Party Caucus," we saw that the average member was actually in their 13th year of incumbency in the House, and things don't look to have changed much since then. There are only 15 actual freshmen among the 60 listed members of Bachmann's Tea Party Caucus (from out of a freshman Republican class of 80+)....
What this means for the "Tea Party" is that the gang that's co-opted their brand in the House has almost nothing to do with the image most journalists and members of the public have of Tea Party-affiliated Members of Congress. For the most part, those who have claimed the label are not freshman upstarts, they're Bush-era or earlier Republicans, with more than a decade of incumbency baggage. And not only that, but they're nothing close to a cohesive voting unit. So when "Tea Party Republicans" are credited in the traditional media with derailing some initiative or another, you've got to think carefully (if it matters) about just who's really behind things, because the chances are that the bulk of the "Tea Party Caucus" was actually on the other side, voting with the Establishment Republican Leadership, just as they always have.
Which makes her being on the road campaigning for President as some kind of Tea Party leader all too ridiculous. She's not leading anything at all, and even if she were to show some ability to direct this gang she's thrown together, she'd still be miles away from being able to demonstrate that it had anything to do with the "Tea Party" as most people understand it (if that's even possible).
The House "Tea Party Caucus" is a collection of Republican Johnnies-come-lately, clinging to what was once a popular brand in the hopes of buying some political immunity at home. But as far as providing a political direction, or even putting voting muscle behind some recognizable agenda, the "caucus" has been a complete and total bust.
With tea party energy arguably waning, particularly in the shadow of the rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement, organizers simply can't afford to have what's left of their brand damaged by Bachmann's grasping.
Besides, the tea party's corporate sponsors, the Koch Brothers-controlled Americans for Prosperity, already has a different horse in the race: Herman Cain. Letting Bachmann hang around and absorb reflected glory is pointless and counterproductive, except to the extent that her desperate clinging to the tea party label obscures journalistic interest in AFP's investment in Cain.