What's the Difference Between Apes and Conservative Iowans?

Michele Bachmann posing for her next Newsweek cover

Apes choose leaders with better odds at success.

Issues aside, is Bachmann really the paragon of leadership among her party hopefuls or does she merely represent the visceral resentment racial conservatives have held against Obama since they found out who he was three years ago? Bachmann has never been a "work together when we can" type of legislator regarding Obama. She has used her energy to denigrate, lie, and decontextualize with the hopes of creating as much anti-Obama hysteria as she can. One such event was her mad press dash to blither on about how Obama's official trip to India was costing the taxpayers $200 million a day. It was a figure  no one else outside of Fox News trusted. Bachmann and friends ripped the figure from an erroneous Indian press source, erroneous because unless Obama was dumping bags filled with hundred dollar bills from Air Force One, it would have been impossible for his trip to have exceeded the daily average cost of the war in Afghanistan. So why did Bachmann say it? She and people like her hate Obama so much that they want to believe whatever negative reports they hear about him. It's why Bachmann can never run successfully against Obama. She can't keep a narrative on him straight. One day he is a crafty and successful flimflammer. The next day he is a neophyte who is in over his head. Which is it? This senseless vacillation only exposes the extreme prejudice she and her fans are capable of.

The goal of Ed Rollins in her campaign will be to avoid the careless slinging of falsehoods for as long as Rollins can stand being around Bachmann. This will make her SEEM like a more centered person, but unless Ed Rollins can erase the past, he's running up against a brick wall. Bachmann's Iowa win on Saturday was not about her ability to lead. It was about her vehement and irresponsible anti-Obamaism. Her record exposes her as a crackpot. And now Iowa unfairly gets the crackpot label. 

As a reminder of how normal Iowa can be, it was the state governed by the capable and reasonable Tom Vilsack who is now Secretary of Agriculture. The progressive Tom Harkin has been the junior Senator from Iowa since 1985. Let's not forget that Iowa was the third state to allow gays to marry. Of course, Bachmann's state of Minnesota allows gays to get married too. The only difference is that in Iowa, they're allowed to marry each other. Zing!

Marcus Bachmann. Supply your own joke.