Michele Bachmann’s SOTU Response

Michele Bachmann's TEA Party response to SOTU 2011 was embarrassingly bad.

It’s not often that I agree completely with Oliver Willis, who’s not only a Media Matters Democrat but a Redskins fan.

Still, his assessment of Michele Bachmann’s “Tea Party response” to the State of the Union address as “hilariously bad” and an “epic failure” that makes one wonder “How can someone this clueless be elected to federal office?” is hard to argue with:

I’m speechless.  As Bachmann should have been.

FILED UNDER: US Politics, , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. DC Loser says:

    You’re not winning any friends when you show up at CPAC.

  2. James Joyner says:

    Don’t I know it. I just can’t imagine Ronald Reagan embracing these people.

  3. Alex Knapp says:

    Wait is she on PBS? Doesn’t she want to cut funding for PBS? Oh, nevermind…..

  4. john personna says:

    Our tolerance of stupidity is way too high.

  5. DC Loser says:

    Are you saying the GOP needs a bigger tent for her?

  6. DMan says:

    Having come into this with the lowest of expectations, and expecting comedy gold, I think she handled herself okay. From what I can see, she managed to avoid any “blood libel” type sound bites. She smartly focused on the economy for the first half. She rambled a lot after that. She finished fairly oddly with the reference to Iwo Jima. My biggest problem with the speech was that she seemed to suggest Obama is not just a political opponent, but an enemy to America. This seems to follow the pattern of problematic rhetoric I’ve been seeing from many on the right for a while now.

  7. DMan says:

    But really, I think my expectations being so low set an all too easy bar for her. Perhaps its the case that my tolerance for stupidity has in fact gotten too high…

  8. mantis says:

    My biggest problem with the speech was that she seemed to suggest Obama is not just a political opponent, but an enemy to America.

    Seemed to suggest? That’s been the entire Republican Party’s message for more than two years.

  9. DC Loser says:

    Seemed to suggest? That’s been the entire Republican Party’s message for more than two years.

    Because he’s obviously not one of us.

  10. Franklin says:

    I’ll be positive:

    1) She knows how to read.
    2) Her eyes are within 15 degrees of looking straight at the camera.
    3) She makes Sarah Palin seem like a genius.
    4) I like infomercials.

  11. Joe says:

    She knows the Iwo Jima picture was posed, right?

  12. sam says:

    “She knows the Iwo Jima picture was posed, right?”

    Bullshit. The picture was not posed. Joe Rosenthal took it almost by accident. As the flag was going up, he just swung his camera around and clicked. See, Flags of Our Fathers. Besides, she effed up the whole reference. There were five Marines and one Navy Corpsman in the picture, not six GIs. Twenty-four hours later, three of those six men were dead. She knows as much about the war in Pacific as she does about the history of slavery in the United States.

  13. wr says:

    I’m surprised she didn’t say that was the founding fathers raising the flag at Iwo Jima…

  14. Gustopher says:

    I don’t blame her, I blame the voters in her district that re-elected her.

    I was hoping for comedy gold, and all we got was a sad and pathetic display of stupid. I was disappointed. At least we got Obama compared to an invading foreign army, subtly suggesting his Kenyan origins without actually demanding to see his birth certificate in the long form.

  15. mantis says:

    Hey, is she using a teleprompter? Don’t you know teleprompters are for Commie Kenyans, Michelle?

    Also, too, Nazis, or something.

  16. Whomever does Bachman’s speech prep needs to tell her to stop Milking the Giant Cow the whole time.

  17. An Interested Party says:

    “Are you saying the GOP needs a bigger tent for her?”

    Yes, an oxygen tent, as she obviously isn’t getting enough of that precious substance…