After the State of the Union Address, the opposition address will be given by Republican Paul Ryan of Kentucky. This job is often given to party rising stars. Ryan is expected to be a party uniter. After the senator speaks, Michele Bachmann will give her Tea Party Caucus response. Bachmann is noted for for angry, anti-Obama rhetoric. Yahoo News gives us some clues of what might be in store for us after the SOTUA:
A recent analysis by the Pulitzer Prize-winning watchdog site PolitiFact showsthat of the 13 times she’s been fact-checked, “seven of her claims [have been found] to be false and six have been found to be ridiculously false,” says PolitiFact Editor Bill Adair. “I don’t know anyone else that we have checked, more than a couple times, that has never earned anything above a false. She is unusual in that regard.” Among Bachmann’s greatest hits: saying that Obama will hike taxes on small businesses that make $250,000 (“pants on fire”); claiming that “the president of the United States will be taking a trip over to India that is expected to cost the taxpayers $200 million a day” (“false”); and declaring that in the 1970s, “the swine flu broke out… under another Democrat, President Jimmy Carter” (“pants on fire”). Beyond all the easily disprovable falsehoods, Bachmann is famous for simply saying outrageous things: that homosexuality is a “dysfunction”; that Obama is turning America into a “nation of slaves”; that conservatives should “slit their wrists” and be “blood brothers” to defeat health-care reform.
Mainstream Republicans are trying to act like they aren’t bothered by her end run, but they haven’t been real convincing. Consider the recent past:
Bachmann’s post-election maneuvering isn’t particularly surprising; the ultraconservative Minnesotan, who by one estimate appears on national cable once every nine days, is always looking for new ways to get attention. But the response her scheming has received in top GOP circles—a response that would best be described as arctic—suggests that the battle between disgruntled, absolutist Tea Party activists (who want to blow the system up) and their more realistic representatives in Washington (who plan to work within it) is only beginning.
Consider how rank-and-file Republicans have reacted to Bachmann’s recent displays of ambition. As soon as the congresswoman launched her conference-chair campaign, Eric Cantor and Mike Pence—the Indiana pol she would be succeeding in the position—endorsed her rival, Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling. Boehner put Hensarling on the GOP’s transition team, and left Bachmann out. Sarah Palin declined to endorse Bachmann, with whom she campaigned over the summer. And Ryan circulated a letter to lawmakers and recently elected Republicans asking them to support Hensarling over his opponent. After awhile, Bachmann took the hint and bowed out.
Bachmann can be viewed at the Tea Party Express website where her message will be streamed live as soon as the Republican rebuttal is over Tuesday night. Meanwhile, Republicans are cringing. They don’t need a wild card in the mix. The moderates and liberals are await the sideshow with eager anticipation. They think Bachmann is the gift that keeps on giving because she is totally outrageous. The events tonight will almost be like a triple header– High political theater as it were.
Who will be naughty and who will be nice? Joe Wilson has his dates lined up so we are expecting sterling behavior from him. He announced on Twitter that he will be sitting with Susan Davis (CA-53) and Madeleine Bordallo of Guam. Many of the Supremes are staying home so we won’t be able to count on them to mouth at the president or roll their eyes. That leaves about 500 people to act out. So many choices….so little time.
I guess poor Michele has no friends here either. Maybe she needs to review what third party does to an election.
In the past people like this were only on Fox News or talk radio. Now they’re elected officials.
I’m ok with Ms. Bachmann wanting to provide a response. I didn’t think Ms. Bachmann needed me or anyone else to defend her.
Why does she need to review what a third party does? It seems that the “third party” is what brought back the GOP. Now, if we can just get the GOP to admit that…..
Other than that, I don’t have an opinion on Bachmann.
OMG!!! Cargo.. No opinion??? SHE IS A GIGANTIC NUT-JOB !! There, that’s an opinion that you can freely admit to, if you had any cajones at all. Not every conservative is right.
Cargo, the secret will be, can you make the same claim in 2 years or was it a flash in the pan?
The more she and others threaten the Republican party, the more there will be division within the party. She wasn’t selected to give the rebuttal. Why can’t she leave it at that rather than increasing the divide??
Surely you have noticed mainstream Republicans distancing themselves from her and her caucus?
I don’t comment on her because I haven’t listened or read anything directly by her. I see too many out of context quotations in the media.
I haven’t noticed because I haven’t been paying attention to the “Tea Party Caucus.” I don’t think the idea is a good one. The Tea Party is a grass roots movement outside of DC. Let the Congress members just vote their conscience. We don’t need a caucus. Either the members will vote the way the Tea Party likes or they won’t.
All political parties and movements are flashes in the pan, until they demonstrate staying power. The TP movement is not yet 2 years old. We’ll see. Actually, if the Republicans return to “business as usual”, I predict democrat successes in the years to come. The TP will stop voting for the GOP. Either the GOP lives up to its rhetoric and platform or it loses support.
@Cargo,
So who will they vote? I don’t expect them to vote with Democrats? How can they form their own party? That takes big bucks.
They just won’t vote. It happened in the 2000 elections and 2006 elections. Conservatives see that the Democrats and the mainstream GOP are heading in the same direction. The GOP is just taking a longer route. The TP doesn’t need to become a third party. Its power is its influence on the existing power structure. Its the same with the Democrats and the Progressive movement. Third parties lose their influence as soon as they become a separate entity. Just take a look at the Libertarian party.
We’re going to work the local levels, the local party structures, and the primaries. RedState is working the Precinct Committeeman project to get more conservatives involved at a local level.
Sorry, that should read 2006 and 2008 elections.
Michelle Bachman also wanted to investigate her fellow house members for anti american beliefs.
http://minnesotaindependent.com/13637/new-mccarthyism-bachmann-calls-for-investigation-of-anti-american-congress-members
There are plenty of Republicans I believe are seriously engaged in policy making differences than Democrats, she is not one of them. She just seems to blather and blather with no real solutions, just attacks. I would be very interested to see her in a debate, one where you needed more than just sound bites and one sentence responses, I mean in depth explanations.
Are you some sort of masochist?
Agree, Cato. That would be hard to take.
I just look as Bachmann as just another politician. As a body filled with egos, eccentrics, idiots, and geniuses, she’s just another exhibit in the zoo.
Actually, a debate between Bachmann and Maxine Waters would be comedy gold.
I am now declaring that if Bachmann’s name is on the Va Republican primary for President, I will absolutely vote for her, without a doubt.
Stranger things have happened.
@Cato the Elder
Maxine is comedy gold all by herself.
Deflection time? If you make fun of Maxine Waters does that make Michele Bachmann seem smarter, less strident, or more knowledgeable?
It seems to me President Obama covered most of her points in his SOTU message. I suppose she didn’t look directly at those she was addressing because she couldn’t take her eyes off the teleprompter.
On the surface, she has credibility because she’s one of the few Republican leaders who didn’t support the outrageous Medicare prescription drug handout. So going into her response, you don’t completely write her off like you would John Boehner.
But that’s where it ends. She starts off with rhetoric perfected by Limbaugh and Hannity, suggesting that the rise in unemployment was Obama’s fault or that he didn’t stop it. Then she reads from Boehner’s book talking about balancing the budget and cutting spending and reducing government without providing specifics.
She is right in that the nation is in a crisis, but she won’t be the person to lead us out of this. The short-term economic situation will be resolved, but long-term we have seemingly incomprehensible spending obligations. The programs that the Repubs have proposed to cut add up to chump change. I suspect that the candidate who talks honestly with people and is capable of leading us out of this mess won’t even get elected.
Gov. McDonnell was on Fox & Friends this morning. I think they’re backing off pushing Newt and exploring Bob.
I believe that seniors having to choose between food and medication is what is outrageous. President Bush didn’t do a whole lot I approved of. The rx drug program was something I approved of.
I knew how much my mother had to pay for her medications without insurance because of the gap when she moved. She afforded insurance that covered much of her medication. What of those people who couldn’t dump $500 bucks into all that insurance per month? (and this was 5 years ago.) The one month I saw, her pharmacy bill was $1300. Granted, she was 85 and had some medical issues, but geez Louise.
The jokes about seniors eating cat and dog food probably weren’t jokes for some people.
Good for Bush and the Congress that passed that act. Perhaps they should now put a little heat on the pharmacy companies to help out more. That is one of the most powerful lobbies in the country, right after the NRA.
Okay, stay with me on this.
Actually, I think Speaker Boehner is playing this like a champ. He needs the Tea Party to regain the majority, so mouths allegiance to most of their principles. I mean, these people are novices or fringe elements – they’ll believe him. Now the mainstream Republicans even elect a Tea Partier as party chair. Perfect. He’s leveraged them to get the House and given them high profile jobs “running” the party. As time passes, all their wacky ideas and amateurish power plays come to light. Voters that only vote in presidential elections will start to pay attention again and see Tea Party-ers for belonging to the smallest cubicle in the deepest corner of the neo-con far right wing of the party and decide they don’t like them. Boehner and the mainstreamers push their candidates as the alternative (more reasonable) to these extremists that have corrupted the party. Tea Party-ers get booted, the mainstream Washington based Republicans get elected, and Boehner keeps the Speaker’s gavel. The Tea Party-ers HAVE to vote Republican, otherwise the demonic liberal Democrats regain the House.
Obama wins because his power base that neglected to vote in the mid-terms returns in droves to keep their man in the White House (which Boehner knows isn’t going Republican). Boehner is now in PERFECT position to run in 2012 for president.
Please delete one of these. I’m so used to doubling clicking! Sorry!!!
@Disgusted, I don’t know how that happened.
Interesting theory. I can’t separate Tea Party from Religious Right. It seems like a blend. Regardless, I am tired of the fife and drum brigade. We are a long way from the ‘founding fathers,’ who really weren’t the idealistic images of perfection some seem to think they were.
No doubt about it. The Republicans are playing the teajadis as chumps.
The R’s had to get in at midterm. Their chances aren’t real good in 2012. It will be real hard to overcome some of Obama’s base then. There are just some things that cannot be changed.
R’s will have an additional problem of having solved nothing, despite a great deal of trumpeting.
The new RNC chair is NOT a Tea Party favorite.
The Tea Party is NOT the “religious right.” (Though I know you won’t believe me.)
The Tea Party candidates WERE NOT given “high profile jobs” and have not been given positions of authority on committees.
And the Tea Party members DO NOT have to vote Republican. That was proven in 2006 and 2008. If the GOP wants to keep its majority, then it has to follow its platform and its own rhetoric. It has to support cutting spending. Not freezing, not slowing the growth, but actual cuts. It has to support job growth.
The GOP has learned that the TP has NO loyalty to the GOP and, in fact, blames them for the mess we are in now by acting like Democrats while Bush was in office and they still held Congress.
The next two years will tell. No predictions. The Stupid Party is infamous for pulling defeat out of the jaws of victory and letting the Evil Party win.
Cargo, it has many of the religious right in it. I never said it WAS the religious right. Think Venn Diagram/overlap. Many of them found a home there.
Stupid and Evil? Who is that?
Words like that and you wonder why people don’t care much for Tea Party people who don’t belong to any organization?
@Moon-howler
Hey Moon I can sympathize with the situation of elderly not being able to afford food and medicine not to mention heat. But the Medicare prescription drug benefit also provides benefits to Mama and Papa Guapo who just got back from a $10,000 luxury cruise through South East Asia. My mom has gotten a quadruple by-pass courtesy of your tax dollars, two artificial knees, enough diabetes medication to choke a camel and various other benes. And after taxpayers pay hundreds of thousands for my parents benefits, they’ll leave I don’t know how much (probably over a million) to me and my brother El Panzon.
Providing live-saving medicine to someone who otherwise couldn’t afford it is one thing. Taking money out of a dishwasher’s salary to pay for medical procedures for the wealthy caused by decades of a sedentary lifestyle is OUTRAGEOUS!
@El Guapo,
So you are suggesting a means test? Where would it start?
@Moon-howler
The GOP and the Democrat party, in many political and gun blogs have been known, respectively, as the STUPID party and the EVIL party. That’s where that came from.
And yes, many of the religious have found a home in the Tea Party. There are also religious party on the left. Does that make them the “religious left?” The “religious right” aren’t making the platform for the Tea Party. They may try to influence it….so what? Their primary reason for joining is because they want less gov’t spending.
I know, because of you abhorrence of anything relating to the “religious right” because of you support for abortion rights, that you automatically will be on the negative side against most things “politically conservative.” Though you may have many conservative principles, that one issue won’t let you think about agreeing with groups that might be “flavored” by the “religious right.”
Too bad.
As for a means test – It would be arbitrarily started where politically feasible. No one in government actually tries to do the hard work and put it where it might do good. It would be put where it loses the least amount of votes. This is the problem with large, general socialized programs.
@Moon-howler
I make fun of Maxine Waters because she continually beclowns herself even moreso than what you think Bachmann does.
Notice that I didn’t defend Bachmann in that instance. Waters just has more history and therefor more instances of idiocy.
Disgusted and Starryflights — Sorry, fellas. Sour grapes.
“…she’s one of the few Republican leaders who didn’t support the outrageous Medicare prescription drug handout.”
“The outrageous Medicare prescription drug handout”–you’re right Moon about helping out those who really neeed the help. I have been working with this program since its beginning and I can tell you that it has helped many older, limited income folks who are just enough above the poverty level that they get no assistance, to be able to pay the rent, buy food and their medications.
And El Guapo’s comment that: “My mom has gotten a quadruple by-pass courtesy of your tax dollars, two artificial knees, enough diabetes medication to choke a camel and various other benes.”
These did NOT come from the prescription drug program but from Original Medicare.
It sounds like his parents would be an excellent case for means testing. And, of course, his parents could have turned down Parts B and D of (and still could) if they are so wealthy they can afford a $10,000 cruise. Then they could spend the millions they have on health insurance and co-pays instead of passing it on to their worthless brats.
That’s a great idea, George. Expect people to voluntarily turn down freebies. That’s a great plan to cure the fiscal ills of our nation.
@el Guapo,
Turning down freebies is an unrealistic expectation. However, to suggest that seniors on very limited incomes have to make a choice between food, rent and medicine is not something I am willing to do.
Perhaps the answer should be means platforms. People sitting on a million bucks should perhaps get a little discount and let those with smaller income at their disposal get the lions share. Meanwhile, I very much support the rx plan for seniors. Rather than pitch it, lets tweak it.
@Moon-howler
MH has an excellent idea there. The point of my earlier comment was to point out the lunacy of taxing the wages of single-mom waitresses to pay for benes that my parents don’t need.
I thought George had a great idea that maybe people who don’t need the handouts should just decline to accept them. MH brings us back to reality by saying that people might not necessarily turn down the benes. I think she’s right.
I agree with MH in that if we are going to have Medicare that we could consider the idea of means testing.