A political post

 

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who represents my district (it shames me to say), has announced she will not seek re-election.  This makes me wonder: is the circus finally leaving town?  While she has her fans among the Islamophobes, gay haters, and assorted illiterati, most sane and rational people look on her the way they would a herpes pimple in the shape of Mickey Mouse’s head: interesting, but very bad news.

Here is a partial list of Bachmann’s “greatest hits”:

• She claimed on national television that the HPV vaccine caused mental retardation, not because of any scientific research stating so (there is none), but because she was told that by one of her fans.
• She advocated her husband’s use of gay reparative therapy (known better in the professional psychology and psychiatry fields as “psychological abuse” and “unfounded and unscientific chicanery”).
• She thought John Quincy Adams was a founding father (he was eight years old at the time of the signing of the declaration of independence).
• She went after an aide to Secretary of state Clinton because the aide was muslim, accusing her of being a “sleeper agent.”  This insanity was condemned by members of her own party.
• Despite mountains of scientific evidence to the contrary, she believes the world is about 6000 years old
• She wanted to mount a modern-day McCarthy witch hunt of congress, claiming many of them were “anti-American” or “in the pay of foreign agents.”
• During 8 years in congress, she proposed 58 acts of legislation, 53 of which died in committee.  Of the remaining five, three of them went on to a vote, of which only one passed the house.  That bill failed to be signed into law.  Eight years, no accomplishments on her own merits.  Not a one.
• At the time I am writing this, Bachmann is under investigation by the Federal Election Commission, an Iowa board of ethics, and the FBI for the handling of funds during her very unsuccessful 2012 presidential bid.

Etc., etc., etc.

As happy as I am with this news, the real winners are not liberals such as myself, but conservatives.  By this, I don’t mean the faction of the Teahadists who think our president was born in Kenya, deny science, and/or believe that our constitution was based solely on the Bible (despite the 1^st amendment, article six, and most of the letters of the original framers, not to mention 200 years of legal documents) and that Jesus has personally chosen us as his chosen people.  That tinfoil hat brigade will no doubt be in great mourning today.  That makes me even happier.

No, the conservatives I am thinking of are ones like Jon Huntsmann or even Ron Paul, people who have grave reservations about our fiscal policies, about our relationship with other super powers (China), who recognize that we need to rethink social programs, people who realize that very much good can be done by federal programs, but that there are far too many costing far too much.  Because, when you have dunces like Bachmann barking from the main tent of the circus, the house lights shine on her and the sensible people of her party are shunned into the dark.  It’s hard to talk about government waste when you have a member wanting to investigate aides for ties to a conspiracy.  It’s hard to suggest more sensible healthcare options when one of your members is claiming Obamacare will kill millions of women.  It’s hard to talk about foreign relations when one of your members has just said we need to think about nuking Iran.  We need competing ideas, and to have them we need serious people, especially intelligent ones with competing ideas, not three ring clowns with wild conspiracy theories.