U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann has all the brain power poor Sarah Palin is without. Chris Matthews says she looks like she’s dazed, hypnotized, irrational. I think this is because to Matthews, a fully engaged female is someone like Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Florida), who talks up a storm in promoting Obama’s statist schemes. Simpletons perceive a fulminating statism as “good,” “caring,” and certainly “smart.”
Bachmann is in the news for a change as she is “mulling a presidential bid.” As you know, I do quite like this woman. She is quick and cannot be rattled.
Very little has been said in the muck-raking media about Bachmann’s background. You can just imagine what publicity Wasserman Schultz (of the double-barreled, affectatious surname) would receive had she provided foster care for 23 children in addition to raising five of her own.
Most women lawyers, moreover, do not go into tax law; family law is more like it. Michelle has a Master of Laws in tax law from the William & Mary Law School. Now let’s not go off on a tangent about the evils of tax law and its enforcement. We’re agreed; The Sixteenth is the Number of the Beast (and Bachmann is forever tainted for having enforced the law). The point made here is that tax law is quite a bit more cerebrally taxing than immigration or family law. Not that you’d know it from the manner in which she is portrayed, but Bachmann is clearly very clever.
Indeed, from the media scrum one hears very little about Michelle Bachmann’s undeniable intellectual aptitude, as they hate her with a purple passion.
In any event, it is this rational, steely quality that drives Chris Matthews crazy. After all, he is the emotional wreck who regularly experiences daytime nocturnal emissions over Obama and genuinely believes that the president is an intellectual of the highest order.
UPDATE (Jan. 6): According to her foes over at Hardball, “Michele Bachmann (R-MN) introduced the first bill of the 112th Congress today, and she’s landed a prime spot on the Intelligence Committee.” Somewhat vapidly, the WSJ characterizes Bachmann’s challenge to the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul as “an interesting strategy to gain more attention.”
Could it be that the financial bill, in all its 2,300 pristine, unread pages and the 500 odd new regulations it imposed simply needs to go? Bachmann has been consistent in her vehement opposition to a bill that will “further increase in the overweening powers of the Executive branch, which will now be able to seize a firm it designates as systemically risky.”
