Nothin’ from nothin’ leaves nothin’
And I’m not stuffin’, believe you me… – Billy Preston
In their seditious bid to ransom the Affordable Care Act for the debt ceiling vote, the Republicans of Tea failed in their usual self-immolating fashion. The post-mortem spin by the would-be extortionists had all the shamelessness we have come to love and expect. Congressbagger Michele Bachmann (R-Far Away Eyes) took to the friendly confines of Sean Hannity’s protective bubble chamber with her version of the autopsy — or rather, her inversion. She stated, “Obama got 100% of what he wanted.”
Which means, if you consider that statement carefully (keep some aspirins handy), President Obama is a petulant non-negotiating negotiator, making all kinds of crazy demands by not making any. How dare he! Since, you know, he forced those helpless congressional Republicans to block a vote on a clean CR because he would not concede to their ransom demands. In its strange inverted way, she has a point. What the president wanted is what he, or any rational American, did not want: a government shutdown, the ACA weakened or repealed, the economy to meltdown like Fukushima, or tens of thousands of federal employees denied their pay and benefits. What a hardliner!
Bachmann audaciously asserted that the White House wanted to push the country into default, and it was up to the Republicans to save the day. “He rolled the dice, he knew that Republicans were willing to be the only adults in the room,” Bachmann said with a straight but vacuous face.
This is just another variation of the trope that the shutdown was the president’s fault. No different from what she said at the World War II Memorial two weeks ago. In the Tea Party world, Obama is an uncompromising child, and he was supposed to blink first. High school psychology students would recognize this as projection. Her unctuous defense on Hannity’s program is banal at its core, no matter how entertaining the package. Bachmann is taking stale and boldly false assertions, but giving them that extra twist that only she can deliver. Kind of like Palin, but with better syntax — and gloriously far away eyes.
Watch Bachmann on Fox News in the video below:
