Michelle Bachmann: The Republican Nightmare?

I took the following quote from a news source a while back. I didn't see or hear her make the remarks, but for the sake of argument I assume the quote is accurate.

In an attempt to rally support, Michelle Bachmann is quoted as saying, "… what people recognize is that there's a fear that the United States is in an unstoppable decline. They see the rise of China, the rise of India, the rise of the Soviet Union and our loss militarily going forward. And especially with this very bad debt ceiling bill, what we have done is given a favor to President Obama and the first thing he'll whack is five hundred billion out of the military defense at a time when we're fighting three wars. People recognize that."

Really, Michelle? Are we blaming the wars on Obama, too? And hasn't the Soviet Union been defunct now for how long? Seems like two full decades to me, but of course, unlike Michelle I could be mistaken.

And what of this ominous "rise of India" Michelle is warning us about? What a threat to world peace and order this must certainly pose if there is some sort of "rise of India" occurring (which, of course, there isn't, much to the chagrin of East Indians). What dream world is Bachmann living in? I think of it as The Republican Nightmare. That party is now officially held hostage by the radical right.

I feel (almost) sorry for the representatives of Republicanism today. They are forced, by virtue of their now powerful radical constituents, to espouse some foolishly extremist rhetoric in order to court that same radical element. But the really unfortunate aspect of this is that some of them actually appear to believe some of this stuff.

India is a "threat" to rise to world prominence.

The Soviet Union is alive and well, and constitutes a "threat" to the United States.

The military is sacrosanct and above scrutiny in a time when militarism has been out of favor for a couple of decades, but we are involved in "three (of Obama's?) wars" and really need our military to remain strong at all costs. That kind of bullshit is what gets us into more wars instead of getting us out of the one's we already can't afford to be in.

By passing the "very bad" debt ceiling bill, we have done "a favor" to President Obama.

Funny, but I don't recall any of the many previous debt ceiling increases being called "a favor" to anybody in particular. I must have missed that. At any rate, it is obvious that Michelle would have preferred the opposite. No passage of the bill, and no debt ceiling increase, would have resulted in quite a bit more drastic a result than what we have now. Not that what we have is a good thing, but it certainly is better than what we could have achieved through Michelle's weird world. Good thing? No. Better than the alternative? Definitely. The negative result we have come to know as our own, is a direct product of the bickering in Congress over whether or not to pass the bill. Michelle would have preferred seeing us flushed immediately into the toilet, instead of buying some time to maybe avoid the flush. Yeah, that must be quite a sell-out "to Obama" when you preserve the possibility of survival, instead of admitting defeat, and deliberately permitting the leading economic engine on the planet to go into a tailspin.

Conclusion: Every politician winds up courting some faction with speeches and rhetoric. It is a telling indicator of a person's depth of character, and overall interests, to determine who it is they are courting.

The radical right cares nothing about representing mainstream America, middle America, moderate America, or you and me. They care only about representing the radical right. And they feel that the conservative factions in mainstream America will naturally and necessarily gravitate to them simply because they are over there "on the right." Being the representatives of "the right" Republicans will automatically gravitate to them as the true representatives of the "values of the right."

What they fail to realize, as do so many these days, is that the right, as well as the left, is made up of a range of opinions. There is, despite the best intentions of conservatives to belie this point, still a RANGE to the political spectrum.

There is, in fact, still a viable political spectrum. It's not just a case of TeaBilly fanatics, and then everybody else. Representing the extreme right is not a guarantee of garnering the support of everyone to the right of center, much less the support of any independent moderates anywhere near the center (a group of voters that, for their own sake, Republicans had better start considering).

Republican politics has degenerated to a point that must make it difficult for some Republicans to admit they are Republicans. Still, the election just hours away now should prove interesting for those trying to forge a future of any kind for Republicanism in America. The party's decisions beginning next week will make all the difference in the world as to whether there even IS such a thing as the Republican Party.

And lest we forget, another debt ceiling bill approaches us at a fast pace. Michelle and other radicals will soon have another chance to derail the nation and send us spinning into debt collection at the hands of China. Climbing the sheer face of a financial mountain like this one amounts to more than just deciding whether to stay on or jump off the cliff. If you can't even get past that decision without causing the country to lose its credit rating, then you really have no business climbing mountains in the first place.