Ignore the media gaffe meme, Bachmann is a serious candidate

Mark McKinnon:

The world is flat. We know it is. It’s what we were taught—in the Dark Ages. Michele Bachmann is a “delusional, paranoid zealot,” a “flake.” We know she is. That’s what we’ve been told—by a mainlining media.

Conservative women in politics run a punishing gauntlet. They endure psychological evaluations and near-gynecological exams their male and liberal counterparts do not. The public is force-fed only their gaffes in 10-second fixes, while similar misstatements by the current president are forgiven as momentary lapses.

Bachmann is not crazy, but the media are if they continue to view her as such.

Ranked the top fundraiser in the House during the 2010 election cycle, Rep. Bachmann was also the first Republican woman to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Minnesota, in 2006. Prior to serving in Congress, in 2000 she was elected to the Minnesota state Senate, where she championed a taxpayers' bill of rights, drawing from her professional experience as a federal tax-litigation attorney. But her first introduction to politics came out of her frustration as a foster parent with inadequate curriculum standards set by state government, standards she was later successful in repealing in the state legislature.

Bachmann’s frustration again turned to action in the fight over health-care reform in 2009. Whether she or the Tea Party movement was the catalyst, the reaction of heat and light was spontaneous at the Tea Party rally held outside the Capitol building on Nov. 5, 2009. And the conversion of this onetime supporter of President Carter to a leader of a conservative movement was complete.

From her official announcement of her candidacy for the GOP 2012 presidential nomination on Monday in Waterloo, Iowa: “As a constitutional conservative, I believe in ... a limited government that trusts in and preserves the unlimited potential of the American people. I don’t believe that the solutions to our problems come from Washington. More than ever, Washington is the problem, and the real solutions will come from our businesses, our communities, our schools, and the most basic and powerful unit of all—our families.”

Her challenge to the president: “In February 2009, President Obama was very confident that his economic policies would turn the country around within a year. He said: ‘A year from now, I think people are going to see that we’re starting to make some progress. If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.’ Well, Mr. President, your policies haven’t worked. Spending our way out of this recession hasn’t worked. And so, Mr. President: We take you at your word!”

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McKinnon says she is a player who has been underestimated and vilified by the media. She will continue to be treated unfairly by the media, such as their showing more interest in a Jon Wayne connection to Waterloo, Iowa than to the substance of her remarks. It is something they would never do with Obama, but the voters are catching on to their act and they should give her a chance to make her case against the evils of liberalism.