Thursday, January 7, 2010

Wingnut of the Year: Bachmann's Crowning Accident

Michele Bachmann has been awarded wingnut of the year, a distinction she has worked very hard to achieve, and I am sure she is proud of her new title. As a politician and a business woman, attracting the attention of the general public is a great way of expanding your brand, and as the old adage goes "there's no such thing as bad publicity."

But what has Bachmman actually done to achieve this title? Sure she writes her own material (as far as we know), but when you look at her actual achievements, her success has been more a happy accident of being in the right place at the right time than it has been a product of effort and elbow grease. Many of the factors leading to her "success" were well outside of her control.

She hasn't done anything in congress to achieve the WOY title. Of the top ten Bachmann quips, the only one that occurred on the congressional floor was the "carbon is harmless" gaffe. This quip was little more than a poorly executed weak argument, which happens to all politicians. It's the football equivalent of a starting receiver dropping and easy pass: it looks bad on T.V. but it happens to everyone at some point. And even that quote never would have been printed if her reputation hadn't already been established.

Her firebrand reputation stems almost entirely from her media exposure. But ironically she would have had this exposure if she wasn't a member of congress. When it comes to eye-catching (or ear-catching, as it were) rhetoric, she is nowhere close to the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. This is partially because since she is in politics she has to keep a much keener eye on public opinion. Being hated is good for ratings but doesn’t win any votes.

And Beck and Limbaugh are professionals at stirring people up. It’s what they are paid to do full time and they have much more experience and practice at the art of doing so. And they get paid a lot to do it. Bachmann gets a lot of media exposure because she doesn’t charge for it. Her rhetoric isn’t nearly as powerful as Beck’s but it is more cost efficient.

She has not established herself as a proven leader the way that other Republicans have. She is not a leader of the TEA Party movement but someone they look up to. Democrats like to claim that the TEA Party is "Astroturfed," or instigated by her and possibly other conservative politicians to look like a people's movement, but I give them the benefit of the doubt. If the TEA Party is truly a grass roots organization, it would exist in roughly the same shape today without Bachmann.

Finally it’s also very likely that her gender played a role in her popularity. From a strategy standpoint the GOP had to respond to the Clinton vs. Obama primary by putting minority faces out there. By not doing so they would continue to be seen as the "old white man" party which left them weak against the "you must be racist" arguments coming from the Democrats. By putting female faces on the conservative movement, they established a solid "well, you must be sexist" response.

Joe Wilson’s conservatism is just as controversial as Bachmann, but didn't fit the profile the GOP was looking to promote at the time. I do not think that gender plays any role in Bachmann's character or politics, but it has played a large role in her popularity. Also, I don’t think that the GOP made a conscious or organized decision to back women over men, but GOP members developed a tendency of doing so en masse because of the strategic benefit it gave their party as a whole.

Whether or not Bachmann is quietly proud of winning Wingnut of the Year or sees this as an achievement, I am sure that she has plenty of supporters that see this as a feather in her cap. But as far as I’m concerned this distinction of hers is due purely to accident, not diligence.

3 comments:

  1. I have noticed the pattern of conservative women in their politics. The pattern seems to be one where the women in politics seem to represent for the most part fairly far right points of view, while the men on the right seem to reflect a larger spectrum from moderate to further right.

    I have wondered for some time now if the right is 'featuring' more women, in part to gain an important demographic, but also as a more palatable alternative seeking a greater racial and ethnically diverse electorate, given their relative numbers.

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  2. APB, thank you for this excellent first post on Penigma.

    I believe that Bachman has become a 'leader' of the right in much the way many leaders become such, through happy circumstance. She says jingo-istic things, and with the crowd that wants simple sound bites, especially highly combative and combustive sound-bites, it resonates.

    I believe she became aware of the popularity it brought her, and since it hasn't presented a down-side to her politically, and gotten her national attention, she's continued, even extended/exagerated more with her insulting and base comments (for example, I don't much care for being called UnAmerican, and I think she, like William Randolph Hearst and Joe MCcarthy before her - represent one of the most vile forms of thought-police/red-stain witch-hunt anti-American sentiments and figures in our history.)

    So, I think like McCarthy at least, she sees this as an avenue to power - whether she fully embraces these comments personally is of no real matter to her - I think he conduct is planful - not in all cases - but often.

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  3. Welcome to authorship on Penigma, Apathy Boy!

    I think you are right that the GOP seems to use women's popularity and to help their cause, but I think its because the GOP realizes that their ideas are increasingly tending to be further and further right, while the political mood of the American population as a whole is still overwhelmingly center.

    I am fortunate enough not to have Ms. Bachmann represent me in Congress, but as a citizen and taxpayer, its a sad day when she can use her office to spew messages of hate and drag what used to be a Grand Old Party, but is now still more and more of a rich old white man's party.

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