Fact checkers mourn Bachman’s exit
America awakened to the news last Wednesday morning — Michele Bachmann has decided to pack it all in. ‘Twas a sad day for those of us who follow national politics, while occasionally needing brief respites of comic relief.
Bachmann’s four terms as the Republican representative from the sixth district of Minnesota has hardly been anything more than colorful. A good public servant she is not. She might be a darling of the Tea Party, but to many other people who take policy and politics seriously, she’s just a curiosity. I’m in the latter camp.
“My good friends, after a great deal of thought and deliberation, I have decided next year I will not seek a fifth congressional term to represent the wonderful people of the sixth district of Minnesota,” she said in a meandering, 8陆 minute announcement that she’s going to turn over her seat to somebody else. Or, as I’d like to call it: Bachmann’s Turnover Overdrive!
I’ve been wondering for years who are those people in Minnesota’s sixth district who keep casting their votes for a woman who seems to always be functioning in an alternative political universe. And there’s some question about whether they’d vote for her in 2014, since she narrowly won re-election in 2012. Besides, there’s that sticky matter of multi-level investigations into her 2012 presidential campaign finances.
At one time during the Republican presidential primary campaign, she was the official “Anybody But Romney.” But her penchant for stretching the truth resulted in her being just another also-ran.
In fact, during one debate, she claimed, “After the debate that we had last week, PolitiFact came out and said that everything I said was true.” But PolitiFact.com was watching, and rated that claim — “Pants on Fire.”
In other words, Bachmann not only didn’t tell the truth during the first debate, she got caught fibbing about it after the second debate. No wonder PolitiFact.com keeps a running tally of Bachmann’s more creative statements. Her score sheet isn’t good.
Of the 59 Bachmann statements PolitiFact.com has fact-checked, 36 of them have been rated “Pants on Fire” or “False.” It only rated six of those 59 statements “True.”
“President Obama has the lowest public approval ratings of any president in modern times.” PolitiFact.com not only rated that statement “Pants on Fire,” it added that “Obama’s lows are higher than most presidents’ lows.”
“The IRS is going to be in charge of our health care.” PolitiFact.com rated that one “False.”
Some of Bachmann’s statements have been so outrageous, PolitiFact.com hasn’t even bothered to fact-check them. She once claimed that “if you’re involved in the gay and lesbian lifestyle, it’s bondage. Personal bondage, personal despair and personal enslavement. And that’s why this is so dangerous.”
Last year, she mysteriously wanted to “expose” members of the Muslim Brotherhood who are supposedly employed by the U.S. Government. She even sent a letter to the U.S. State Department and implied that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s top aide, Huma Abedin, was somehow allied with nefarious Muslim forces. The letter did cause a few raised eyebrows. But not in the way Bachmann had intended.
Sen. John McCain took to the floor of the U.S. Senate to declare Bachmann’s attack “unfounded and unwarranted.”
When Bachmann, who is a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, isn’t busily spinning “unfounded” yarns about the willful overthrow of something-or-other, she’s hard at work trying to get Obamacare repealed.
During that 8陆-minute farewell tape, she boasts that she co-sponsored the latest in the continuing series of (failed) legislative efforts to repeal it.
During one of her speeches on the floor of the U.S. House, she claimed she wanted to get rid of Obamacare before it “kills women, kills children, kills senior citizens.” Once again, PolitiFact.com didn’t go near that statement. It was too ridiculous to fact-check.
With the announcement that Bachmann won’t be seeking re-election, the Washington Post’s fact-checker (FactCheck.org), wrote, “As one of our colleagues put it, ‘The entire fact checking industry may have to hold a national day of mourning.'”
Uniontown native Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. Email him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net