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But not that woman

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Normally, our major news media figures are cheerleaders for women candidates. They especially like those who challenge the establishment and who are attractive and bright.

But the announcement she would not seek a fifth term in Congress did not gain much respect for one particular social conservative from our press lords. The Washington Post hailed the announcement by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) as “a shift to the GOP sideline.” The University of Virginia’s Larry Sabato is normally sharper on the numbers. He was quoted as saying of this week’s announcement by Congresswoman Bachmann  that she would likely have lost anyway in a re-match against her 2012 opponent, DFLer* Jim Graves. It’s as if the chattering classes are saying: We want women, but not that woman.

Let’s take Prof. Sabato’s comments first. (Full disclosure: This writer got his degrees from Dr. Sabato’s own U.Va. department of government and foreign affairs.) It’s a commonplace to confuse turnout for presidential years with that of off-year elections. It is true that Rep. Bachmann has had a rough time winning election in Minnesota’s sixth district in presidential years.

This is largely because Minnesota has not voted for a Republican for president since 1972. The turnout is largest in presidential years and this creates a strong undertow for Republican candidates to swim against. Michele Bachmann is a strong swimmer. In 2006, she won her House seat by more than 20,000 votes. And that was in a strong Democratic year nationally. In `08, Minnesota was very excited about Barack Obama’s candidacy, and Rep. Bachmann’s margin against her DFL opponent slipped to just 12,000 votes. The off-year elections of 2010 saw a Republican surge, fueled by the TEA party, and Mrs. Bachmann sailed to re-election by a margin of almost 40,000 votes.

It is true that her 2012 victory margin was perilously close against DFLer Jim Graves. And Mr. Graves was quoted as saying he was surprised only by the timing of Congresswoman Bachmann’s withdrawal announcement. He is champing at the bit to get into the race again.

This story and how it is being treated in the media is important nationally. We cannot ignore the basics in political science. Even in a state like Minnesota, with its admirable record of high voter turnouts, there is a considerable difference between voter participation in off-year elections and presidential elections.

Thus, it is not accurate to say that Virginia, for example, veered sharply conservative in 2009 when Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) was elected in a landslide. That was just one year after Barack Obama became the first Democrat since 1964 to carry the Old Dominion. Had Virginians really moved sharply conservative? Sure, there was dissatisfaction with President Obama’s record in office, and doubtless the unhappy voters were more likely to take their dissatisfactions to the polls.

But even such beloved presidents as Eisenhower and Reagan took a “shellacking” in mid-term elections in 1954, 1958, 1982, and 1986. Considerably lower off-year turnout was the key.

We cannot know how Michele Bachmann would have fared in Minnesota’s Sixth District in 2014.  Minnesotans famously do not like scandal. Both parties in the North Star State have seen their candidates dumped by voters whenever scandal touches them.

The Obama administration is surely beset by scandals today. Media dismissals of Michele Bachmann as a lightweight (by some of the same people who think DFL Gov. Mark Dayton is a heavyweight) will seem less credible now that Attorney General Eric Holder may be poring over their phone records.

The famed Rothman-Lichter study of the prestige press taught us some time back that 91% of journalists never attend a worship service. Thus, many leading writers and TV talking heads find it incomprehensible that someone like Michele Bachmann could even exist in public life. She has never been willing to hide her light under a bushel.

There is something else at work here. The major media always thought the Occupy Movement was a big deal and thought the TEA party was ridiculous, if not downright dangerous.

Michele Bachmann is a darling of the TEA party—and an articulate social conservative. The media is at pains to say that TEA party is all about money. I spent six months on the road last year with the FRC-Heritage Foundation Values Bus. FRC represented social issues; Heritage Foundation the fiscal issues. We found audiences of TEA partiers broadly accepting of both messages.

Compare the media treatment of the TEA party with their embrace of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Marxist professor David Graeber is the historian of the Occupy movement. He recently appeared on C-SPAN’s “Book TV.”

Graeber told interviewer Thomas Frank that at a specific moment last fall, all of his major media interviews were canceled. The major media simply pulled the plug, as if on cue. Thomas Frank, of course, is the sympathetic Marxist professor who wrote What’s the Matter with Kansas?

Prof. Frank’s theme is that Kansas is working class, so Kansans should vote for the party of the workers. But they get distracted by “wedge issues,” like religion, like abortion, like marriage. Those folks in Kansas doubtless need to have their “consciousness raised,” in good Marxian fashion. (I love the fact that these genial lefties are both wearing red socks in their televised tete-à-tete. Helps alert C-SPAN watchers to their principles.)

Did the major media “go dark” on the Occupy Movement last fall, just in time to help President Obama win re-election? Perish the thought. That would probably make me a conspiracy theorist.

Whether it is the collective sigh of relief that they won’t have to worry about covering Michele Bachmann, or their weeks and weeks of not occupying seats reserved for the press at the murder trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell, or their willingness to suddenly shift their focus away from the Occupy Movement when they sensed it might be prejudicial to their preferred candidates’ re-election prospects, the major media are increasingly being exposed for the biased recorders they are.

We can thank Rep. Bachmann for her principled leadership. She determined from the start that she would not take the advice of famed House Speaker Sam Rayburn. That great old Democrat said in order to succeed in the House, you should “go along to get along.” Michele Bachmann remained true to her principles and we can be grateful for that.

[*DFL is the official designation of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, a coalition of parties with a long history in the state’s progressive politics.]


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