Michele Bachmann may constantly be generating controversy in the national news, but back at home she finds herself in a solid position politically. 53% of her constituents approve of the job Bachmann is doing to 41% who disapprove. Opinion about her is strongly polarized along party lines with 86% of Republicans approving of her and 83% of Democrats disapproving, but with independents she finds a positive 51/42 spread," reported the lefty Public Policy Polling organization.
She is above 50 and up 16-18 points against two possible Democratic opponents (DFL in Minnesota)...
http://blogs.dailymail.com/...
Is it really the left's excoriation of this nut, bigot and liar that's led to the improvement in her numbers?
No. (What the hell do they know in Charleston about what's going on here in the Sixth District of Minnesota?) But I see it's time to trot out "the reasons why Bachmann wins" again.
Why Bachmann wins
I set out these four reasons on February 20th of 2009, in a Kos diary entitled "Over at Dump Michele Bachmann." But that wasn’t the first time I listed the reasons, I’d been posting them in response to inquiries ever since Bachmann was first elected to Congress in 2006. All of the following conditions still obtain, on the ground here in the Sixth Congressional District of Minnesota.
- The Sixth District of Minnesota was gerrymandered to be a very conservative district. Since it was redistricted about ten years ago, the congressional seat has always been won by a Republican--regardless of the local and national economy, regardless of Michele's opponent. (She beat liberal Patty Wetterling to win her first term in Congress; and she beat Blue Dog Democrat Elwyn Tinklenberg to win her second term.)
2. There is a white hot core of angry, paranoid, conservative potato heads living in this district. It's the most conservative district in this liberal state, and those guys are proud of it. Michele is the darling of the local Rush Limbaugh knockoffs. If Olbermann or Sanchez do a piece on national TV that shows her in the actual act of lying--they vote for her harder.
- She's an evangelical darling; that's how she got started and took away the nomination from a more "secular" conservative Republican to win her first elective office. She doesn't talk much these days about "how gay marriage means the end of Western civilization" and "how wacky the theory of evolution is"--but the conservative evangelicals up here know that's where she came from and what she stands for--so they're in her pocket, every election. (She's also got the national evangelical political movement on her side; the Council for National Policy, the Dobsons of this world.)
- Our local press. We send stuff to the press, letter, calls for corrections, documented evidence of her craziest statements and lies--the professional press and the big papers don't run it. We've been putting it on the Web (at the Dump Bachmann blog and at thebachmannrecord.com) for years; they won't go near it. Not one journalist in a big local newspaper is willing to report the crazy shit that she's said over the years on local conservative and evangelical radio. (The local "alternative" news weekly in Minneapolis/St. Paul--the City Pages--is doing stuff on her now, but the older folks don't read that. I'm not sure the younger folks are reading it much, either, except for the movie and record reviews.)
There is a fifth reason for her election and re-election, the last two times around. I've also written about this one before:
- About ten per cent of the voters in Bachmann’s Sixth District can be identified as more-or-less "libertarian" independents—Ross Perot/Jesse Ventura types. They say they hate the Republicans as well as the Democrats, but it’s a certainty that these voters hate Democrats more. They are opposed to "special interests" and big government. (But yes, I’m sure that those of them that qualify take their federal farm and ag subsidies, just like the Bachmann family.) This bloc of voters is so independent that it doesn’t even respect the endorsement of Minnesota’s Independence Party (which endorsed Bachmann’s Dem opponent last time around.)
Their presence acts to limit the effectiveness of any Dem challenger.
So there’s five reasons "why this kook and liar can get elected." But why the uptick in Bachmann’s numbers?
Well, in the past two years there have been at least three new developments.
- Her national fame. Never in their lifetimes have the conservative Minnesotans who live in her district seen their congressional representative get this much attention. The district is a backwater, unimportant in national politics—but Bachmann’s successful attempt to build a national base has put them on the map. Bachmann is a nut, bigot, and liar—but if conservative rhetoric is all you care about, she’s a phenomenally successful one: and that makes local conservatives somehow "feel successful."
It does not bother local conservatives in the least that Bachmann has delivered no significant legislation or reforms at any time during her nine year career in office. It does not bother them that the district has suffered economically during her entire tenure of office; that she has delivered practically nothing for the district in the way of returning their federal taxes to it. It does not bother them that the Sixth District continues to lead Minnesota for home foreclosures.
What matters to the Republican conservatives and independent conservatives of this district—is that "one of them" finally has a spot on the national stage.
- Over the last year or so, Bachmann has "reached out" with photo-ops about issues like "women's health care" and such. A la Ronald Reagan, she creates the media event to show "she's listening, she's aware"--and this apparently pays off, even though she's the enemy of any real effort to fund improvements in women's health care (or anyone's health care.)
- Over the last year or so, Bachmann has made a sustained attempt to "crack" the local Ron Paul vote. She regularly attended Paul’s "seminars" in D.C. and was talking him up whenever she got the chance. That (I think) has helped her numbers back here in Minnesota. As you might suspect from reading the above, Paul has a significant number of acolytes here in the district. (This year they staged a sort of "coup" in the local Republican Party and captured some of the important posts in the local GOP.) The reach-out to Paul voters was a canny way to cut into that "independent vote" that was keeping Bachmann’s previous numbers to just under 50%.
So, no, it’s not the jibes from the "lefties" that are improving her numbers. It’s voting demographics here on the ground, the national notoriety, cowardly local corporate media. And the Bachmann campaign’s effective courting of Ron Paul’s John Birch type "yes, it really is a conspiracy" libertarians here in the district.
That what's paying off for her, here in her district.
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