Category: Michele Bachmann

‘Everyone Sells Out in Iowa’

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DAVENPORT, Iowa
According to Michele Bachmann, that’s what her former campaign chairman state Sen. Kent Sorenson told her before he switched allegiances to Ron Paul.

Ed Morrissey is shocked — shocked! — to discover that Republicans can be bought, but it happens every day.

Remember when Tim Pawlenty was supposed to be the “conservative alternative to Mitt Romney”? And yet when Pawlenty dropped out, his campaign deep in debt, he endorsed Romney. Like that wasn’t about money?

Shane Vander Hart at Caffeinated Thoughts:

The principled thing for Sorenson to do would have been to see his commitment through to the end. . . .
I don’t know how much this will help Paul.  I would suspect not much.  What Sorenson did manage to do however is fatally wound the Bachmann campaign and damage his own credibility in the process.

Sorenson’s defection may have served the purpose of signaling to evangelicals in Iowa that, given the choice between Santorum and Bachmann, hers is the weaker of the two campaigns. A for the impact on Sorenson: “He just committed political suicide.”

Yeah. You can have a fine career in the GOP as a greedy opportunistic backstabber, but only if you maintain a public reputation as a Man of Principle and Integrity.

But why bring Ralph Reed into this, huh?

Report: Huntsman, Bachmann, Santorum Fail to Make Virginia Primary Ballot UPDATE: Close Calls for Newt and Perry

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A certain number of petition signatures had to be delivered by close of business today in order for candidates to be included on the ballot for the March 6 Virginia Republican primary.

Rick Santorum supporter Lisa Graas just informed me by e-mail that, according to University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato, three candidates — Santorum, Michele Bachmann and Jon Huntsman — failed to collect enough signatures in time to meet the qualifying deadline.

UPDATE: Andrew Cain of the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports:

Four Republican presidential candidates – Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Ron Paul — submitted paper work in time to qualify for Virginia’s March 6 primary ballot. . . .
Rep. Michele Bachmann, former Sen. Rick Santorum and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman did not submit signatures with Virginia’s State Board of Elections by today’s 5 p.m. deadline.
Those who submitted the required signatures must clear another hurdle. The Republican Party of Virginia has until Tuesday to certify which candidates qualify. . . .
The State Board of Elections will turn over the petitions to the respective political parties for validating. Republican will begin the process Friday morning and have sought volunteers to help with the process.
Candidates must submit the signatures of at least 10,000 registered voters, with 400 from each of the 11 Congressional districts.
Romney submitted 16,026 signatures; Paul 14,361; Perry 11,911 and Gingrich 11,050.

UPDATE II: NBC’s Alex Moe reports:

The Gingrich campaign might be able breathe a sigh of relief.
After Newt Gingrich’s third event in less than 24 hours in Virginia, the former House speaker announced that his campaign has secured enough signatures to be on the ballot in the state.

Notice that Perry also barely cleared the 10,000-signature threshold. As Lisa Graas notes below, because some signatures will prove ineligible, it is recommended that candidates get at least 15,000 signatures to qualify. If Romney wants to dispatch lawyers to keep an eye on the validation process, they might be able to disqualify enough petitions to knock Perry and Gingrich off the ballot.

UPDATE III: Hat tip to The Right Scoop on Twitter for this Politico article by Emily Schultheis adding further background:

The state’s primary, which is slated for Super Tuesday on March 6, has some of the most stringent ballot access requirements in the country: 10,000 signatures from registered Virginia voters, including 400 from each of the state’s 11 congressional districts. And the elections board recommends getting at least 1.5 times the number of required signatures — 15,000 for presidential candidates — in case any of them are found to be invalid.
Mitt Romney, who filed Tuesday, was the only candidate to get 1.5 times the required number of signatures . . .
The Gingrich campaign had announced yesterday, after “scrambling” to organize in the state, that it had reached the required number of signatures.
The state parties will certify the signatures from each of the candidates and decide by Dec. 27 whether or not the four GOP candidates are eligible to appear on the ballot, Piper said.

UPDATE IV: OK, we’ve nailed down the facts. Now for the big-picture “What Does It Mean?” stuff that’s usually above my paygrade. (Because it’s Thursday evening three days before Christmas, all the super-genius Smart Guy pundits in D.C. are off the clock, so I’ll give it a shot.)

The Right Scoop says, “I wonder if they struggled to get the 10k signatures needed.” And yeah, of course that was the situation.

On a conference call with grassroots supporters last week, a top Santorum staffer had discussed ballot-access issues in several states. Virginia was singled out as a tough one, because of the “stringent” factor described in the Politico article: Not just the 10,000-signature minimum, but you have to get 400 signatures in each of 11 congressional districts, and the deadline hit in the middle of the holiday season, at the same time that the campaigns were going all-out in Iowa.

The Santorum people on the conference call were asking for Virginia volunteers to help with their ballot-access drive, saying they were hoping for a “Christmas miracle.” Given the low-budget situation with the Santorum campaign, they had no other choice but rely on volunteers. (Romney, of course, could afford to hire professional ballot-access people.)

Contrast Santorum’s situation to the ballot shortfalls by Huntsman and Bachmann — both of whom have raised and spent multiples of Santorum’s campaign budget — and Santorum’s shortfall in Virginia, while certainly disappointing, is not nearly as embarrassing as the others.

The fact that Gingrich was “scrambling” to hit the 10,000-signature threshold in Virginia shows the gap between his high-profile “front-runner” status and the relative weakness of his campaign operation.

But certainly the biggest question mark is why Perry could only get about 900 more Virginia signatures than Newt. The Perry campaign had millions of dollars cash-on-hand in early September, and has unloaded a huge amount on TV ads the past month, yet they barely cleared the Virginia ballot threshold? That doesn’t bode well.

So, yeah: Romney’s now looking a bit more likely as the nominee.

UPDATE V: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

Now that I think about it, a wild-card idea: If we assume a four-way Virginia primary between Romney, Newt, Perry and Paul — that is to say, if Romney’s big-money lawyers can’t disqualify either Newt or Perry — could Ron Paul win Virginia?

Think about it: Gingrich and Perry waging an all-out knife-fight to be the “Not Mitt” conservative candidate, both of them taking their shots at Romney. Meanwhile, Paul’s army of fanatics descend on the Old Dominion to turn out every possible libertarian/Constitutionlist/fringe-kook vote. In a four-way primary, if the other three candidates run in the 20%-30% range, couldn’t a maximum effort by the Paulistas produce a shocking upset in Virginia?

War-gaming these crazy possibilities is such fun, isn’t it?

UPDATE VI: Now a Memeorandum thread. I’m sitting here with Fox News on the TV in my home office, and they haven’t even mentioned this story yet. Everything’s all, “Congressional compromise, blah, blah, blah, Iraq, blah, blah, blah.” Maybe they don’t grasp the significance. Probably because their super-genius Smart Guy pundits are all on holiday this week.


Gingrich Campaign ‘Imploding’ in Iowa; Ron Paul Leads; Rick Santorum Gains

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Newt Gingrich’s campaign in Iowa is “rapidly imploding,” according to the latest poll, as the former House Speaker has tumbled to third place and Ron Paul has moved into the lead in the Hawkeye State, with Mitt Romney in second place just two weeks before the crucial Jan. 3 caucuses.

Meanwhile, Rick Santorum moved into a three-way tie for fourth place with Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry in the latest Iowa survey by Public Policy Polling. It was the second consecutive gain in the PPP Iowa poll by the Pennsylvania senator, who has seen his support in the state nearly double since Dec. 3.

CANDIDATE ……… Dec. 3-5 … Dec. 11-13 … Dec. 16-18
Ron Paul ……………………… 18% ………… 21% ……….. 23%
Mitt Romney ……………….. 16% ………… 16% ……….. 20%
Newt Gingrich ………………. 27% ………… 22% ………. 14%
Michele Bachmann ……….. 13% ………… 11% ……….. 10%
Rick Santorum …………….. 6% …………… 8% ………… 10%
Rick Perry …………………… 9% …………… 9% ………… 10%
Jon Huntsman …………….. 4% …………… 5% …………. 4%
Gary Johnson ……………… 1% …………… 1% ………….. 2%

“Newt Gingrich’s Iowa support was extremely soft and has collapsed in only two weeks,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. “Ron Paul has taken the lead, but it will be interesting to see if he can turn out his unique base of voters for the caucus.”

(Via Memeorandum.)


Shorter Ace: ‘Bitches Lie’

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A grossly unfair oversimplification of Ace’s argument? Sure.

But in a multi-candidate Republican primary campaign where everybody’s cutting each other to ribbons, who can complain — if anyone even notices — when I gratuitously play the sexism card?

And isn’t Ace calling the lady a liar?

Michele Bachmann lives in a strange world. People talk about “moral relativism.” Presumably they would claim she’s not a moral relativist.
But truth is an objective fact, is it not?
Ms. Bachmann seems to confuse premises which are politically helpful to her for premises which are actually true.
That seems like moral relativism to me — the world is not as it is, but as I perceive it to be.

Ace is talking about the assertion by Bachmann “that we’ve been hearing all across the country, that money is changing hands” — candidates paying for Tea Party support. Professor William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection says:

You know I have a big problem with Michele Bachmann making statements which are not supported by facts and then repeating them endlessly.
Her campaign is up to much worse in South Carolina, where her local campaign manager has suggested that the Gingrich campaign has paid off Tea Party leaders for support.

Professor Jacobson has hopped aboard the Gingrich bandwagon and is savagely lashing Newt’s critics, as is his right. But notice that this pay-for-play accusation comes from South Carolina, which is to the GOP what Chicago is to the Democratic Party: The dirtiest place on the planet.

A South Carolina Republican primary is always fought according to the Al Davis rule — Just win, baby — and they never heard of a “fair fight.” So either:

  1. Bachmann’s S.C. guy Wesley Donohue is just slinging mud against Gingrich; or
  2. Gingrich and perhaps unnamed others are indeed bribing Tea Party activists for their support.

Are the pay-for-play accusations unproven? Yes, but so were the sexual harassment accusations against Herman Cain, yet the accusations were enough to drive Cain out of the race. And furthermore, just because Bachmann can’t prove that the Gingrich campaign is paying for endorsements doesn’t mean that Bachmann is lying when she says she has “been hearing all across the country” that such shenanigans are afoot.

Maybe the people telling Bachmann this stuff are paranoid, and certainly it is irresponsible for a candidate to repeat such stuff without proof. But you can accuse Bachmann of being a loose cannon without saying she’s engaged in “moral relativism.”

Grossly unfair oversimplification, you see.

Being aboard the Santorum Express myself, I should be happy to sit quietly while Michele Bachmann is accused of lying. Bachmann and Santorum appeal to the same pool of social conservative voters who are crucial in Iowa, so if Ace and Professor Jacobson are calling her a liar, the “smart” thing to do would be to say, “They’re right! You can’t trust that lying hussy!”

Ah, but why do what’s merely “smart,” when genius is an option? Because Professor Jacobson is a Gingrich supporter, and the two-bank carom shot is this headline: 

Gingrich Supporter Calls Bachmann a Liar

But did I say genius? Here’s Ace proclaiming his own allegiance after Thursday’s debate:

I thought Perry did well. He’s still my pick.

Ah, so here we have a three-bank carom:

Gingrich, Perry Supporters: ‘Bachmann Lies’

As I’ve said before, Ace is ax-grinding against Bachmann because he’s still butt-hurt about the way she carved up Perry in the Tampa debate three months ago.

Dude: Let it go. It’s not worth it.

But I’m “Not Good Enough for BlogCon,” so nobody ever listens to me.

UPDATE: Ron Paul is a uniter, not a divider:

Ron Paul Takes Swipes at GOP Rivals,
Says Michele Bachmann ‘Hates Muslims’

That should boost Bachmann’s InTrade rating. Damn it.
 

#tcot @AceOfSpadesHQ So, You’re Still Kinda Butt-Hurt About Rick Perry, Huh?

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Look, I’ve just endured my own Disastrous Month of Pain, OK? But I seriously doubt that 78 days from now I’m gonna be grousing bitterly about Gloria Allred and Ginger White. So why — 78 days after the Tampa debate — is Ace still ax-grinding against Michele Bachmann?

What’s especially interesting is that Bachmann signs up so willingly for Sacrifice Attacks. Some attacks are kind of over the top and involve a lot of blowback; they hurt the person making them as much or more than the target of the attack.
Gardasil, for example. That more or less took Bachmann out of things.
And that wasn’t entirely unforeseeable. A lot of people — including Republicans — are not so jazzed about the anti-vax swamp that a lot of the animus there seemed to be coming from. And her cloyingly emotional appeal — “Little. Girls.” — came off as shameless.
Plus, her convenient My Daughter Came Out a Retard mystery witness.

Dude. That was Sept. 12. And I was there:

TAMPA, Fla. — Rick Perry came into last night’s debate here with a target on his back, leading in the polls only a month after his late entry into the Republican presidential campaign. His fellow GOP candidates fired at the Texas governor all night, but it wasn’t until Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann said the phrase “innocent little 12-year-old girls” that he suffered any serious wound. . . .

You can call that a “cloyingly emotional appeal” if you want, but it was absolutely devastating in terms of Perry’s support among conservative moms. Don’t take my word for it: Ali Akbar was in the audience in Tampa, sitting among a bunch of Tea Party women who came into the debate pro-Perry. Afterwards? Thumbs down.

Was the Gardasil issue overblown, misrepresented, misunderstood? Tell it to conservative mom Michelle Malkin. But why blame Bachmann? Because you think she’s stupid? Because she’s a woman? Because her attack on your guy Perry was effective?

And this endorsement of the C4P write-in campaign?

Rather than look for a Palin-like candidate, doesn’t it just make more sense to write in Palin?

“Hey, let’s undermine Bachmann in Iowa — just for spite!”

Ultimately, it wasn’t Michele Bachmann or any other Republican rival who destroyed Rick Perry. He surfed into the race on a tsunami wave of overconfidence, his campaign led by a bunch of cutthroat assholes who had just finished sabotaging Newt Gingrich.

They convinced a lot of people — Ace among them — to climb aboard The Smilin’ Texan Express for a one-way ride to glory.

“Phantom Menace.” Told ya so.

Perry auto-destructed and keeps bumbling onward toward greater humiliation. So why keep beating up on Bachmann? Why scapegoat her, instead of blaming the geniuses who sold you on Perry? (“Howdy. Thank you, Erick.”) Or why not own up to letting yourself get sold?

It’s been non-stop pain for me lately, Ace, so I’m not here to rub salt in your wounds, but . . . beating up on a girl? C’mon. Let it go, man.

And tell Tabitha Hale I said, “Hi.”

 

UPDATE: Linked by God’s Own Crunk — thanks!

Some in the comments are wanting to turn this into “Why Everybody Should Hate Ace,” which isn’t my intention at all. Ace loved him some Perry, which required him to do some hating on everybody else — especially anyone who attacked Perry (Bachmann and, to a lesser extent, Santorum) or appeared to prosper at Perry’s expense (Cain).

Honestly, I get it: Vengeance is fun, and hate is a habit, which is why I can’t stand me no Newt Gingrich. What Newt did to Doug Hoffman was so wrong and so stupid as to make Newt permanently unacceptable to me. When Hoffman forgave Newt, I was shocked beyond words. Dude, if I’d been screwed over that bad, I wouldn’t even have taken Newt’s call.

Ace is a good blogger, and one of the best at eviscerating liberals. His work on WeinerGate was heroic and — just in case you didn’t realize it — Ace ought to take a bow for Barney Frank’s retirement. No blogger did more than Ace to promote Sean Bielat, and it was Bielat’s 2010 challenge, combined with re-districting, that convinced Barney to hang it up.

Ace and I (and evidently many of y’all) are having a disagreement over a contested primary. It happens, and we can’t let ourselves go all Montagues and Capulets over this stuff. Because next August, if we find ourselves watching Mitt Romney give his acceptance speech in Tampa, we’re all going to have to find a way to convince our fellow Americans that this was The Greatest Acceptance Speech Ever.

Like we really mean it.

Am I looking forward to that? No, but if that’s the way the cookie crumbles, it’s what I’ll be doing, and I’ll keep pushing Romney as long as there is any real hope he can beat Obama.

Then I’ll go to the voting booth on Nov. 6, 2012, and probably vote Libertarian again, just to defy the GOP Establishment sons of bitches who keep ramming these doomstruck losers down our throats.

Anyway . . .

Don’t hate Ace. He’s a good man ewok to have on our side.

PREVIOUSLY:


BOOM! Michele Bachmann Publishes Gingrich’s 2004 Pro-Amnesty Letter

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Michele Bachmann today offered what she called “more evidence indicating that Newt Gingrich is the most liberal GOP candidate,” in a press release that cites a pro-amnesty letter Gingrich signed in 2004.

The Gingrich letter, sponsored by the neoconservative National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP), called for President Bush to offer a “new path” via guest-worker arrangements and to “recognize that those already working here outside the law are unlikely to leave.” The letter was co-authored by longtime pro-immigration activist Tamar Jacoby and originally published Feb. 6, 2004, in the Wall Street Journal.

“This letter is a clear indication that Speaker Gingrich has a deep history of supporting amnesty,” Bachmann said in the press release, sent to national media Saturday shortly after noon ET. “I don’t agree that you should make 11 million workers legal because that in effect is amnesty and will only encourage more illegal immigrants to come here.”

Gingrich has been under fire on the immigration issue since a debate Tuesday, when he proposed granting permanent U.S. residency to illegal immigrants who have been in the United States for 25 years. Gingrich’s rival Mitt Romney slammed Gingrich’s proposal as amnesty, as did influential Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King.

Jacoby is a scholar at the Manhattan Institute who has been called an “open-borders advocate” favoring amnesty for illegal aliens. In addition to Gingrich and the late Jack Kemp, other prominent signers of Jacoby’s NFAP letter included Linda Chavez, Francis Fukuyama and Grover Norquist, as well as former Bachmann adviser Ed Goeas.


‘Mitt Romney’ On SNL: Among The Stranger Campaign Ads Of All Time

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by Smitty

Last night’s SNL campaign ad is pure Mitt. Superficially, the ad is about how stiff and un-funny Mitt is. Jason Sudeikis doesn’t go far enough in capturing the slightly congested, Brokaw-esque diction that helps me understand why some people really don’t care for Sarah Palin’s accent, either (she bothers me not).

So, I theorize:

  • Romney paid for this space. We have here an appeal to the SNL’s hipster viewership.
  • The message is that, while as exciting as watching the lawn grow, Mitt is not stone-cold scary, like the rest of the GOP field.
  • If you just put your trust in Mitt, you can return to your rationally ignorant ways about politics with no ill effects.
  • Mitt’s new Double-Action Boringness is so boring that he can bore conservatives into believing he will repeal ObamaCare during the election. Stage Two Boring kicks in when he does not repeal repeal ObamaCare, but rather re-labels it and has it hidden in other boring bills so that the velvet handcuffs which have been such a great success in Europe continue to tighten on American wrists and ankles. That, folks, isn’t just boring: it’s Mitt Strength Boring.

Does this work?

I guess we’ll find out, when the independents cross over, Operation Chaos style, and vote for Mitt in GOP primaries. Meanwhile, a quick bit of Wikipedia research reveals that Gingrich was supposed to host an episode around 14 years ago. Could Newt rock him some SNL? If they brought in Doug Hoffman for a sketch, would Stacy McCain’s head ‘splode? What about Michele Bachmann hosting? I think she would be surprisingly good. However, if you watch a lot of SNL, you soon discover that if the cast doesn’t respect the host, they phone in the episode in a subtle way.

It Ain’t ‘Whining’ If the Bias Is Real

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No, I’m not talking about the bias of Tabitha Hale in excluding me from the BlogCon agenda for the second consecutive year. The final word on that has not only been said, but also set to music. Rather, I’m talking about the evidence of bias by John Dickerson of CBS:

In a slip of the finger that quickly ignited a furor among Mrs. Bachmann’s supporters, Mr. Dickerson e-mailed his colleagues that he would prefer to “get someone else” other than the Minnesota congresswoman for an online show after the CBS News/National Journal debate on Saturday night. The e-mail said that Mrs. Bachmann was “not going to get many questions” in the debate and that “she’s nearly off the charts” — an apparent reference to her low standing in many polls.
The problem was that Mrs. Bachmann’s communications director was copied in on the e-mail, and Mr. Dickerson hit “reply to all.” Oops.

Smitty has said that it is “whining” to call attention to such vicious backstabbing dishonesty, as though no one — least of all Michele Bachmann herself — should call attention to Dickerson’s contemptuous disparagement of her candidacy, lest they be accused of irrational and unseemly self-pity. Bachmann’s campaign manager Keith Nahigan, by contrast, complained of the insult with the obvious goal of exacting retribution.

Now, imagine yourself in Dickerson’s place, while your bosses at CBS News are being deluged with e-mails demanding your immediate termination. Imagine the next 24 hours, as Dickerson is denounced on the radio airwaves by Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Michael Savage, et cetera.

Even if Dickerson doesn’t get fired by CBS, he is now marked for life — his name a despicable epithet, so that no Republican will ever trust him again — thanks to the success of Nahigan in calling attention to that 29-word e-mail.

But there are many more scoundrels like Dickerson in high places amongst the soi-disant elite of the media establishment, and the way they’ve stage-managed the GOP presidential debates this year is the subject of my American Spectator column today:

Whether they’re accused of trying to gin up rating-friendly “fireworks” or limiting questions to a candidate they deem to have dropped out of contention, suspicions toward debate moderators are part of an ongoing erosion of the media’s credibility. Perfect fairness and complete objectivity are perhaps an impossible ideal, but when a candidate claims to have discovered “concrete evidence” of bias, it is a serious charge that merits serious consideration. Republican voters will ultimately decide their party’s nominee, despite efforts by the media elite to decide for them. And Bachmann’s poll numbers are still higher than Huntsman’s.

Please read the whole thing, because among the many unintended consequences of Dickerson’s insult to Bachmann was the fact that I was compelled to spend three hours writing that column in a McDonald’s in Spartanburg, S.C.  The necessary delay in my departure meant that I was on the road driving 452 miles to arrive home at 3:15 a.m., utterly exhausted at the end of a grueling 19-hour day.

Journalism as an act of personal vengeance — seeking vindication against bullies, backstabbers and other such miscreants — is a topic worth at least an essay, if not an entire book, but I’m too tired to write it now.

And why write that story at all, when I’m living it every day of my life?