Both Nick Coleman and Doug Grow had columns about Michele Bachmann this week. From Coleman:
One lesson from the fight over Sen. Dean Johnson's comments about same-sex marriage and the Supreme Court is easy: Preachers should be patted down and body searched by security officers.
A more important lesson is: Politicians should stop saying one thing to the public and another when they think they are in the company of friends.
Johnson, the DFL Senate leader, was wrong about who his "friends" were when he spoke to a ministers' meeting: One Preacher Man was wired and made a surreptitious recording of Johnson's remarks. That was ungodly, as three of Preacher Man's fellow ministers pointed out in a letter to the West Central Tribune:
"We would like you to know how disappointed we are in your behavior," the three told Brent "Radio Shack" Waldemarsen. "You have much to apologize for, including the deceitful premeditation of your actions [and] the secret taping of our conversations."
Here's the problem: Too many politicians reveal their true beliefs -- and their true intentions -- only when they are speaking to true believers. That leaves those of us outside the prayer circle not knowing what is happening. Especially if we don't understand the insiders' "code" being used.
There is something to this. Though there are times when it's nice for some conversations to be off the record.
Increasingly, this doublespeak involves partly disguised conflicts between private faith and public creeds. When I attended a prayer breakfast in 2004, Minnesota's Living Flag, Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer, told the faithful that the "five most destructive words" she knows are "Separation of church and state."
Funny, I don't remember Kiffmeyer making that part of her campaign platform.
I remember Nick Coleman's coverage of the day of prayer event in Plymouth. It's important for the press to cover events like that.
Now he gets to Bachmann's latest stunt of praying for cameras in the rotunda.
Here's another case where the line between church and state gets fuzzy: State Sen. Michele Bachmann recently videotaped herself praying in the State Capitol. Unfortunately, she won't let me see the tape.
Capitol staffers saw Bachmann praying in front of a video camera in the rotunda in February. As far as I care, Bachmann, the sponsor of the effort to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot barring marriage and civil unions to same-sex couples, can pray wherever she wants. But the camera crew raised eyebrows.
A month of inquiries got this response from Bachmann: She was taping a campaign video to use at endorsement conventions in her run for the Sixth District congressional seat. Other than a shot of her family at dinner, saying grace, Bachmann says no prayers are in the completed video.
"Sure, I prayed with some people in the rotunda," Bachmann says. "I'm not ashamed to let it be known. I'm a recovering sinner, and a big sinner, and I feel I need it. But there's nothing in [the video] that's bad or inflammatory."
Bachmann refused to let me view the video, which has been shown at one Republican Senate district convention. The Capitol prayers were not intended to be on her campaign video, she says, and we have to take her at her word. I do.
But if we have learned anything from the Johnson affair, it is that the public always should see the tapes before passing judgment. Thank you, Mr. Undercover Evangelist.
My point in all this is simple: We want to see and hear the tapes. All of them. Let all candidates of all parties be warned that when they speak -- even to their so-called friends -- they should be ready and willing to be seen and heard in a public forum.
If they are not willing to do that, they are not inspiring.
They are CONspiring.
Mark Gisleson comments:
The easiest way to make people fall in love with you is to seduce them one on one or in small groups. The easiest way to get people to hate you is to seduce them, then let them see what you said to another group.
Sounds like Bachmann is taking the easiest route to the nomination possible, pandering on a group-by-group basis. I hope she's wearing kneepads because streetcorner praying is just as hard on the knees as other, more traditional ways of sucking up to the voters.
People who pander that way, deal that way. I'm guessing Michelle Bachmann's word doesn't mean much to people who really know her.
That was the way Michele ran for her seat when she ran in 2000 and 2002 - and it worked for her. With 3 republican opponents, there is more scrutiny this time and she is getting called out on her nonsense.
As Mark Hanson mentioned here earlier, Doug Grow reports on his effort to track Michele Bachmann's "thought processes", which proved to be a real challenge.
In her mind, this business is pretty simple. She said it was wrong when there were laws prohibiting blacks and whites from marrying each other. This is different.
"Gender is an essential irreducible complexity," she said.
Irreducible complexity, a term favored in intelligent design circles, apparently means a baseline truth.
"Didn't having a penis used to be the essential irreducible complexity?" I asked. "You had to have one to have any rights."
"That's your word," she said, sounding exasperated.
She returned to her fundamental argument: The people should decide who has rights and who doesn't.
"If the people of Minnesota want gays and lesbians to marry, if they want to allow polygamy, group marriage, whatever, let's have it," she said.
Polygamy? Where'd that come from?
"Did you know that in England they're seriously considering legalizing polygamy because they have so many Muslims?" she asked.
As previously mentioned, I'm often perplexed.
Maybe that's why she didn't want to take questions on Race to the Right. |
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