Bachmann drives over a cliff with injection argument

Michael Walsh:

... 

Even when Perry conceded that the order was an overreach and that his Legislature was correct in overturning it, Bachmann continued to pound him -- arguing that the decision should be left to the parents, not the state, and that by vaccinating girls against an STD, the government was somehow encouraging promiscuity.      

The way Bachmann chose to go after Perry -- berating him for “government injections” of “innocent little 12-year-old girls” -- made it sound like the Texan was ordering up fiendish medical experiments instead of responding to legitimate public-health concerns.

Further, there is nothing wrong with states ordering vaccinations -- they do it all the time with infectious diseases like polio, and save millions of lives.

It’s fine for Bachmann to raise the issue of possible “crony capitalism” -- Perry’s former chief of staff was a lobbyist working for the vaccine’s manufacturer, Merck. But she went way over the line when, after the debate, she repeated the evil lie that vaccines can cause autism.
Bachmann, wrote former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, “seems prone to a serious condition: the compulsive desire to confirm every evangelical stereotype of censorious ignorance.”

Bachmann’s behavior looks even worse in light of the recent revelation that Perry’s order was in part a response to his friendship with a cervical cancer patient, whose dying wish was that other women be spared her fate -- something that Perry pointedly did not mention during the debate.

This unforced march into crazyland was only the latest blunder from a candidate who likes to shoot from the lip -- such as celebrating the birth of Elvis Presley on the day of his death. Small stuff, yes, but the national media delights in making Republican candidates (especially females) look “stupid.”

And staffers openly fret over her tendency to say things that simply aren’t true.
Perry will have to get faster on his feet: He was far too slow responding to the vaccine charges -- a subject his campaign should have known was going to come up. If he can’t handle criticism now, he’d be mincemeat before the Democrats’ attack machine come the general election.

Bachmann is bright, articulate and accomplished, an avatar of motherhood and apple pie in a power suit. But she’s going to have to radically improve her game if she’s to continue as a viable candidate.
...

I think she has stepped over the line.  She was too desperate in her argument against Perry and the vaccine. She took her argument to an extreme which shows she does not know when to sit down and be quite.  It is something most lawyers learn early on.  It can make the difference between winning and losing.