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John Colson: Hit and Run

John Colson
Aspen Times Weekly
Aspen, CO Colorado

Seems like we just did this, but here comes the much ballyhooed Iowa straw poll for the 2012 presidential race.

As I write this, the straw poll is days away. As you read this, it either is taking place (Sunday, Aug. 14) or is already consigned to the trash heap of political history.

Which is to say, you know more than I do. Don’t you just love the interplay between writing deadlines and real-time understanding?



Anyway, I’m sitting here wondering whether Michele Bachman’s seeming inability to deal with her marriage vows will translate into a deserved trouncing on Sunday.

For those of you who thought you didn’t care, Bachman has been battling with pundits over her statements about how a wife should be “submissive” to her husband, and questions about whether she will follow that Christian dictum if she wins the White House.




One questioner asked her point blank about the issue at the recent Iowa Republican presidential debate, and her response was, essentially, that in her lexicon “submissiveness” means “respect.”

“I respect my husband,” she has been quoted as saying.

So, what exactly does that mean? Is she already practicing the kind of shuck and jive that seems to be the only way politicians can relate to the world? If she won the election, would we actually be electing her husband, Marcus, to run the U.S.? Or would we truly be electing a rather vicious tea-bagger, a devotee of the Politics Of No whose main accomplishments in her five years in Congress appears to be that she didn’t do much.

At least that’s the view of one of her opponents, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who is desperately trying to prove he’s got political heft and accused Bachman of a “do-nothing” career in Congress.

Oh, right, she rabidly opposed anything President Obama ever proposed. That’s her explanation of her non-performance in Congress, not mine.

Lest we forget, however, Bachman did propose at least one bill in Congress, the “Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act, arguing that citizens should have the right to choose conventional incandescent bulbs over compact fluorescent lightbulbs. This weighty bit of legislative fluff came in response to proposals to effectively ban incandescents in favor of the longer-lasting CFLs. Good going, Michele.

Interestingly, Bachman initially opposed former President George W. Bush’s plan to increase troop levels in Iraq, back when she was a freshman legislator in 2006.

Oh, I almost forgot. She went to Iraq in 2007 (along with a few other places) and decided the “troop surge” she had once opposed was, a year later, a good idea.

So, she’s a good Republican who apparently doesn’t have much of a political backbone except when it comes to ravaging any idea every proposed by the Democrats.

Now, isn’t that just what we need in the Oval Office? Someone who has no interest in anyone else’s’ opinions besides her own, whose personal theme is “My Way or the Highway?”

What else is there about Michele that seems a little off-key to me?

Raised as a Lutheran, she switched to an evangelical church this year, shortly before she officially kicked off her presidential bid, and now says she does not agree with her former church’s belief that the Pope is the Anti-Christ.

First off, I couldn’t care less whether the Pope is God’s lieutenant on Earth or is really the Devil. God, the Devil, the Anti-Christ- all these are just fabrications by power-mad priests eager to scare the masses into submission.

Oops, there’s that word again.

Could it be that Bachman declines to be “submissive” to the edicts from Rome, and that’s why she switched pulpits this year?

But, wait, she also has been quoted as saying, “I love Catholics,” a declaration that, tellingly, she did not follow up with the assertion, “Some of my best friends…”

To say the least, Sunday in Iowa should be quite a time.

jcolson@aspentimes.com