...but who knows, sometimes she says stuff and it just doesn't happen, right? That was the case when she said she was staying in the race after primary failure--ten minutes later, she announces she's getting out. She's "kooky," that way. Too.
Here's her announcement (link below.)
Michele Bachmann says she’ll seek 4th term in House
By DOUG GLASS Associated Press January 25, 2012 9:54AM
Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann announced Wednesday she will seek a fourth term in the U.S. House following her failed presidential bid.
Bachmann declared her plans in an interview with The Associated Press. The Republican congresswoman had been mum on her plans since folding her presidential campaign after a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses earlier this month.
“I’m looking forward to coming back and bringing a strong, powerful voice to Washington, D.C.,” Bachmann said.
I'll say she is. And that announcement is top headlines this morning on the Internet, I saw it on the top of Google news headlines this morning when I got up.
Which means she's still "hot copy" and "a national political figure." And as long as she's a national figure, she can position herself as she has in the past...as a kind of evangelical conservative McCarthy in Congress. She can (as she has in the past) hurt Republicans for even talking about negotiating with Democrats in order to govern.
(CONTINUED)
But you Bachmann watchers who were saying "ah, she's through, she's off to Fox to pick up paychecks"--well, you still have a chance of being right...a somewhat slimmer chance, after this announcement...
...because it isn't up to her whether she gets to run again. It's really up to her bosses, who are not officially in the Republican party. They are that national conservative evangelical movement I write about. (The guys who are trying to stop Mitt Romney from being the presidential nominee, right now and for the past five years.)
The story carrying the announcement of Bachmann's decision to run again notes that she's a formidable fundraiser (something like $13.5 million in the last go-round.) But that money doesn't show up if the national conservative evangelicals tell her not to run (because she's acquired too much "she's crazy" baggage in the media, during her prez bid.)
If they tell her "you're not running in Minnesota, either"--then she's over. But it's really got nothing to do with anyone else's opinion...no one else has the ability to cut off oxygen to this particular career. (Why oh why won't people understand this, and take into account in the analysis of Republican politics?)
Anyway: just yesterday I was writing about US Senate approval of the St. Croix bridge project. I was writing about how approval of that massive deficit spending project in Bachmann's district could hurtle this nut, liar and bigot back into office. (She will take credit for it, despite the fact that massive federal deficit spending to create jobs is against everything she says she believes in as a conservative.)
Hindsight, this morning: there's really no reason for her to quit now. The Christian right built a national brand for her, brought millions (not just dollars, but supporters) to that brand. It doesn't matter that the professional media and senior Republicans have now identified her as a crackpot; the kind of people who support Bachmann despise the opinion of the professional media and the senior Republicans.
She can be effective in Congress in the same way she was before--helping to organize and promote right wing fashion shows like the tea party, smearing Obama and the Democrats as tyrants and agents of an international conspiracy...
There's no reason to throw all that branding away so long as it's still working, still keeping out progressive and liberal reform with paranoid politics that you hear on conservative talk radio. As for the argument that the nature of the "brand" (nut, liar, bigot) will keep her from being important...well, you may hate the brand "crack cocaine," but that doesn't mean that crack cocaine is no longer significant.
LINK:
http://www.suntimes.com/...