Eye Recommend -- The G.O.P.'s Bachmann Problem

THE G.O.P.'S BACHMANN PROBLEM, by Charles H. Blow -- http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/23/opinion/blow-the-gops-bachmann-problem.html?_r=0

Mr. Blow begins his article by pointing out the intramural squabbles that seem epidemic in the Republican Party since last November.  He points out the name calling between John McCain, Paul Rand and Ted Cruz, Ann Coulter’s tacky digs at Chris Christie and his absence from the CPAC speaker schedule and the public spat between Sarah Palin and Karl Rove.   Donald Trump also gets a mention.

He goes on to compare the modern Republican Party with the Democratic Party during the McCarthy years, citing politicians like Michele Bachmann as the cause.

It makes for some very entertaining reading.


“But all this name-calling, as fun as it is to watch, is just a sideshow.  The main show is the underlying agitation.

The Republican Party is experiencing an existential crisis, born of its own misguided incongruity with modern American culture and its insistence on choosing intransigence in a dynamic age of fundamental change."

Sorry to break in here, but I have to applaud that sentence.  It may be the most efficient and intelligent use of vocabulary to explain the modern Republican Party...ever.  I am in awe.

"Instead of turning away from obsolescence, it is charging headlong into it, becoming more strident and pushing away more voters whom it could otherwise win.

Andrew Kohut, the founding director of the Pew Research Center, pointed out in The Washington Post on Friday that the party's ratings 'now stand at a 20-year low', and that is in part because 'the outsize influence of hard-line elements in the party base is doing to the G.O.P. what supporters of Gene McCarthy...did to the Democratic Party in the late 1960s and early 1970s...

...And too many of those hard-liners have a near-allergic reaction to the truth.

A prime example is Michele Bachmann...

...Last year The Washington Post quoted Jim Drinkard, who oversees fact-checking at The Associated Press, as saying, 'We had to have a self-imposed Michele Bachmann quota in some of those (presidential primary) debates.'

It's sad when you are so fact-challenged that you burn out the fact-checkers.

People like Bachmann represent everything that is wrong with the Republican Party.  She and her colleagues are hyperbolic, reactionary, ill-informed and ill-intentioned, and they have become synonymous with the Republican brand. We don't need all politicians to be Mensa-worthy, but we do expect them to be cogent and competent.

When all the dust settles from the current dustup within the party over who holds the mantle and which direction to take, Republicans will still be left with the problem of what to do with people like Bachmann.

And as long as the party has Bachmanns, it has a problem.”