An open letter to Representative Michele Bachmann

From: Michele Bachmann
Date: September 16, 2010 3:38:57 PM CDT
Subject: Bill Clinton's personal attack

Dear Fellow Conservative,

Bill Clinton is on the attack.

This week, while hosting a fundraiser for my opponent Tarryl Clark, Bill Clinton attacked me personally. Not only did he refer to me as "stupid," but he accused me of "putting ideology over evidence."

I need your help to defend myself right away. This is yet another example of how the liberal Democrat establishment has put a target on my back for defeat. They'll say and do anything. The comments from Bill Clinton have hit a new low and I must have the resources to defend myself and fight back.

Will you follow this link to make an emergency contribution of $25 or more to help me fight back against Bill Clinton's attacks?

I am proud of my record and I refuse to be bullied into silence by Bill Clinton. Liberals across the country believe if they defeat me in November, the Tea Party movement will be eliminated. So every big name liberal is coming out of the woodwork to raise money for my opponent. Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean, Barack Obama, Walter Mondale, and now Bill Clinton -- have all helped my opponent build up a multi-million dollar war chest to attack me and our values. I won't back down and today, I need to know you stand with me.

Will you help me send a message to Bill Clinton that I am not going anywhere? Will you help me deliver this message loud and clear by making a contribution of $25, $50, $100, $250 or any amount up to the $2,400 limit?

Every day, we get word of a new leftist organization dumping money into my race. We just got word this morning that Big Labor is contacting voters in my district with misleading statements attacking me. They join the extreme pro-abortion group EMILY's List, the radical environmental lobby and hosts of others who have jumped on the "attack Michele bandwagon." Their only aim is to defeat me and squash the growing Tea Party movement.

Clinton, Pelosi, Obama and the rest of the liberal establishment are in panic mode as Tea Party candidates across the country rise up against their socialist government. We must continue to fight! Please make an immediate contribution to show these liberals we are stronger than they are and that we will not be silenced!

Your encouragement and prayers mean so much to me and I hope I can continue counting on your support.

Sincerely,



Michele Bachmann

P.S. While hosting a fundraiser for my opponent, Bill Clinton took the opportunity to attack me personally by calling me and other Tea Party activists "stupid." The liberal left loves Bill Clinton and I have no doubt the fundraiser raised a pretty penny for my opponent, so I need your immediate help to fight back against Bill Clinton's attacks and the influx of cash into my opponent's war chest. Will you help me defend myself with an immediate contribution of $25, $50, $100, $250 or more? Please don't sit on the sidelines and allow Clinton's attacks to go unanswered!

Paid for by Bachmann for Congress
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Dear Representative Bachmann,

I am surprised to agree with you when you suggest it was improper and gratuitous for former President Clinton to make various accusations above and beyond calling you "stupid." Personally, I would have left it at that at this point, or perhaps merely added a qualifier such as "fucking stupid" or maybe even "really fucking stupid." For Mr. Clinton to suggest that you place "ideology over evidence" is truly unfair, insofar as "ideology" implies that you have some sort of more-or-less coherent worldview or ethos that guides you, as opposed to possessing a grab-bag of soundbites and cynical positions taken to appeal to some uneducated jackass somewhere. At this point, I'm very skeptical towards the notion that you are principled enough to have an ideology, and Mr. Clinton was wrong to imply that you are.

I doubt, however, that Mr. Clinton's comments truly constitute a "new low." I'm sorry to have to point this out, but I'm pretty sure lots of other people have said meaner things about you, and in public, too. There are whole websites, in fact, dedicated to criticizing you, such as Michele Bachmann Said What?! and The Dump Bachmann Blog (they appear to be against your re-election). Here's a webpage that points out you bear a striking resemblance to Bat Boy, the little fellow who (if you don't know) is the iconic mascot of the Weekly World News, and I have to admit the resemblance is... uncanny. Have you ever been to West Virginia? But then, I think you know this, since you have cannily used claims you're being persecuted as campaign fodder in e-mails like this one; poor you, if people stopped saying mean things about you, you might have to come up with a campaign platform and pay for more advertising and everything.

(To that extent, then, you may consider this my campaign contribution, Representative.)

I have some ideas as to how I ended up on your spam list; suffice it to say, I'm not a "fellow conservative" and I think somebody thought he was being funny. And he was being funny, though (if I'm right) not in the way I suspect he thought he was being funny: I think the idea was that your spam mail would annoy me or make me gripe, when I've largely found it funny and sort of a window onto the murky waters of the other side. I get your spam in my junk box, and I get a nice laugh out of it, along with a sense of what you say to your supporters when you're not in front of a camera--the kinds of claims you make to raise funds--and now I'm getting a blog post out of it, another edition in a series largely devoted to silly e-mails from crooked people who are trying to trick others into sending them money.

I think it's adorable how you and those like you respond to criticism, valid or not, by saying people are trying to bully you into silence (I almost said "your ilk" but just the other day Roger Ebert tweeted that this would expose me as a conservative, so I guess I shouldn't). I guess I could accuse you of hypocrisy, since you say mean things about opponents all the time. But why would I bother? I mean, you have every right to be critical of others, and even if some of the critical things you say are outright lies, well... well that's a little more complicated, what with ethics and defamation law and all that jazz, but within that framework, it's a free country and all that. And that's the real point, actually: I don't much care if you're a lying hypocrite, Representative Bachmann, because, honestly, you've taught me to expect that of you; I just wanted to say Mr. Clinton has a right to say you're stupid. And I think he could've said worse things about you without crossing any lines.

I also kind of wanted to say that you're pretty far off base about a lot of what you say liberals want. I realize I have no chance of convincing you otherwise, but then again I don't know if you even believe a quarter of what you put out under your name. I'm not sure you do. But, anyway, someone might be surfing Google and they might see this, and maybe that person is better than you are.

First, let me say that I don't think any liberal thinks defeating you (or anyone else) will make the Tea Parties go away. Gosh, don't we wish! But no, I'm afraid they're not going anywhere, and it certainly worries me.

Second, defeating you isn't our "only aim." When you say that, you're just being narcissistic and paranoid. We'd like to defeat everybody like you and try to make America a better, more thoughtful, kinder, more prosperous place. We'd like to make sure everyone can get a living wage and has enough to eat and a roof over their heads and medical care and an education, etc., and you just happen to be in the way. Sorry. It really isn't anything personal.

Third, y'know, I can't really say the liberal left (and is that redundant?) "loves Bill Clinton." Some of us do, I know, but a lot of us thought he was a bit of a disappointment. Let me put it to you this way: if the liberal left loved Bill Clinton, then in 2000, Al Gore would have run his campaign on "BILL'S MY MAN!" and not on "I hardly know the guy, we just worked together for a few years and he did his thing and I did mine," and then all of us who voted for Ralph Nader or stayed home or whatever would have gone and voted for Gore and things in close states like Florida probably would have turned out a lot differently. But a lot of us thought Clinton was sleazy and some of us thought he fucked up healthcare and gay rights and was too cozy with corporate donors and a little too-willing to start shooting up the Middle East (and how ironic is that in retrospect, eh?) and so we all threw our votes away in one way or another. And here's the really funny part, which is that most of Clinton's rehabilitation with the left is really the result of your guy, W. Bush, because in retrospect all the pragmatism and centrism looks at least reasonable if not actually progressive when compared to the guy who drove the country into the ditch after he took the wheel from ol' Bill: the rocket strikes seem preferable to invading Iraq, the lying about sex seems tame compared to lying about WMDs, at least the cushy treatment of corporate donors wasn't as bad as having all these conflict-of-interest-ey deals with thugs like Haliburton, etc., and above-all at least the economy was doing well enough for everyone on the left to have the luxury of grappling with moral and ethical quandaries. It's kind of like what happened to Nixon after Ford-Carter-Reagan: hey, maybe Nixon was evil, but at least the sweaty little fucker mostly had his shit together.

So keep sending me the e-mails. It costs me as much to skim them whenever I feel like bothering as it does for you to send them, and after this blog post, I've now gotten more out of them than you ever will.

Cheers,
R. Eric VanNewkirk
Standing On The Shoulders Of Giant Midgets