Community | August 09, 2011 | 76 comments

The Transformation of Michele Bachmann

source: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/15/110815fa_fact_lizza#ixzz1UZVTVVZX

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The transformation of Michele Bachmann from Tea Party insurgent and cable-news Pasionaria to serious Republican contender in the 2012 Presidential race was nearly complete by late June, when she boarded a Dassault Falcon 900, in Dulles, Virginia, and headed toward the caucus grounds of Iowa. The leased, fourteen-seat corporate jet was to serve as Bachmann’s campaign hub for the next few days, and, before the plane took off, her press secretary, Alice Stewart, announced to the six travelling chroniclers that there was one important rule. “I know everything is on the record these days,” Stewart said, “but please just don’t broadcast images of her in her casual clothes.”

Bachmann, a two-term member of Congress from Stillwater, Minnesota, is an ideologue of the Christian-conservative movement. Her appeal, along with her rapid ascent in the polls, is based on a collection of right-wing convictions, beliefs, and resentments that she has regularly broadcast from television studios and podiums since 2006, when she was first elected to Congress. Often, she will say something outrageous and follow it with a cheerful disclaimer. During the last Presidential campaign, she told Chris Matthews, on MSNBC, that Barack Obama held “anti-American views” and then admitted, “I made a misstatement.” (In 2010, she said that she had been right about Obama’s views all along: “Now I look like Nostradamus.”) In the spring of 2009, during what appeared to be the beginnings of a swine-flu epidemic, Bachmann said, “I find it interesting that it was back in the nineteen-seventies that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat President, Jimmy Carter. And I’m not blaming this on President Obama—I just think it’s an interesting coincidence.”

After the second Republican Presidential debate, in Manchester, New Hampshire, on June 13th, Bachmann surged in popularity. Her success there was mainly the result of her clear enunciation of Tea Party talking points. But Bachmann and her campaign staff know that––like Sarah Palin and like Mitt Romney—her image depends on a carefully groomed glamour. As Stewart was spelling out the rules of the plane, a flight attendant solemnly carried a full-length white garment bag from Nordstrom down the aisle, as if she were carrying the nuclear codes. Close behind followed two more aides––Bachmann’s personal assistant, Tera Dahl, and the makeup artist Tamara Robertson, who had been asked to join the team because Bachmann so admired her work at Fox News...


Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/15/110815fa_fact_lizza#ixzz1UZVTVVZX



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Another sterling example of this delusional wannabee...
  1. groups:
    Community,   US Politics,   Progressive America,   Elections 2012
  2. tags:
    Bachmann,  transformation,  Flip Flop,  Delusional,  1 more
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