"I can out-crazy Rick Perry! Really, I can!"
You can be justified if you missed it over the weekend, given the meteorological turmoil along the eastern seaboard. But GOP presidential Michele Bachmann stumped in Florida on Friday at a local sandwich shop. Bachmann is a favorite of ours for bringing the crazy, and she didn't disappoint.
Bachmann, like most Republicans, thinks that the biggest crisis facing our economy today is the poor and underprivileged corporations. And when asked about it, she remained open to giving those needy corporate titans a hand by lowering the federal minimum wage.
Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann said Friday she wouldn't rule out changes to the federal minimum wage as a way to lower the cost of doing business and lure corporations back to the United States.
The Minnesota congresswoman told supporters at a packed sandwich shop that the corporate income tax needs to be reduced because companies are moving to other countries to save money. She was later asked by a reporter whether changes to the minimum wage should also be considered to balance the cost of labor here and overseas.
"I'm not married to anything. I'm not saying that's where I'm going to go," she said.
If that strikes you as fairly thin evidence upon which to convict Bachmann of wanting to take a hatchet to the minimum wage, consider her prior offenses.
As Laura Clawson told us just two months ago, Bachmann's disdain for the minimum wage has been a standard feature of Bachmann's repertoire for years. Consider this nugget from all the way back in 2005:
"Literally, 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."
Now that she is on the presidential stage, and confronted with a nation that largely supports increasing the minimum wage, she has to be a bit more oblique with her references.
Case in point--this exchange with George Stephanopoulos back in June:
Stephanopoulos: Let me try one more time, so you are saying that the minimum wage is one of those regulations you’d take a look at, you’d try to eliminate it?
Bachmann: Well what I’m saying is that I think we need to look at all regulations, whatever--whatever ones are inhibiting job growth that’s what we need to --
Stephanopoulos: And the minimum wage is one of them?
Bachmann: All regulations George. I think every department. We have just too much expansion of government.
Team Obama and the Democrats have to be, in spite of middling polling, enjoying watching Bachmann, Romney, and Perry playing the batshit-crazy edition of "Can you top this?" It might be the thing that keeps the president's re-election hopes alive amid what, on paper, is some pretty adverse terrain.