The 2012 Speculatron Weekly Roundup For October 28, 2011

The past two weeks on the campaign trail have been plumped up by goings on at two consecutive debates, and while those were contentious, they seemed ordered. Cain had edged up to the top tier, so it made sense that the field would go after his "9-9-9 Plan." Romney and Perry sport the deepest pockets and the best shots at longevity, so it made sense that the two would get heated with each other. In the ensuing days, the media marveled at the fireworks that they had helped to stage, wrapping up the state of the race in a neat little bow -- Romney as unwanted frontrunner, Cain as the incomplete contender, Perry as the pending comeback, and Obama as the real target of all.

But this week? Man, this is the week that everyone just went crazy!

It's possible that Ron Paul was the only guy who saw this week coming -- he was the one who was urging more substance and fewer discussions about who was tending Mitt Romney's lawn many years ago. All we can say is that this week, everyone went in a different direction than Paul suggested. The field was no longer staging some sort of contest about the economy and who could produce a better jobs record than Obama. (Rick Perry, the one guy who tried, somehow managed to promise in an advertisement that he'd be less effective at creating jobs than the incumbent he'll be running against.) Instead, the candidates dealt with all manner of internal desperation and strayed way off message in many interparty disputes, while the media spent whole days fascinated by the sight of this one dude smoking a cigarette.

The Bachmann camp, which hasn't managed to do much in the past month, lost an entire operation in New Hampshire and had to learn about it in a radio interview. Rick Perry decided to retest the theory that a sinking ship can be righted if you only reshuffle the deck chairs hard enough. The world learned that Herman Cain's staff lives in a constant state of chaos and unfriendliness, where people are directed to not speak to the candidate unless directed to do so by Cain himself. Cain probably has food-tasters and eunuchs who sing the popular songs of the courtiers to him! (We're guessing "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster The People.) A New York Times article on the subject made readers painfully aware of how desperately Cain's staffers must cherish their smoke breaks.

Meanwhile, what was going on with Rick Perry? Was this really the week to start allying himself with Donald Trump's clown-faced birther nonsense and telling people that he was going to just skip the debates instead of working to master them? Did Rick Santorum go over the top in making as big a deal of Herman Cain's confused brain-fugue over abortion? Why is Michele Bachmann accusing Rick Perry of stealing her tax plan when she hasn't actually released one yet? And how did Mitt Romney manage to forget that he supported Ohio Governor John Kasich's union-busting bill when he was in Ohio, getting asked about it? That earned Romney a prompt pile-on and the opportunity to notch another historic flip-flop.

Newt Gingrich has, for a long while, castigated the media for seeking to get the candidates all at each other's throats when all the candidates wanted to do was mount an attack against Obama (who spent his week, by the way, losing his 2008 donors in droves). But with the field giddily tearing each other to shreds, Gingrich's complaint isn't really applicable anymore. (It won't stop him from making it, over and over again, though -- it's the best schtick he's got.)

Elsewhere on the campaign trail, there were things that made more sense. Jon Huntsman demonstrated that he might be just unfunny enough to kill the "Colbert bump." Ron Paul showed once again that his devotees can gin up a pile of dollars at the drop of a hat. Herman Cain found that his sudden success had earned him some powerful detractors. Gary Johnson nearly missed an important deadline. A "tea party leader" had some dire words for Michele Bachmann. President Obama found the least appropriate lobbyist in the world and hired him for his campaign. And just how much are people going to pay for the privilege of seeing Newt Gingrich spew balloon juice? For all of this and more, please enter the Speculatron for the week of October 28, 2011.

1 of 12

Michele Bachmann

1 of 13

First Slide

Previous Slide

@

Michele Bachmann has spent the last few weeks being bedeviled by terrible poll results and being belittled by former campaign manager Ed Rollins in the press. She's responded to the hardship by working Iowa hard in an effort to resurrect her once promising candidacy. But did anyone tell Michele Bachmann that she had this whole "New Hampshire staff" that's all this while been attempting to "staff" her in "New Hampshire?" Evidently not, because this week, that same New Hampshire staff basically got up and said, "Yeah, guess what? We quit." Bachmann found out about it during a radio interview. Bachmann initially told Radio Iowa that the report of her New Hampshire staff's exodus was a "rumor" and "not true" and that it was probably something another campaign fed the press. Because that makes sense: some other campaign had to have been thinking, "We're crushing Michele Bachmann in the polls, dude! Let's say -- for fun! -- we call up the Union Leader and tell them her staff is leaving? Who cares that it's not true? I'm sure those journalists will continue to treat us as highly credible off-the-record sources when they find out we made this up!" Indeed, for a while, Bachmann courted denial, saying that the rumor of staff defections was something the media had invented just to get at her. But that staff eventually released a letter explaining why they were all taking it on the arches:

The manner in which some in the national team conducted themselves towards Team-­NH was rude, unprofessional, dishonest, and at times cruel. But more concerning was how abrasive, discourteous, and dismissive some within the national team were towards many New Hampshire citizens. These are our neighbors and our friends, and some within the national team treated them more as a nuisance than as potential supporters.

Don't mince words, thesaurus-toting former New Hampshire staff of Michele Bachmann!

Through all this chaos, Team-NH was never involved in the shifting strategy discussions. Team members were repeatedly ignored regarding simple requests, sometimes going weeks with little or no contact with the national team. Yet the members of Team-NH remained committed to Congressman Bachmann, often at peril to their own personal and professional reputations within New Hampshire.

They supported Michele Bachmann at their peril! In their letter, the staff said that they "would like to stress that pay was not a primary motivation," and that seems fairly evident given the fact that they hadn't been paid for a month. Bachmann tried to get reporters to not pay attention to the statements her former Granite State team were making, but it was hard to do, given the fact that the end result was that Bachmann had to mail in her paperwork to get on the New Hampshire primary. Today, Bachmann received some more dispiriting talk from some guy named Ned Ryun, who the Post describes as a "Tea Party Leader." He is the president of "American Majority," which sounds fairly impressive, but given the fact that the media is habitually prone to calling just about anyone a "Tea Party Leader," the term loses all distinction. But, hey! Let's generously assume that Ned Ryun is a pretty big wheel for the moment, if only to frame his remarks as deeply grave:

"It's time for Michele Bachmann to go. For the last two years, I've been cautioning about the dangers of individuals or organizations trying to present themselves as leaders of the Tea Party movement," he writes. "Every day [Bachmann's] campaign flounders, it risks hurting the credibility of the movement. If she really is about the tea party, and making it successful, it's time for the Congresswoman to move on. "The Tea Party doesn't have a spokesperson, and it's certainly not Michele Bachmann."

Aww, snap! Well, even before that, Mother Jones' Tim Murphy pretty much figured that Bachmann's presidential race is just about over, and gives odds on what Bachmann might do next. While a "Dancing With The Stars" turn is considered a possibility, he says that the obvious "even money" choice is that she returns to the House of Representatives. Should be an easy effort:

Minnesota laws prevent Bachmann from running for the House and presidency concurrently, but she doesn't have to file her paperwork for re-election until June 5, by which point she'll almost certainly be out of the presidential race. Working in her favor: So far, no Sixth District Republicans have stepped in to announce they're running for the seat, and her 2010 Democratic opponent has switched districts.

For the time being, however, Bachmann still has plenty of motions to go through on the way to losing the Iowa Caucus. And many of those motions include going on the offensive against rivals -- she rapped new frontrunner Herman Cain this week for his "muddled abortion remarks." Also, now that she's free of anyone who could remotely be called a professional campaign handler and the need to be even remotely serious, we can probably expect more of the raw and uncut Michele Bachmann. And this week, she managed to really dig deep in her playbook of extremism and fantasy, pushing a bonkersauce NRA conspiracy theory suggesting that millions of Americans without access to health care should just look forward to getting below-par care from various charities, and proclaiming that if she was president now, Gaddafi would still be in power in Libya, and what of it, who cares? The fact is, there's another group of people that Bachmann is even more steamed about than her former New Hampshire staff. We're talking about the Iraqi people, who this week found out that American forces will be leaving the country in the manner their government agreed to in the Status of Forces Agreement they signed with President George W. Bush. Bachmann told Bob Schieffer on "Face The Nation":

And here the United States has expended forty-four hundred lives, over eight hundred billion dollars in toil and blood and treasure. And while we're on the way out, we're being kicked out by the very people that we liberated. ... And to think that we are so disrespected and they -- they have so little fear of the United States that there would be nothing that we would gain from this.

She went on to express what's become a new complaint of hers -- that the Iraqi people owe us money from that time we destroyed their country and staged "Operation Iraqi Rubble" in the name of finding weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist in a country that didn't attack us on September 11th. "That's the thanks that the United States is getting after forty-four hundred lives were expended and over eight hundred billion dollars?" It reminds us of a joke. What's the difference between the Iraqi people and Michele Bachmann's New Hampshire staffers? Her New Hampshire staffers all live in homes with electricity and potable drinking water that aren't part of a war-torn hellscape!

John Edwards Trial Juror Flirting With Ex-Senator

Elizabeth Warren Heritage Case Stirs American Indian Query

Anthony Weiner Still In Limbo One Year After Scandal

Memorial Day Quotes: Politicians Honor Armed Forces On National Holiday (PHOTOS)

7 Ways To Get Yourself Detained Indefinitely

Harold Hamm, Romney Oil Adviser, Also A Big Donor To Super PAC Restore Our Future

Michele Bachmann has spent the last few weeks being bedeviled by terrible poll results and being belittled by former campaign manager Ed Rollins in the press. She's responded to the hardship by working Iowa hard in an effort to resurrect her once promising candidacy. But did anyone tell Michele Bachmann that she had this whole "New Hampshire staff" that's all this while been attempting to "staff" her in "New Hampshire?" Evidently not, because this week, that same New Hampshire staff basically got up and said, "Yeah, guess what? We quit." Bachmann found out about it during a radio interview.

Bachmann initially told Radio Iowa that the report of her New Hampshire staff's exodus was a "rumor" and "not true" and that it was probably something another campaign fed the press. Because that makes sense: some other campaign had to have been thinking, "We're crushing Michele Bachmann in the polls, dude! Let's say -- for fun! -- we call up the Union Leader and tell them her staff is leaving? Who cares that it's not true? I'm sure those journalists will continue to treat us as highly credible off-the-record sources when they find out we made this up!"

Indeed, for a while, Bachmann courted denial, saying that the rumor of staff defections was something the media had invented just to get at her. But that staff eventually released a letter explaining why they were all taking it on the arches:

The manner in which some in the national team conducted themselves towards Team-­NH was rude, unprofessional, dishonest, and at times cruel. But more concerning was how abrasive, discourteous, and dismissive some within the national team were towards many New Hampshire citizens. These are our neighbors and our friends, and some within the national team treated them more as a nuisance than as potential supporters.

Don't mince words, thesaurus-toting former New Hampshire staff of Michele Bachmann!

Through all this chaos, Team-NH was never involved in the

... more

comments(1825)

featured comment

Reply | Share

MeMyselfI said on 29 Saturday 2011 pm31 12:58 pm: I bet the Bachman house is not a place you wanna be when Michelle's had a bad day.

Total comments: 1825 | Post a Comment

1 of 13

Rate This Slide

Rank #2  |  Average: 4

Fading Fast In It To Win It

• 
  1
• 
  2
• 
  3
• 
  4
• 
  5
• 
  6
• 
  7
• 
  8
• 
  9
• 
  10

Current Top 5 Slides

loading...

Choose your Top 5 Slides

UserName

 | Become a fan

Picked These as the Top 5 Slides in the Slideshow

loading...

Top User Slides

← Prev|Next →

 | Become a fan

Picked These as the Top 5 Slides in the Slideshow

loading...

Users who voted on this slide

← Prev|Next →

loading...

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to [e-mail] -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

 

 

Comments

[realpolitic]

08:46 PM on 11/05/2011

The only serious presidential aspirants in the GOP field of loonies is Huntsman and Romney, who really does not have any core beliefs. The GOP base has rejected Huntsman probably because he is so sane and does not pander. Romney is the only contender who would be able to debate Obama on the issues. Can he excite the base, though? Well, perhaps not, but if the economy is on a path to recovery and people feel more confidence Obama will win, although he will certainly see no help from Congress. If not, we may be stuck with a Republican president with a "do nothing" approach to the economy and we will again see that Republican policies just do not work.

[Bobjack23]

07:32 PM on 10/31/2011

Well tonight is Halloween and the first time the Republican candidates for the Presidency have looked like they are in the right time and place. What a pack of goblins!

[quickchick]

07:42 AM on 10/31/2011

What a fraud the Democratic Party has become: waging a campaign against bullying while silently condoning the shameless mocking of the GOP by all the media giants in this country. Why is the left not embarrassed to accept all this free political campaigning on its behalf…while openly attempting to silence the few conservative voices that remain? There’s no denying that a decline in integrity is evident in both political camps--but modern liberals have a patent on it.

[OneNationIndivisible]

05:04 PM on 10/31/2011

"...the few conservative voices..." Ha! Ha! Ha! Thanks for the ridiculous snoozemaxx laughing points! You folks at the Onion are hilarious!

[hollace]

04:54 AM on 10/31/2011

genetically modified for sure.

[David Steven]

09:26 PM on 10/30/2011

Go ahead, Democrats...continue to bash the GOP candidates. You have so much room to criticise,, judging by the job your man's been doing for the last 32 months...not to mention his dismal poll numbers.

[SvK]

11:26 PM on 10/30/2011

youre funny...he beats all your candidates in ALL nellweather states in ALL polls....Prez polls at 43%

repub controlled congress polls @ 13%

you were saying?

[Veganie]

01:17 PM on 10/30/2011

The Democrats are working on getting real jobs for over twenty million unemployed¬.

[exhale09]

01:09 PM on 10/30/2011

I want the moderators of Republican debates to ask point blank questions a demand point blank answers fro the candidates, for ex.

Do you agree it is time we stop giving Federal Government Tax Subsidies to Big Private wealthy fossil fuel Corporations?

Do you agree that with tens of thousands military veterans returning home in the next couple of months, to their country that has no jobs to offer them, that Obama's Jobs Act Plan, which offers Business's tax incentives to hire our vets... and also creating jobs by repairing our country's infrastructure, so they will have more jobs available to them, as well as to other unemployed Americans is the right thing and an important thing to do?

[maab76]

02:31 PM on 10/30/2011

It is such a smart way to deal with a diminishment of our military involvement in the internal business of other countries. It does make me wonder, however, if some of our deployments were done to keep more of our work-eligible generation at work for the country in hopes that our businesses/corporations would do the right thing and create jobs for them! 'Course, we do know that there were those in past administrations used those deployments to line their own pockets, too.

[Cacey]

12:07 PM on 10/30/2011

I can totally understand the frustrations of the Republicans as evidenced by their posts on this thread. Where as during my years of political awareness, they have had at least two viable and reponsible possible candidates ranging from Taft and Eisenhower in 1952 to McCain and Romney in 2008 at this point, this cylcle they have none, but rather a group who tomorrow will dress like Seven Dwarfs and a less than Snowy White and figure out what treats they can trick the American public with next.

[ronp121]

10:54 AM on 10/30/2011

Usually by this time I pretty well have a good idea of who will be the Republican or Democrat Presidential nominee. Not this time. This is like a crap shoot. What a bunch of losers.They have no tangible ideas except to cut taxes and deregulate. If corporations are people then they can vote for them. I don't want to be a corporation myself. I rather like the human side of things.

[jimfl]

10:54 AM on 10/30/2011

Republicans will END Social Security and Medicare. They have already started cuts to the VA, if they can screw our Vets what chance do you have? Vote for a Democrat.

[cvermeulen9]

09:06 AM on 10/30/2011

Ron Paul for President! He is the only one. He is sensible

[okim5150]

09:57 AM on 10/30/2011

Ending Social Security, Sensible?
Ending Medicare, Sensible?
Legalizing drugs, Sensible?
Legalizing prostitution, Sensible?
Paul is going to do what he has done so well in the past, lose.

[cvermeulen9]

10:10 AM on 10/30/2011

Have you ever heard .." People want what they cant have". Look at all the drug wars. What would happen if we took away the war? Look what happened during prohabition. The mafia came into play and the killings started. Holland legalizes prostitution and its regulated by the government. There is no abuse, no sickness, no rape, no murder. Social Security would be a choice to participate in, Meidcare the same. Thats what he is all about , YOU making the choices for YOUR LIFE. You are only here for a short time.

[DANIELISTICALL]

10:08 AM on 10/30/2011

NONE of them make any sense,,,,,,, Obama will win by default

[VenezuelanRedneck]

08:38 AM on 10/30/2011

How Bachman and fellow candidates take so much abuse and still think they are going to win the nomination is beyond comprehension...even Newt whose been villified for months now, still hangs in there despite no financial support...there has to be another reason

[okim5150]

09:58 AM on 10/30/2011

EGO!

[snafu20]

11:26 AM on 10/30/2011

"sell books" is the business model

[truthillusion]

08:38 AM on 10/30/2011

This just proves how insanely stupid a good portion of this country is! There are actually people sending the idiots their hard earned money! Here, I worked hard long hours making this money, now you take it and run around the country saying STUPID things! Money well spent Republicans! Do you realize that if you took all the money that will be doled out to these idiots over the next few months you could use it to reduce the deficit that's got your panties all twisted? Please, get a clue!

[mac110m]

08:30 AM on 10/30/2011

The GOP could run anyone of these people and beat Obama. Dems are up against the ropes.
You tell me that no Dem is going to challange Obama?

[VenezuelanRedneck]

08:33 AM on 10/30/2011

?????????...no kidding?

[okim5150]

09:59 AM on 10/30/2011

No Dem is going to challenge Obama. I wish one would. But, that doesn't matter much, none of the Republican hopefuls has any chance whatsoever in a national election against Obama.

[Sipiwe Mutunhu]

11:57 AM on 10/30/2011

So, so true!!! Whether you like it or not, and I like it! OBAMA 2012!!!!

[Rob Achor]

04:13 PM on 10/30/2011

Actually since Gary Johnson actually has a successful record in executive government proving he can perform more than adequately in the White House, just like he did in NM from 1995-2003, I would say he has the best chance in the General Election since, you know, he's qualified to run the country, unlike anyone else running. Especially since half of the democratic platform is civil liberties, (Gary Johnson wants to free you from the shackles big government has had around the American people since the Nixon administration) and the other half is SPENDING MORE MONEY THAT WE DON'T HAVE, pushing us further towards financial collapse.

[rsaillant1]

08:04 AM on 10/30/2011

Jason and Elyse,

Once again, on behalf of your many sane and impassioned
readers, I implore you to embrace your power and influence
at HuffPo and get Sarah Palin's likeness off of the headline photo
that accompanies this, your weekly summary of the Republican
candidates. She is not, neither has she been, in the running
for this election. She was in it for the money, and only the money.

Surely, her image is not being flaunted as bait for readers. Or is it?