Newsweek is taking flack for the recent issue that features Michelle Bachmann, a Republican presidential candidate from Iowa, on the cover with a crazed look in her eyes. Conservatives are saying it is proof of liberal bias. However, the cover may be more fitting than conservatives would like to admit. She has said many controversial things, but I will name three that are prima facie absurd.
The first is when, on The Chris Matthews Show on MSNBC, Michelle Bachmann said that members of Congress need to be investigated for anti-American views. This is the typical conspiracy theory John Burch society Joseph McCarthy line that communists have infiltrated our government and that we have to weed them out before they take over and imprison dissenters. It's paranoid thinking (if it even deserves to be called thinking).
The second thing is when she said Obama was running a "gangsta government." This is really an appeal to racist attitudes among many white conservatives who think of the word gangster and see images of black and Hispanic males running around causing havoc. And Obama just happens to be African American, so this is actually a really sick thing to do.
And finally, during the recent negotiations of the debt-ceiling, during which the Tea Party's intransigence caused the nation's credit rating to go down, Bachmann said that default would not happen, that the date was made up by the Obama administration to try and scare Congress into voting for what he wanted. However, Standard and Poors specifically cited that members of Congress who used the default to play politics was a factor in the downgrade. So thank you Michelle Bachmann for hurting America, you would be a mighty fine president indeed.
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