To say that Jake Tapper's "This Week" interview of Michele Bachmann was a journalistic abomination would be to understate its abomination. Question asked; scripted, unrelated answer given. Next question. On "State of the Union" Bachmann asserted that raising the debt ceiling meant handing President Obama "an additional $2.4 trillion," which impelled Candy Crowley not to a clarifying follow-up, but to a political question. To his credit, David Gregory valiantly tried to adjust the focus on Bachmann's torrential blur on the debt-ceiling issue, but all too soon he segued to her neolunacy on homosexuals in appointed office.
Hence another Sunday morning of public affairs sounded indistinguishable from my post-coffee bathroom visit just now, although the latter was more rewarding.
On the other hand, my bathroom visits have failed to be amusing since I was about 13, whereas the morning shows were infinitely so. In listening to them -- and them alone -- one might gather that Ms. Bachmann possesses some reasonable shot at the GOP nomination, which is about as likely as Rick Perry sweeping the primaries, which is to say, both odds stand rather firmly in frozen Hell territory.
And that, as they say, is a damn shame. Nothing could be better for the GOP's long-term interests -- and the nation's -- than a raving, tea-partyesque Republican presidential nominee, whose subsequent Goldwateresque implosion would force the Genies of Crazy back in their bottle for years -- perhaps forever. The party needs such an ideological dialysis.
My much greater fear is that Republicans will nominate another John McCain -- see Mitt run -- after whose (probable) loss in the general election the ideologues will bark louder than ever: See? We didn't nominate a true conservative, and that's why we miscarried. In short, the madness will likely roll over.
The Romney-nomination upside? The certifiable crazies would split from the party by 2014 and form their own.
"The topper was Paul’s tale of watching an abortion when he was a medical student. He said he saw doctors lift out of a woman “a baby that was crying and breathing” and put it in a bucket to die, “and pretended nobody had heard it.”
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I just read this over at The Daily Beast, quoted from a speech Paul gave in Iowa sometime this week. Is this a story widely told by Paul previously? At all? Late term abortions can be controversial to many even in the pro-choice community. I'm also sure some are done and the aborted fetus is very nearly viable, albeit often having various gross deformities or health deficiencies that prompted the abortion procedure in the first place. Yet tales of a living, breathing, crying baby tossed into a garbage pail to die are rare at best and when made known are greeted with an inquiry from law enforcement. Even in the world of third trimester abortions hasn't Paul described a murder? Did Paul call the police when this happened? Did he rush to tell hospital authorities? Did it really happen? I'd be very interested in a journalist fleshing this out. It seems too ripe a target for exploration to ignore. Therefore, it likely will. Be ignored that is.
Posted by: steve duncan | August 14, 2011 at 12:06 PM
I agree, Steve, and I hope some reporter(s) is right now looking into his med school, its associated hospital, a class list of his years there, the instructors, etc.
Posted by: You Don't Say | August 14, 2011 at 02:15 PM
As for the main topic, I understand what pm is pulling for, but history suggests that, when you say "the worse, the better," you better be prepared for a lot worse. In other words, we're probably not going to get the "dialysis" until and unless the disease becomes truly life-threatening to the whole organism - that means us, too.
Posted by: CK MacLeod | August 14, 2011 at 06:42 PM