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. Politico reported earlier this week:
Her S.C. spokesman Wesley Donohue made the accusation against Gingrich last month in an interview with the Columbia Free-Times:
Bachmann is trying to grow an organic base of supporters, and Newt Gingrich is trying to buy off tea party groups. … Newt Gingrich knows the only way he can get the tea party vote is to buy it.
When King asked Bachmann tonight to support or deny it, she deferred to Donohue but said she’s been “hearing” about these occurrences around the country:
Well, Wesley would have to speak to that himself with what evidence he has, but this is something that we’ve been hearing all across the country, that money is changing hands, and that’s not how I do business. In fact I’ve told people, I’ve told evangelicals, I’ve told tea partiers, I don’t pay people to come out and be my supporters, that’s not what I do. When we have tea party groups and all of the rest, I don’t do that because I’m just a real person.
Bachmann’s gotten in hot water before for making claims without backup, and it’s not clear whether there is more to this one.
The Daily Caller also reported on the accusations of payoffs. Tea Party officials in South Carolina are pushing back:
A dozen South Carolina Tea Party leaders take a swipe at Bachmann in a statement today, making it clear they don’t like what they’re being accused of:
The South Carolina tea parties have a well-developed network and history of working together on statewide campaigns and legislative issues, and we are disappointed and angry that the Bachmann campaign is using this negative strategy in an attempt to divide us.
The full statement is printed at RedState.
Bachmann is trying to split the Tea Party vote in South Carolina, which had been coalescing around Newt, which will give rise to this headline which will have the Romney campaign popping champagne corks, again: Fractured S.C. Tea Party may be non-factor in GOP primary.
I have been warning you about Bachmann for months. Spreading rumors of payoffs directed at the Tea Party is just the latest confirmation.
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Comments
[…] figure out a way to win South Carolina. Which explains why she’s spreading rumors there that Gingrich is paying off tea partiers. […]
Hey, she’s taking her cues from Romney.
This, to me, is as plausible as the alternative (that being she’s batshit crazy.)
Gingrich doesn’t have the money and the TEA parties are not well formed enough to manage this type of geld without word leaking out rapidly.
These aren’t unions or old line political machines – where the foot soldiers can be bought for the price of a few well placed favors.
This is Mitt trying his hand at Alinsky tactics – trying to sow dissent and distrust within the TEA party factions via a gullible (or complicit) Bachmann.
She’s . . .zany.
With Bachmann, ambition appears to have overruled principles or scruples, and sooner or later that cannot help but to bite a supposed social conservative on the ass. The lady is pure scorched earth treachery.
As an independent conservative I am certainly interested in candidates who have conservative values. That noted, conservative values do not trump poor judgement, duplicity or otherwise very wanting behavior.
Michelle Bachmann has revealed aspects of her person that I find to be extremely disturbing. Is it possible that she has no idea how transparent many of her actions are?
At this point I believe the best thing we can all do is REMEMBER THESE THINGS. When her name comes up for cabinet posts or other possible appointments we should all remember what she is capable of when under pressure. I do not believe she is in the same league with the other Republican candidates when it comes to honor and integrity.
Like Obama, she needs to go!
Ipso, well said. I was enthusiastic for Bachmann when she started, but no more. Unlike the Left, truth and objective fact are essential to conservatism.
Do da name “Wesley Donohue” ring a bell?
HINT: Will Folks, Larry Marchant, Andre Bauer, phony sex accusations, bottom-feeding slime, filthy, corrupt perverts.
Anyone who would hire such foul excuses for human beings as Donohue will never get a vote from me.
She started her campaign by hiring Ed Rollins who promptly trashed Sarah Palin. Remember folks her initial strategy was to so trash Palin that Palin stayed out. That was her summer strategy.
I’m from Minnesota, and Michelle Bachman is known to lie. A lot. And I’m not a Democrat. One of my close friends worked on one of her campaigns, and learned quickly that Michelle will say or do anything to win. Just read theminnesotawatchdog.com if you want to learn about her.
I used to like her until I got the inside skivvy. Now I think she’s just an opportunist.
And I’m sure she’ll sink to the lowest level to smash her competition. That’s her modus operandi.
“I’m from Minnesota . . . I’m not a Democrat.”
If you really were from Minnesota, you’d know from the day of your birth that there’s no such party in this state.
Besides, the four other Minnesota Republicans are all here, with me.
I’m really starting to despise this Bachmann woman.
Bachmann has found her Waterloo and it’s her own personality!
When she first started, it looked like she and Palin would contend for the female vote and that quickly faded when Bachmann began her “I, I, I, I, ….I” mantra, her own self impalement. Sad! Bachmann doesn’t deserve to even stand in Palin’s shadow.
Hope she drops out of the Congressional race for MN6, she needs to stay home and rejuvenate herself.
“You know I have a big problem with Michele Bachmann making statements which are not supported by facts and then repeating them endlessly.”
“Bachmann doesn’t deserve to even stand in Palin’s shadow.”
I’m glad people are starting to see the truth about Mini-Me.
OT- she has nice legs for 55, just sayin
Best Gams in the GOP? You Be the Judge-
Let us first reject her prospective candidacy on its merits, or lack thereof, irrespective of gender, and once she has abandoned the race THEN we shall afford her a sound sexual objectification.
Protocols, people. Protocols.
I wish your comment had a like button so I could hit it a thousand times.
Ditto on the like comment button needed.
Very much liked.
I saw Bachmann last March during the huge march on Capitol Hill. She was heavily made-up for a TV interview. She is incredibly short, and was wearing heels but seemed to be just a bit over 5 feet. I took some video and will have to look for it.
It isn’t news any more but it does offer a stunning contrast with the OWS crowd. Perhaps the professor would like to see some clips?
I am amused by Bachmann’s self-aggrandizing talking points which, she believes, makes her the only viable candidate in the race.
So, she voted against Obamacare; how’d that work out, again? And she was against raising the debt ceiling; again, how’d that work out? Basing her campaign on her “record” would be a smart move, had she actually accomplished something.
Her foreign “policy” amounts to preventing Iran from possessing nuclear weapons. An admirable goal but, short of a preemptive attack, how does she plan on doing anything? Really, really, intense sanctions? Oh, please.
Look into her eyes when she speaks; she’s got the look of pure crazy. She truly scares me.
By the time South Carolina rolls around, Ms. Bachmann will be long gone.
she is despicable. and if she’s working with romney, which, as the prof pointed out, she appears to be, he is doubly despicable. guiliani talked about what a sneaky creep romney is and i’ve heard about what romney did to fred thompson from mark levin.
we all went to school with someone like romney — a nasty sneaky brown-noser. whereas newt is not afraid to fight and confront his opponents to their face, romney is a coward; if nominated, romney will not confront obama directly. from romney’s weak support, it seems many have figured out what kind of “man” romney is.
one thing that’s a mystery to me is why levin can’t see what an opportunistic weasel and lackey bachmann is.
“nasty sneaky brown-noser. ” Remember the kid who was so icky that you’d like to punch him out and then ask him what he wants?
William, this post, and all the comments sound like the “anybody-but-mitt” campaign I suggested earlier.
I will vote for whomever is running against Obama, but the argument that Newt is better than Mitt for conservatives is… in the margins. Both have huge flaws. Your campaign against Michele Bachmann will engender support from the David Brooks, the David Froms, and the Cathleen Parkers, it will not engender real grass root support and it turns off this tea partier.
what takes the cake with me is her bombastic allegation that Newt supports infanticide. He is a pro-life stalwart and to slime a person like that is shameless.
I guess she follows the George Costanza school of thought; if you believe it, it is not lying.
Newt told the RNC he would campaign for Republicans who favored partial birth abortion. That is what he said, emphatically – there was talk of denying RNC money to candidates who didn’t favor the ban on those horrific “procedures.”
He didn’t just say withholding Party money from them was a bad idea, or a bad precedent. He declared he would personally campaign for them.
Bachmann overstates the case, but it isn’t baseless.
“overstates the case” is a gross understatement. She lied, period.
Consider the possibility that the fault lies not in what commenters here are saying, but in what you are hearing.
[…] I made the part up about the “crying woman,” but yes, that is the newest allegation from Ms. Bachmann. […]
Bachmann has rubbed me the wrong way since the beginning and this doesn’t help. Watching her in the debates though has given me the opportunity to perfect my impression of her. My Michigan accent was already halfway there but I’ve really got her voice down pat now.
Say ‘ja’ to da U.P., ay?
(Michigan native here, in 28th year of exile in rural North Cackalacky).
So let’s see now… Michelle Bachmann apparently holds the opinion that Tea Partiers can be bought off. This would be the same Tea Partiers who railed so vociferously against the “Louisiana Purchase” and other mafia-style payoffs so manifest during the ObamaCare debacle. Or perhaps she just believes it’s those rube hick South Carolinian Tea Partiers who can be carried around in one’s pocket like so many nickels and dimes.
Just what does Ms. Bachmann truly think of the Tea Party Movement? Or did she open her mouth before thinking? Or is she just playing the populist game? Just what *is* going on here?
Was anyone else disgusted by La Bachmann’s invocation of the leftists at Politifraud against Newt last night? I just found this at GlennBeck’s website, where they’ve been relentlessly trashing Newt for 2 weeks straight–THE IRONY, IT BUUUUURRRNS!!:
Michele Bachmann vs Politifact
Wednesday, Jul 13, 2011 at 12:02 PM EST
Almost every interview with Michele Bachmann includes a mention that she is essentially the devil, according to “Pulitzer Prize winning website Politifact.” I’ve been ranting about Politifact’s…um…interesting(?) way of deciding what is true and what is false for a while. But, while a lot of their leanings are pretty overt, some are far more subtle.
Here’s an example of their Michele Bachmann bias. Politifact takes on this statement:
“Well, remember, again, already the top 1 percent of income earners pay about 40 percent of all taxes into the federal government.”
If you obsessively look at government released tax data (who doesn’t?) you might be familiar with this stat. The wealthiest 1% of taxpayers pay about 40% of federal income taxes. This is Michele Bachmann’s point, of course: the wealthy carry an extraordinarily high share of the burden in this country, and perhaps it shouldn’t be even higher. Yet, Politifact rates Bachmann’s statement “false.” Why? Only the eagle eyed (read: obsessive) among us are probably capable of noticing Michele’s terrible, awful, catastrophic, egregious error.
She said “all taxes into the federal government” not “all income taxes into the federal government.” On that basis, Politifact rates her statement “false”, which the media translates as a lie. Seriously? This is clearly a minor misspeak. It’s the equivalent of “fact checking” Barack Obama’s 57 states comment. Its’ ridiculous.
[snip–LOOOOONG SNIP]
Yet, all of this gets Bachmann a “False.” Not a “mostly true” “half true” or even “barely true.” This is what Politifact does far too often. The left gets the benefit of the doubt in the headline rating, so it can be trotted out in political ads and hackish interviews, while the truth gets buried or completely ignored.
Remember this next time some interviewer brings up the “Pulitzer Prize winning website” attack with Bachmann.”
Did you hear Bachmann’s latest lie? She said, and I quote, “I’m so conservative mine don’t stink.” Everyone knows that this is patently false, Politifact even checked the stall at the Iowa debates and found she stinks like all politicians.
Did you hear Bachmann’s latest lie? She said, and I quote, “I’m so conservative mine don’t stink.” Everyone knows that this is patently false, Politifact even checked the stall at the Iowa debates and found she stinks like all politicians.
I started to be turned off Bachmann when she demanded a chairmanship in the House even though she had no seniority. She raised such a big stink about it that I was embarassed for her. Isn’t she just in her second term? She based this demand on her tea party “connections”. Which were nebulous at best. However, after she allowed Ed Rollins to trash Sarah Palin those “connections” are now zilch I would imagine. Look at it this way, she is now trashing the tea party movement by claiming they can be bought. It could be that she thinks everyone is like her and can be bought. This woman has an enormous ego which is why she is still in the race. She hopes, like some of the others, to get a cabinet post or the VP slot. Goodness knows she is unwilling to work her way up in the ranks so as to deserve any of it. I have never seen such a blatasnt opportulnist and I have seen a lot of them.
I’m still waiting for the money. Meanwhile, “darling” Nikki has gone and sold out the TEA party that put her in the SC State House, and is getting squishy with the “occupy” folks trashing the State House grounds. Sorry Nikki, but it looks like you are as much of a fraud as David Beasley was.
If Newt goes to the SC Tea Party to recruit people to work on his campaign, and pays them to work on his campaign, is that a payoff? (The commenter in that linked thread is also the author of that post. )
Isn’t it just smart to embrace what Romney and the GOP have kicked to the curb, find a self-organized PAC already in place and hire the hard-working true-believers to work for him? That’s not a payoff, that’s a business decision.
The Charleston Tea Party group is as diverse as any given community of political aspirants and everyday citizens. One of them happens to like Newt and works for him. It’s a free country.
[…] 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 […]
Bachmann’s love fest interview with Glenn Beck smacked of a political collusion that is a pretty sound strategy for Bachmann. Whether it is a winning strategy remains to be seen. But the enemy of her rival is her friend.
My take is that Glenn Beck is behind every bit of it. If he can strip the Tea Party before the primaries, then his man Mitt can waltz in and take the prize. Oh, I know he doesn’t publicly support Mittens, but if Mitt was your guy, would you do anything different than Beck is doing?
I live for the moment when Beck bolts the door on his Apocalypse Bunker from the inside, at which point we’d do well to weld it shut from the outside.