POLITICS SEPTEMBER 12, 2011
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Ever since Rick Perry declared his candidacy, Bachmann has struggled to emerge from his shadow. Once the undisputed craziest candidate who had a plausible shot at the nomination, the congresswoman from Minnesota has suddenly had to contend with a remarkable string of wacky revelations from her Texan opponent. One thing is clear: Between the two of them, there’s more craziness than Ron Paul fans at a straw poll. But who’s the most off-the-wall? To save you the time and intricate mental calculations, TNR has devised a nine-part Craziness Index to settle the matter, once and for all.
Round One: Gun Rights
Rick Perry: Perry, not content merely to run with scissors, actually jogs with a gun and says he shot a coyote that looked at his dog the wrong way.
Michele Bachmann: Bachmann has paid ample lip service to the Second Amendment and performed the usual ritual of shooting assault rifles at a gun range to bolster her NRA credentials, but there’s no record of her killing a wild animal during her morning aerobics.
Discussion: Teddy Roosevelt surely found occasion to run with a gun on especially perilous hunting safaris, but jogging and shooting? There’s something unsettling about the thought of Rick Perry in running shorts, to say nothing of him packing heat at the same time.
Advantage: Perry
Round Two: Immigration
Rick Perry: Despite some recent rightward hedging, Perry has been relatively moderate on immigration, in large part due to Texas’s sizable Hispanic population. When it comes to the DREAM Act, Perry faces a problem similar to Romney’s headache with the Affordable Care Act, having signed a state-level law that allowed foreign-born children of illegal immigrants to receive in-state college tuition (but not citizenship). Perry even gave a bleeding-heart speech to mark the occasion, calling Texas a “compassionate” state and saying, “We must say to every Texas child learning in a Texas classroom, ‘we don’t care where you come from, but where you are going, and we are going to do everything we can to help you get there.’”
Michele Bachmann: In 2008, Bachmann told a Fox anchor she wanted to mandate that all drivers’ license tests be conducted in English. She has also advocated for a wall spanning the length of the border between the United States and Mexico, which she occasionally refers to as a nation of “narco-terrorists.”
Discussion: Clearly, Perry is edging here—as he rarely does—into liberal territory. Bachmann, on the other hand, is playing the conservative parlor game of trying to come up with the most outrageous way of securing American territory from anyone who might want to come in, ever, for any reason.
Advantage: Bachmann
Round Three: Gay Rights
Rick Perry: Perry does not support gay marriage, but has until recently maintained the position that states could do as they pleased. In late August, Perry caved and signed an anti-gay marriage pledge, putting him in line with the mainstream conservative position. He’s also claimed the Boy Scouts are threatened by the “homosexual movement” and defends Texas’s anti-sodomy law, ruled unconstitutional in 2003.
Michele Bachmann: In addition to signing the recent pledge, Bachmann has also participated in some very weirdo behavior during her various anti-gay crusades. In 2005, she hid behind the bushes at a pro-gay marriage rally. The same year, she screamed that she was being “held against her will” when two lesbian women approached her in the bathroom of a community center. She also compared gay people to pedophiles and sex abusers in arguing against a gay hate crimes bill in 2009. Finally, in perhaps her creepiest move, she prayed for a gay colleague over his desk while serving in the Minnesota state senate.
Discussion: Perry opposes gay rights in a manner largely consistent with his federalist, red-state views. Bachmann opposes gay rights because she’s terrified for her safety.
Advantage: Bachmann
Round Four: Foreign Policy
Rick Perry: We don’t have a ton of information on his foreign policy, but Perry has tended to strike an isolationist tone. Recently, however, he is reported to have retained the advice of neoconservatives Donald Rumsfeld and Doug Feith.
Michele Bachmann: Bachmann came out against Obama’s Libya intervention, and in an overture to the pro-Israel community, criticized the president for allowing one of the country’s “best friends,” former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, to fall. Bachmann’s biggest idea on foreign relations, however, is blocking Sharia law from taking root at all costs. She also once theorized that Iran was planning to divide Iraq into three parts and name one of them the “Iraq State of Islam.”
Discussion: In yet another move to solidify her Iowa credentials before the January caucus, Bachmann is claiming to represent the sixth district of the Iowa State of Minnesota. Which is currently threatened by Creeping Sharia.
Advantage: Bachmann
Round Five: Evolution
Rick Perry: Perry told some poor kid in New Hampshire that “It’s a theory that’s out there. It’s got some gaps in it.”
Michele Bachmann: Bachmann says all the right right-wing things about evolution, but to give her claims added credibility, she cites “hundreds and hundreds of scientists” who believe in intelligent design, “many of whom have won Nobel prizes."
Discussion: First, if Bachmann’s figure includes members of the Church of Christ, Scientist, we ask that it be retracted. Second, as of 2001, there were 2,157,300 scientists employed in the United States. Her “hundreds” figure is therefore reminiscent of a demand made by the great, unaccredited mad scientist Dr. Evil.
Advantage: Bachmann
Round Six: The Constitution
Rick Perry: Perry wrote in his book, Fed Up, that everything the courts have interpreted the commerce clause of the constitution to permit—e.g. “federal laws regulating the environment, regulating guns, protecting civil rights, establishing the massive programs and Medicare and Medicaid, creating national minimum wage laws, [and] establishing national labor laws” defy the original intent of the constitution. Perry also decries the 16th and 17th amendments, which call for a federal income tax and the direct election of U.S. Senators. And for good measure, he called Social Security a Ponzi scheme and Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke “almost treasonous.”
Michele Bachmann: Bachmann brands herself a “constitutional conservative,” and like Perry, thinks the Affordable Care Act and the Department of Education don’t pass constitutional muster. She also once asked Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke, to their puzzlement, if they could point to any clause in the constitution giving them the right to bail out the government.
Discussion: Calling things unconstitutional is Bachmann’s bread and butter, but she hasn’t yet intimated that several constitutional amendments are themselves borderline unconstitutional, a feat that may end up being Perry’s coup de grace.
Advantage: Perry
Round Seven: American History
Rick Perry: Perry harbors the interesting historical perspective that the Civil War was precipitated by the trampling of northern states’ rights by the Fugitive Slave Law and other instances of big government slaveholder activism.
Michele Bachmann: Bachmann has conflated Concord, Massachusetts with Concord, New Hampshire and John Wayne with John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer. The endearing naïf that she is, she also believes the founding fathers “worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.” The first two are gaffes; the third is simply wrong.
Discussion: Anyone can get their facts mixed up, so we give the nod to Perry for this radical re-interpretation of American history, as well as his ability to maintain a states’ rights understanding of the beginning of the Civil War without coming across as a Southern apologist.
Advantage: Perry
Round Eight: Divine Inspiration
Rick Perry: Perry couches his pro-austerity position on the national debt in biblical principles. “I think we’re going through those difficult economic times for a purpose,” he said, “to bring us back to those biblical principles of, you know, you ‘don’t spend all the money.’” Also, he prayed for rain in front of 30,000 people.
Michele Bachmann: Bachmann credits God for telling her to be submissive to her husband Marcus, and she explained the recent earthquake and hurricane as manifestations of His wrath.
Discussion: Bachmann’s natural disasters position is standard among evangelicals. If Perry can find a little more textual evidence in favor of his divine debt-reduction theory, the GOP’s current austerity shtick may outlast the recession as the unifying principle that forever yokes deficit hawks and fundamentalists.
Advantage: Perry
Round Nine: Global Warming
Rick Perry: Perry said in August that scientists were coming forward every day with new evidence against global warming, which he thinks is a theory that has not been proven. In his book, he went further, calling it “all one contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight.”
Michele Bachmann: Bachmann agrees with Perry but goes further still, making the argument that humans shouldn’t be blamed for CO2 emissions because carbon is a “natural by-product of nature.” She adds that “there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas. There isn’t one such study because carbon dioxide is not a harmful gas, it is a harmless gas.”
Discussion: Bachmann’s comments (on Earth Day, no less) represent a pretty impressive tautology, and as far as we can tell, one that has never before been attempted, let alone on the floor of the House of Representatives.
Advantage: Bachmann
And the winner is … Michele Bachmann in a 5-4 nail-biter. When she gets wind of her spot atop TNR’s Craziness Index, her confidence will surely swell. If she can just manage to get a few words in during tonight’s debate in Florida, we’re sure her credentials will shine through.
Simon van Zuylen-Wood is a reporter-researcher at The New Republic.
20 comments
I think they are both equally nuts and beyond help. The only difference is that Perry nutsiness is part genuine and un-reflective and part political theater. Bachmann couldn't act if her life depended on it.
- arnon
September 12, 2011 at 12:08am
Michele Bachmann shows no sign of understanding what the debate over global warming is all about. The woman is not real bright, and for all her populist appeal, she will soon be a footnote in history. On the other side Al Gore's cult of warmist apocalypse is equally ignorant and silly. There are brilliant scientists on various sides of the debate over the causes and likely extent and consequences of climate change. Read (about) what these scientists have to say, and ignore the knee-jerk reactions on the right and the left. If you do do so you may lean one way or the other, but you will understand that that the jury is still out.
- bulbman1066
September 12, 2011 at 1:02am
Everything I've seen suggests that if the jury is indeed still out, it's because they're in the sentencing phase, after reporting their verdict...
- hairdan
September 12, 2011 at 1:46am
Articles like these are entertaining, but they invite readers to dimiss the appeal of Bachmann and Perry and to underestimate their chances for nomination. To date, Perry has not lost an election ever, and as I recall, Bachmann lost once early in her career.
- emulholl
September 12, 2011 at 2:09am
Who votes for these people? Wow. Meanwhile, there's bulbman doing his best David Brooks impersonation. Good job posting thoughtfully noncommital gibberish and achieving the strange tautology of reaching the wrong conclusion by seeming not to reach a conclusion at all. Even if you ignored climate change and all the environmental concerns of current energy policy (if such a thing exists in the US), it would still make sense from economic & national security standpoints to pursue & encourage green energy in the US. The opposition is baffling. Ignorance is dangerous. China, though a major polluter herself, will eventually reap the benefits of American Republicans' environmental policy.
- Konstantin
September 12, 2011 at 2:26am
Simon van Zuylen-Wood seems up to the challenge of researching & writing a decent analysis of the nuttiness of Representative Shimkus. Get to it, man. We can't always just focus on the shiniest names of the moment. There's still a year+ until the elections, so you might as well take a look at some other House members. Illinois's 19th district probably feels lonely; all the crazies in the national spotlight are taking attention away from their own local crazy.
- Konstantin
September 12, 2011 at 2:33am
"Articles like these are entertaining, but they invite readers to dimiss the appeal of Bachmann and Perry and to underestimate their chances for nomination. To date, Perry has not lost an election ever, and as I recall, Bachmann lost once early in her career." One of them will lose this time, and perhaps both of them.
- arnon
September 12, 2011 at 5:47am
A controlled experiment in which Bachmann had to stand in a chamber full of carbon dioxide for an hour would quickly settle whether her tautology had scientific merit.
- chaitless
September 12, 2011 at 7:59am
Bulbman sayeth: "the jury is still out." The scientific jury is still out on many of the of details about the where and how much of anthropogenic climate change, to be sure, but it's pretty much been polled on the question of whether there will be significant change. The verdict is that there will. The enduring mystery to me is that so many folks decide that since we don't know those details, we should do nothing - somehow conflating not knowing the details with the details not being an important future risk. This is nuts. It's the global equivalent of someone deciding that since no one can reliably predict whether any individual smoker will die prematurely of lung cancer, heart disease, or emphysema, or live out their days with none of these diseases, it's safe to smoke up to the point you know for sure that you're the one who drew the lung cancer card. Of course, by then it's too late. Ditto on climate. We don't know whether any particular region is going to draw the lung cancer card, or the live long and prosper card, from global warming. We do know there is a high probability for big disruption, however, and we certainly know that by the time the outcomes are obvious, it will be too late to stop them. How anyone can take comfort in this kind of knowing/not knowing, beats the hell out of me.
- IowaBeauty
September 12, 2011 at 9:24am
IowaBeauty -- I like your analogy. My take has been that the US won the climate lottery when it was held the first time around (we can produce enough food to feed ourselves plus a large portion of the rest of the world, for example), so why we want to throw it all up in the air and see where it lands a second time is baffling...
- hairdan
September 12, 2011 at 11:16am
Obviously, the only way Bachman and Perry can overcome such shallow criticism of their knowledge and insight is to bring forth convincing witnesses, choosing among world leaders who have already demonstrated their sanity and effectiveness. Two figures spring to mind (among those still living). One would be Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, about as impeccable as can be imagined. Another, if he can be tracked down (he's on vacation or something) is Muammar Gaddafi. Perhaps the most irrefutable witness, though sad to say, he doesn't travel much, would be Kim Jong-il of North Korea. I am sure the expert analysts among those who comment regularly here (as sane a group of people as can be found anywhere in the world) can think of some additional sane world leaders I may have overlooked.
- skahn
September 12, 2011 at 12:02pm
next up - those crazy particle physicists from Denmark and Switzerland in what is a truly under-reported story on the politicization of climate change, from August 27, 2011: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100102296/sun-causes-climate-change-shock/ "...The science is now all-but-settled on global warming, convincing new evidence demonstrates, but Al Gore, the IPCC and other global warming doomsayers won’t be celebrating. The new findings point to cosmic rays and the sun — not human activities — as the dominant controller of climate on Earth. The research, published with little fanfare this week in the prestigious journal Nature, comes from über-prestigious CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, one of the world’s largest centres for scientific research involving 60 countries and 8,000 scientists at more than 600 universities and national laboratories. CERN is the organization that invented the World Wide Web, that built the multi-billion dollar Large Hadron Collider, and that has now built a pristinely clean stainless steel chamber that precisely recreated the Earth’s atmosphere. In this chamber, 63 CERN scientists from 17 European and American institutes have done what global warming doomsayers said could never be done — demonstrate that cosmic rays promote the formation of molecules that in Earth’s atmosphere can grow and seed clouds, the cloudier and thus cooler it will be. Because the sun’s magnetic field controls how many cosmic rays reach Earth’s atmosphere (the stronger the sun’s magnetic field, the more it shields Earth from incoming cosmic rays from space), the sun determines the temperature on Earth. ..." actually a very interesting post, with much more than I quoted above, including the hyperlinks. but, we all know that Danish and Swiss particle physicists really are "crazy", even those of us who have watched Senator Barbara Boxer speak about human-caused climate change.
- K2K
September 12, 2011 at 12:17pm
Thanks K2K. So let me get this straight. Multiple computer models, observable data in the real world and the years of work dialing in the "certainty" of climate change and human impacts is not to be taken seriously but a one-off lab experiment is "proof" that the sun causes all of our problems! Now we can see that with the right "scientific" proof that our continued polluting of the earth really has no downside. In fact, we can keep on pumping toxins in the water, soils and air all we want because there is no down side. The bigger issue isn't whether or not the sun impacts the climate (we already knew that) hello photosynthesis. It is the issue of whether or not civilization continues to tell itself a lie that poisoning the landbase (earth) is all good with no negatives and justifying it in any manner that it can.
- singlspeed
September 12, 2011 at 1:17pm
Regarding "Role of sulphuric acid, ammonia and galactic cosmic rays in atmospheric aerosol nucleation" (the title of the Nature report to which the nonsense K2K parrots from a blogger whose self-trumpted qualifications are: "James Delingpole is a writer, journalist and broadcaster who is right about everything. He is the author of numerous fantastically entertaining books including 365 Ways to Drive a Liberal Crazy, Welcome To Obamaland: I've Seen Your Future And It Doesn't Work, How To Be Right, and the Coward series of WWII adventure novels.") ----- The CLOUD experiment no more disproves anthropogenic global warming than Arhenius' calculations 100 years ago regarding the role of CO2 in trapping heat proves it. In fact, it is in its current form even less convincing. Atmospheric CO2 clearly does trap heat. The nucleation observed in the CLOUD results may or may not govern cloud formation. None of the nuclei observed in the experiment where sufficient large (by factor of 10) to actual initiate droplet condensation, for example. These are certainly interesting and valuable results, well worthy of follow up, but they are so far from being conclusive proof that the greenhouse effect is irrelevant and solar magnetic fields are the sole reason for climate warming, as to be laughable. I issue a challenge to K2K - read the CERN research, and show us that you actually understand what you are talking about. Otherwise, shut up and listen to people who can read and understand it (hint: Delingpole isn't one).
- IowaBeauty
September 12, 2011 at 1:31pm
This may be the only time I ever defend anything Rick Perry ever said (including "a", "and" and "the") ... but I don't think his perspective on the Civil War and states' rights is as crazy or as right-wing as people generally think. While it was Southerners who spoke of "states' rights" and state nullification of Federal laws in defense of slavery and pro-slavery economics in the 40-year struggle over slavery between the Missouri Compromise and Lincoln's election, the clearest examples of Federal activism versus the states during that period were all promulgated by a pro-Southern Federal government against abolitionism in Northern states. The Fugitive Slave Act was the most flagrant example, which empowered Federal marshals to arrest fugitive slaves in Northern states, return them to their owners (or protect those owners or their agents in capturing those slaves) and nullified state laws to the contrary. The "gag rule" prohibiting the deposit of abolitionist pamphlets in the US mail bound for Southern states was another example of Federal activism on behalf of slavery, making a general exception to First Amendment principles for abolitionist literature. The Dred Scott decision further enabled the Federal government's trampling of state-level abolitionism by casting doubt on whether a state could effectively grant citizenship rights to ex-slaves (at least insofar as such rights gave the ex-slave the rights of a US citizen). Dred Scott also cast doubt on the 1852 decision of an intermedia NY appellate court in Lemmon v. The People, which upheld a NY law granting freedom to slaves in transit through NY. In the wake of Dred Scott, the State of Virginia appealed the decision to New York's Court of Appeals (the highest appellate court), which upheld the lower court's decision and NY state law in an 1860 ruling. However, Virginia intended to appeal the case to the US Supreme Court and many abolitionists feared that the Supreme Court would overrule the NY court and invalidate the NY law. Only Virginia's secession in 1861 prevented the case from proceeding any further in the Federal courts. The above conclusions are not fringe or right-wing -- they are common currency among modern American historians of the Civil War era, including James McPherson, Eric Foner, Paul Finkelman and others. Perry is certainly dense on many subjects, and his views on many issues in Fed Up! are far on the fringe of Constitutional law and American politics. But the assertion that aggressive Federal protection of the rights of slaveholders resulted in the suppression of state support of abolitionism is absolutely accurate. It is also correct to say that this sort of Federal policy contributed to the Civil War, though it is not accurate to say that it was the only factor or even a principal factor -- the debate about slavery in the Western territories was the principal factor in the coming of the Civil War. But it was a significant factor among many.
- wildboy
September 12, 2011 at 3:09pm
Wildboy [interesting screen name], I am jostling my tired old brain cells to recall what I learned (if anything) about American history. While I am dubious about voting for Perry for President, perhaps he should be made a Professor of Constitutional Law & History, somewhere--Texas A & M perhaps? [Though I see their web page is promoting "Darwinism," which might undermine his support among evangelicals.] Though perhaps they can use him at http://teexweb.tamu.edu/esti/ where firefighters are trained. As Texas firefighters rest from days on the firelines, Perry can provide pep talks about how global warming has nothing to do with the fires in Texas to motivate them. [Full disclosure, for all I know global warming has nothing to do with forest fires in Texas.]
- skahn
September 12, 2011 at 7:03pm
well stated wildboy. nice refresher since my days of reading Foner and McPherson. as to the personal attackers, I totally agree with the main point about human activity and climate change. The cause is not 100% either/or; more likely a confluence of effects. I think we should kill all the cows spewing methane which is much worse than CO2. Maybe I pray for Krakatoa to explode again. Just think that those crazy Danish and Swiss particle physicists may also be correct, and currently have zero empathy for rabid environmentalists ever since I was screamed at in a public forum for suggesting homeowners could plant long-lived trees (species list from SUNY available in my hand). Why the heated opposition to planting long-lived trees? Well, the greens were opposed because those trees might die in 100 years and release that CO2. Nuance. Critical thinking. replaced by angry groupthink. sigh.
- K2K
September 12, 2011 at 7:07pm
K2K, The "shut up" remark was a bit harsh. My apologies. My real point is consistent with yours - these things require thinking, and close attention to facts. The fact is that the CLOUD results do not make the point that Delingpole says it does. It is an indication that solar magnetic activity and cosmic ray influence on cloud formation and thus on climate are not well understood. Touting it as disproving anthropogenic climate change is wrong. I can't imagine any one worthy of the name "environmentalist" against planting trees as CO2 remediation. That is about as dumb as I've heard.
- IowaBeauty
September 12, 2011 at 9:14pm
thanks, IowaBeauty "I can't imagine any one worthy of the name "environmentalist" against planting trees as CO2 remediation. That is about as dumb as I've heard." You should have been there. After I got slammed with the "but those trees will die in 100 years and release CO2", the second punch was that planting trees would reduce the albedo effect. I decided to NOT point out that the concern over decreased albedo effect had to do with shrinking glaciers and Arctic ice pack, not whether I planted three long-lived trees on my 1/3 acre... The big winner of that meeting was to stop using clothes dryers and, for a year I saw a LOT of outside hanging laundry, but then I guess everyone realized that drying outside collected molds and allergens on everything :) I am already a climate change refugee, but no longer certain the increasing CO2 can be reversed as long as China burns more coal. In 2003, I did a research project on green (vegetative) roofs in NYC, and got slammed by everyone. In 2004, I tried to find a micro-turbine for the stream that formed my north border - no luck - only available in India.
- K2K
September 13, 2011 at 12:53pm
In the unlikely event that Michele Bachmann is nominated I hereby pledge that I will not vote for her. The woman is repulsive, the worst sort of Bible thumping demagogue. Actually Obama plus a Republican House and Senate would not be a bad outcome. Faced with a Republican legislature, Obama would have to continue on his slow, tentative journey into adulthood. Cf. the Clinton-Gingrich government of the late nineties. Strange bedfellows make good politics.
- bulbman1066
September 13, 2011 at 10:45pm