Friday, June 24, 2011

Michele Bachmann

by Edd Doerr

Now that Newt Gingrich has torpedoes himself and Mitch Daniels has chickened out, we need to closely watch Michele Bachmann in her run for the GOP/Tea Party nomination.

Bachmann is a fundamentalist zealot. She got her law degree from Oral Roberts University's law school, which promoted "the law from a biblical worldview." That law school is now part of Pat Robertson's Regent University, described by journalist Matt Taibbi as an "educational outhouse" where 60% of the grads fail the bar exam and that ranks 136th nationally, but produced a flood of entrants to the Bush Justice Dept.

Bachmann, who home-schooled her own kids, got involved in 1993 with a charter school in Stillwater, MN, and helped steer the publicly funded school into being very religious. Parent complaints led to state and local officials threatening to take away the school's charter and Bachmann soon left the board.

In the late 1990s she ran as a Republican in a nonpartisan school board election and tried to make abortion a school board issue.She lost, but the next year she defeated a Republican incumbent for a seat in the MN senate. Her political career was off and running.

A key plank in her platform now is to cancel out women's reproductive rights.

{Info for this comment cames from the 6/22/11 NY Times, the 6/23/11 LA Times, and 6/22/11 Rolling Stone.]

2 comments:

lucette said...

I live in Maryland which will very probably vote Democratic. In any case, the Democratic primary will not change anything. However, the Republican primary will have an impact on the choice of the Republican Presidential candidate. If I understand correctly, you must be registered as a Republican to vote in the Republican primary. I intend to do just that: register as a Republican and vote in the Republican primary. I think it is the best thing we can do at this point. I am sure it is not illegal.

Edd.Doerr said...

Lucette: Yes, that is OK in MD. Edd