Known by the company they keep (Part V): Michele Bachman

Compared to Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin looks brilliant and Christine O’Donnell looks absolutely reasonable.  She is living proof that any idiot can get a law degree (from Oral Roberts University) and that intelligent, competent individuals who want to serve in Congress are rare in the 6^th District of Minnesota.

Bachmann is a major Tea Party darling seeking a third term in the House of Representatives.  (She also served for 6 years in the Minnesota state legislature, where she twice proposed a same-sex marriage amendment to the state’s constitution.)  Her 2006 Congressional campaign received major backing from James Dobson’s Focus on the Family.  During the campaign, the pastor of a charismatic megachurch provided Bachmann with a speaking platform and a personal endorsement, much to the consternation of local ethics watchdogs and the IRS.  Bachmann herself has said that she was called by God to run for Congress.  At the time, she was a member of a church that is part of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, whose published doctrine teaches that the Pope is the Antichrist.  However, Bachmann insisted that claims about her church’s beliefs were “patently absurd.”  (Interestingly, Bachmann was quick to ascribe Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s “anti-American” beliefs to Presidential candidate Barack Obama.)

Science is not Bachmann’s strong suit.  She believes that anthropogenic global warming is a hoax.  She made a statement on the House floor explaining that she opposed cap and trade legislation because it would  regulate carbon dioxide, a “natural byproduct of nature” that is “beneficial” to plant life.  She has consistently opposed all legislation aimed at protecting the environment and/or regulating the energy industry.  She is a true believer in Sarah Palin’s “drill, baby, drill” energy policy.  Bachmann introduced legislation – the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act – to repeal a ban on incandescent light bulbs, because: (1) she believes that the government has no business telling people what kind of light bulbs they should buy; and (2) she believes that compact fluorescent bulbs are more polluting to the environment because of their mercury content.  Bachmann advocates teaching intelligent design in public school, and co-authored a bill in the Minnesota legislature that would have required teaching evolution and intelligent design as coequal theoretical explanations of the origin of life.  She has publicly stated that “there is a controversy among scientists about whether evolution is a fact or not” and that “there are hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel Prizes, who believe in intelligent design.”

So Bachmann is not a rocket scientist, but she is reliably anti-government and anti-tax.  In 2001, Bachmann wrote that Federal economic policies were designed to promote a centralized, state-controlled US economy.  Predictably, she has opposed the Wall Street and Big 3 auto bailouts, the stimulus bill, and Health Care Reform.  She also opposes minimum wage legislation, capital gains taxes, government-funded student loans, Social Security and Medicare. 

Bachmann’s campaign website vows that she will work tirelessly to eliminate wasteful Federal spending. Meanwhile, the Bachmann family farm in which she holds an ownership interest received over $250,000 in Federal subsidies, primarily dairy and corn price supports, from 1995 through 2006.  I’m guessing that farm subsidies are not wasteful . . . ?