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Stories tagged with “Michele Bachmann”

Election

Bachmann Rewrites History, Claims Women ‘Overwhelmingly’ Voted GOP in 2010

By Alex Seitz-Wald on May 6, 2012 at 11:42 am

Appearing on CBS’ Face the Nation this morning Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), now a Romney surrogate, did her best to argue that the presumed GOP nominee will reverse current trends and win among women voters in November. But as with many of her best attempts, the argument relied on fabricated information:

BACHMANN: Actually, if you look at the 2010 elections, women went Republican. They didn’t go Democrat, and they will this time as well, because women are more concerned about the economy and jobs for themselves, for their husbands, for their children, and that’s not happened because obama’s broken his promises. [...]

And it was women who overwhelmingly went Republican and threw out a woman speaker [Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)]. I think this time again what women want, Bob, is they want competence, and, unfortunately, with all due respect to the president, he’s not competent to deal with the economy. Mitt Romney is competent in spades. That’s what women are going to be looking for.

2010 was a banner year for the GOP and every voting block went more Republican it had in the previous election, but she’s still wrong. In fact, exit polls shows that Democrats and Republicans tied among women in the midterm election that year, each capturing 49 percent of the vote. It was a major improvement for Republicans among women, who lost that demographic by 13 points in the 2008 presidential race, and their best performance among women since 1982 — but hardly an “overwhelming” win.

Romney, meanwhile, has faced a yawning and consistent gender gap. A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed President Obama up 12 points over the Republican, 53 to 41 percent. Romney himself has acknowledged the difficulty of closing the gender gap, and his surrogate and key adviser Kerry Healey, who served as lieutenant governor under Romney, told Newsmax, “there’s always going to be a gender gap between Republicans and Democrats.”

Election

Bachmann Shakes The Etch-A-Sketch For Romney, Undoes All Of Her Attacks On Him

By Alex Seitz-Wald on May 4, 2012 at 11:53 am

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) endorsed Mitt Romney yesterday despite leveling withering criticisms on him during the primary.

To her credit, however, the congresswoman is a much better surrogate for the presumed GOP nominee than Newt Gingrich — who said just yesterday that Romney “said things at time that weren’t true” — completely reversing many of her charges against Romney in an interview with Fox News host Greta Van Susteren last night:

BACHMANN NOW: “He’s standing full square behind the pro-life cause. He believes in life.”
BACHMANN THEN: “He has been very inconsistent on his positions. He has been both sides of the abortion issue.”

BACHMANN NOW: “He believes in marriage between one woman and one man. He stands for that.”
BACHMANN THEN: Romney signed “189 same-sex marriage licenses.” In December: “He has been…on both sides of the issue of same-sex marriage.”

BACHMANN NOW: “He stands for the full scale repeal of Obamacare.”
BACHMANN THEN: “It’s highly unlikely that he will ever truly repeal [Obamacare].”

Watch it:

Election

Michele Bachmann’s 10 Best Hits On Mitt Romney

By Alex Seitz-Wald on May 3, 2012 at 11:50 am

A 119 days after she dropped out of the presidential race Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) will finally endorse presumed GOP nominee Mitt Romney today.

“She really liked Romney during all the debates,” he former campaign manager said. You wouldn’t have known it from watching the debates, where Bachmann repeatedly trashed Romney, as she did for months during her primary bid. Here are Bachmann’s 10 best hits on Romney:

1. CAN’T BEAT OBAMA — “He cannot beat Obama,” Bachmann told ABC News in December. “It’s not going to happen.”

2. ‘NEWTROMNEY’ — During the moment that Newt Gingrich was on top, Bachmann lumped the two leading candidates together as single entity — “NewtRomney” — a corrupt insider who supported socialized Medicine and other nefarious liberal polices. “When you take a look and people say this is a two man race I would agree, but the one man is ‘NewtRomney’ and the other man is Michele Bachmann, the only proven consistent conservative,” she told CBS News.

3. ROMNEY WRONG ON IMMIGRATION, CLIMATE, STIMULUS — Bachmann went on to say that ” ‘NewtRomney‘ are on the same side as the president when it comes to cap and trade, the $700 billion bailout, illegal immigration, even the payroll tax this week.” “NewtRomney” also “advocated for the healthcare mandate,” she said.

4. ‘BIG GOVERNMENT CANDIDATE’ — During a debate in Iowa, Bachmann charged that “Mitt Romney is the big government candidate.”

5. ‘CHAMELEON’ — In a speech in Florida, Bachmann called Romney a “chameleon” for his propensity to change positions in the political winds.

6. NOT PRO-LIFE — At the same speech, she said, “If you look at Mitt Romney, he…has been very inconsistent on his positions. He has been both sides of the abortion issue, on both sides of the issue of same-sex marriage.”

7. PRO-GAY MARRAIGE — Bachmann accused Romney of signing “189 same-sex marriage licenses.” This attack was false, but Bachmann said it cast doubt on Romney’s willingness “to fight against same-sex marriage.”

8. INDIVIDUAL MANDATE — Bachmann repeatedly hit Mitt Romney for implementing the antecedent of ObamaCare while governor of Massachusetts, saying the dreaded individual mandate “was Newt Gingrich’s idea, and Mitt Romney implemented it.”

9. NOT COMMITTED TO REPEALING OBAMACARE — Bachmann often criticized Romney’s plan to repeal Obamacare, which she said didn’t go far enough. “You’ve got to full-scale repeal it, and I don’t think the governors have that level of commitment to do it,” she said in a radio interview in Iowa.

10. ROMNEY ENDORSEMENT FALSE — Back in February, Bachmann seemed to take offense at the prospect of endorsing Romney, demanding the Boston Globe retract a “completely false” story reporting that negations were in the works. “Let me be absolutely clear — there are absolutely no negotiations between me and the Romney campaign regarding any pending endorsement of Governor Romney,” she said in a statement.

See Rick Santorum’s and Gingrich’s best hits on Romney before they endorsed him.

Alyssa

Bradlee Dean, Rachel Maddow and Conservative Entitlement

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Apr 23, 2012 at 10:07 am

Last summer, Bradlee Dean, the drummer for rapcore band Junkyard Prophet and a virulently anti-gay advocate whose ministry is based in Rep. Michelle Bachmann district, sued MSNBC host Rachel Maddow for defaming him. Maddow and her lawyers contend that the charges constitute a strategic lawsuit against public participation, an attempt to quash her free speech rights, and filed a motion to have them dismissed. The lawsuit has been roundly and hilariously dismantled. But it’s worth taking a look at Maddow’s petition to dismiss the suit and revisiting Dean’s initial complaint for what it reveals about the conservative sense of entitlement in the public square.

When he initially filed the suit, Dean claimed that one of Maddow’s broadcasts had unfairly misconstrued his words, because “I once made reference to how even Muslims oppose homosexuality under Shariah law. I did not suggest that I condoned the methods that radical Muslims use to enforce Shariah law, but made this analogy to prod Christians to become more concerned about what was going on in our schools with the nation’s youth.” Maddow was commenting on a broadcast in which Dean said:

Muslims are calling for the execution for homosexuals in America, this was just released yesterday and it shows you that they themselves are upholding the laws that are even in the Bible, the Judeo Christian God. They seem to be more moral than even the American Christians do. Because these people are livid about enforcing their laws, they know homosexuality is an abomination.

Maddow’s contention is that it’s reasonable to read that his statement as expressing at least some approval of the murder of homosexuals. “The broadcast truthfully reported on Dean’s May 15 statements. Those broadcasts re-played original audio of Dean speaking on the May 15 radio show. Dean does not—and cannot—allege that he did not make those controversial statements,” her petition to dismiss the case argues. “The fact that NBCUniversal broadcast the essence but not the entirety of what Dean said during that radio show, as he now protests, does not change this analysis. Dean bears sole responsibility for the consequences of his words, however much he may try to distance himself from the backlash…As Dean is entitled to his opinions, however objectionable, so too is Maddow entitled to hers.”

That last sentence, in particular, highlights the difference between Dean’s worldview and the one I assume most of us share with Maddow. Dean thinks that he’s entitled to the most generous reading of his words, one that leaches the malice out of his language even when the collected weight of his statements would mitigate against such gentling. (Maddow, as she makes clear in the motion, made clear that Dean wasn’t advocating the actual murder of homosexuals.) And he thinks, because he believes he’s right, that Maddow isn’t entitled to her own opinions of him, much less a generous interpretation of her broadcasts. Dean said in his announcement of the lawsuit that, as he’d started his ministry, “In the course of doing high school assemblies, I was shocked to learn that there were those that were offended at my message to teach our nation’s youth that homosexuality is not a preferred lifestyle.”

There’s something totalitarian—and privileged—about that kind of thinking. Gay people like Rachel Maddow don’t particularly have the luxury of being unaware that there are people who think they’re unnatural and their lives are abominable and ought to be outlawed. And despite the rise of GLAAD, which uses societal pressure to try to marginalize anti-gay speech, there’s a difference between that kind of positioning and Dean’s attempts to “stop ‘the radical gay agenda,’…to use the judicial process in this fashion.” Dean and his fellow travelers want a legal regime that will protect them against the fact that their argument is doomed to failure. They’re not likely to get it.

Update

Dean’s ministry sent us a letter complaining, in part, that we did not fully excerpt the relevant quote. The letter is similar to one provided in an update here. We stand by our reporting

Election

Bachmann: Obama Is ‘Waiving A Tar Baby In The Air’

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Apr 19, 2012 at 10:13 am

Tar Baby character from Disney's "Song of the South"

In a taped interview with Florida conservative blog The Shark Tank, Rep. Michele Bachann (R-MN) used a racially-charged term while attacking President Obama’s economic record. Asked about Obama blocking the construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, Bachmann said Obama is “waving a tar baby in the air” — a term that carries a long history of controversy in the South:

BACHMANN: This is just about waiving a tar baby in the air and saying that something else is a problem. I have never seen a more irresponsible President who is infantile in the way that he continually blames everyone else for his failure to first diagnose the problem and second to address the problem.

Watch it:

The term “tar baby” was popularized by the 19th-century Uncle Remus Br’er Fox stories, as a synonym for a sticky situation, but it’s always had a racial undertone. The Oxford English Dictionary says that tar baby is a derogatory term used for “a black or a Maori.” Famed poet Toni Morrison once said of the term, “Tar Baby is also a name, like ‘nigger,’ that white people call black children, black girls, as I recall.”

When Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) compared working with Obama to “touching a tar baby” last year, he was slammed by African-American leaders and quickly apologized to the president in a personal letter.

Presumed GOP nominee Mitt Romney had his own “tar baby” situation when he used the term in 2006 to describe Boston’s floundering “Big Dig” construction project. The then-head of the NAACP said Romney “made a bad choice” of words, and a Romney spokesperson promptly issued an apology.

Health

Anti-Abortion Bachmann Says Women Need To Make Their Own Decisions About Their Bodies

By Rebecca Leber on Apr 15, 2012 at 1:25 pm

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) argued that women should be allowed to make choices over their own bodies, while blasting Obamacare on Meet The Press. Without noting the irony of the GOP war on women targeting Planned Parenthood, abortion services, and contraception coverage, Bachmann said women need to be allowed control over their own bodies:

BACHMANN: What we want is women to be able to make their own choices [...] We want women to make their own choices in healthcare. You see that’s the lie that happens under Obamacare. The President of the United States effectively becomes a health care dictator. Women don’t need anyone to tell them what to do on health care. We want women to have their own choices, their own money, that way they can make their own choices for the future of their own bodies.

Watch it:

Bachmann doesn’t believe a women’s right to choose applies in all cases, though, promising on the presidential campaign trail that in addition to supporting an abortion ban, she wouldn’t allow exceptions for rape or for the woman’s health.

On Meet The Press, Bachmann also claimed that “every aspect of women’s lives would be better” under likely Republican nominee Mitt Romney than under President Barack Obama. However, Romney has already promised to repeal the gains women make under Obamacare, which prohibits health care providers from charging higher rates to women.

NEWS FLASH

Marcus Bachmann Is Still Practicing Ex-Gay Therapy | A second undercover investigation conducted by a documentary filmmaker has discovered that Bachmann & Associates — the Christian counseling clinics owned by Marcus and Michele Bachmann — is still offering discredited ex-gay therapy to its gay and lesbian patients. This is the second expose to uncover reparative therapy in the Bachmann-owned business. According to the filmaker, the counselor “talked a lot about submitting to God, giving my life path over to him and letting him direct the way. She told me if I wanted to be happy I could ‘give my problems to the Lord and he could take them away.’” When confronted with the allegations last summer, Marcus Bachmann admitted that the clinics would perform reparative therapy upon request.

Health

Michele Bachmann Thinks People ‘Choose’ To Not Have Health Insurance, Not Because They Can’t Afford It

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on Mar 30, 2012 at 8:30 am

The Affordable Care Act expands health insurance to the millions of uninsured Americans by making it more affordable and regulating the abusive practices of health insurance companies. But conservatives have attacked it as government overreach, with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) as one of the loudest critics. After the last day of Supreme Court hearings about the health care reform law, Bachmann told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that people are uninsured not because they can’t afford insurance, but because they simply choose to be uninsured:

BACHMANN: One argument that the government was trying to make is that somehow health care is uniquely different. That government can regulate it because everyone participates. Health insurance is not uniquely different. It’s still an opportunity that some people choose to engage in, but 40 million people do not. And the premise was made that people don’t buy insurance because they can’t afford it. That’s not true. There are people who just decide they want to roll the dice and take their chances that they won’t need insurance.

Watch her comments:

Bachmann’s assumption that 40 million people “choose” to not have health insurance downplays the plight that people can face trying to find affordable health insurance in the face of rising costs. For the past decade, the number of people uninsured has risen each year, and working families make up 80 percent of those who have no health insurance. And young adults make up the largest share of those who are uninsured.

Instead of acknowledging this growing problem, Bachmann has attacked the Affordable Care Act, the very thing that could help slow these costs and expand access to health care.

Health

Bachmann: Federal Government Could Force A One-Child Policy

By Annie-Rose Strasser on Mar 7, 2012 at 5:10 pm

Michele Bachmann argued last night that the Obama administration could institute a one-child policy under the Affordable Care Act. Appearing on Glenn Beck’s online television show Real News From The Blaze, Bachmann launched into a long monologue on why she thinks the health care reform law could negatively impact women and explained that “the federal government will only pay for one baby to be born in the hospital per family.”

When anchor Amy Holmes pressed her on that point, she quickly backed away from singling out the Obama administration, and instead talked of a generic “health care dictator” who may institute such policies:

BACHMANN: Women have a lot to lose under Obamacare If you want to go into specifics, what the government gives, the government can take away. It certainly isn’t beyond the pale to think, in light of Kathleen Sebelius, the Health and Human Services Secretary — she said that it’s important that we have contraceptives because that prevents pregnancy, and pregnancy is more expensive to the federal government. Going with that logic, according to our own Health and Human Services Secretary, it isn’t far-fetched to think that the President of the United States could say ‘we need to save health care expenses — the federal government will only pay for one baby to be born in the hospital per family, or two babies to be born per family.’ That could happen. We think it couldn’t?”

Watch it:

Media

Pressed Four Times, Bachmann Refuses To Condemn Rush Limbaugh

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Mar 6, 2012 at 11:06 am

When Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last November and the band played a song called “Lyin’ Ass Bitch,” she was rightly outraged, saying it showed a clear “bias on the part of the Hollywood elite and sexism as well.” Rep. Nita Lowey, a Democrat from New York, called the incident “insulting and inappropriate” and said, “I do not share Michele Bachmann’s politics, but she deserves to be treated with respect.” After a media firestorm, NBC, Jimmy Fallon, and the band all apologized to Bachmann, as they should have.

But Bachmann apparently doesn’t see fit to defend another woman who has come under gender-based attack in the media, repeatedly today refusing to condemn Rush Limbaugh’s attacks on Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke.

Pressed four times on CNN over three minutes, Bachmann deflects four times, pivoting to everything from health care reform to terrorism, unwilling to offer even mild criticism or Limbaugh aside from pointing to his apology. Watch it:

Ironically, Bachmann attacked CNN and the media for supposedly employing a double standard when it comes to conservative women and sexism. But it is Bachmann who seems to be deploying the double standard here, happy to go after her perceived enemies in the mainstream media at NBC, but resistant to condemn her ally, conservative Limbaugh.

When the Daily Beast asked Bachmann last year if she considers herself feminist, she instead described herself as “pro-woman and pro-man.”

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