Mitt Romney Is More Of An American Girl Than Michele Bachmann

I'm torn when it comes to exposing witless reactionary neanderthal Michele Bachmann's unsuitability as a major party presidential nominee. First of all, she's perfectly suited for the Republican Party nomination; she is what they have turned themselves into. Second... well, what would be the point? To make it easier for Romney to paint himself as the moderate alternative between the Communistic Obama and the fascist Bachmann, when in fact Romney is a pluperfect fascist candidate and Bachmann is just stark raving mad or, as Chris Wallace put it in what may or may not have been a moment of candor, "a flake."

All week I've been meaning to comment on Bachmann's intellectual property theft of the Tom Petty song, "American Girl." But, again, to what end? Let Romney do his own campaigning. Republicans always steal song usage from liberal musicians. Bush (Petty's "I Won't Back Down"), Palin ("Barracuda" by Heart), Reagan (Springsteen's "Born in the USA"), McCain (Jackson Browne's "Running On Empty" and John Mellencamp's "Pink Houses"). And they get cease and desist orders and get sued but they just keep on stealing. It's what Republicans do. It's in their political DNA. By the way, Hillary Clinton asked Petty for permission to use "American Girl" in her campaign, and he agreed and she used it.

While trying to research the Petty-Bachmann brouhaha, I came across another Rolling Stone feature that I thought worth referencing. It's the real Michele Bachmann story-- and written by America's most perceptive political commentator, Matt Taibbi. And it's decidedly not the story Petty told in "American Girl," the song that started to break the unknown Florida boy's career wide open nationally.

Young Michele found Jesus at age 16, not long before she went away to Winona State University and met a doltish, like-minded believer named Marcus Bachmann. After finishing college, the two committed young Christians moved to Oklahoma, where Michele entered one of the most ridiculous learning institutions in the Western Hemisphere, a sort of highway rest area with legal accreditation called the O.W. Coburn School of Law; Michele was a member of its inaugural class in 1979.

Originally a division of Oral Roberts University, this august academy, dedicated to the teaching of "the law from a biblical worldview," has gone through no fewer than three names-- including the Christian Broadcasting Network School of Law. Those familiar with the darker chapters in George W. Bush's presidency might recognize the school's current name, the Regent University School of Law. Yes, this was the tiny educational outhouse that, despite being the 136th-ranked law school in the country, where 60 percent of graduates flunked the bar, produced a flood of entrants into the Bush Justice Department.

Regent was unabashed in its desire that its graduates enter government and become "change agents" who would help bring the law more in line with "eternal principles of justice," i.e., biblical morality. To that end, Bachmann was mentored by a crackpot Christian extremist professor named John Eidsmoe, a frequent contributor to John Birch Society publications who once opined that he could imagine Jesus carrying an M16 and who spent considerable space in one of his books musing about the feasibility of criminalizing blasphemy.

This background is significant considering Bachmann's leadership role in the Tea Party, a movement ostensibly founded on ideas of limited government. Bachmann says she believes in a limited state, but she was educated in an extremist Christian tradition that rejects the entire notion of a separate, secular legal authority and views earthly law as an instrument for interpreting biblical values. As a legislator, she not only worked to impose a ban on gay marriage, she also endorsed a report that proposed banning anyone who "espoused or supported Shariah law" from immigrating to the U.S. (Bachmann seems so unduly obsessed with Shariah law that, after listening to her frequent pronouncements on the subject, one begins to wonder if her crazed antipathy isn't born of professional jealousy.)

This discrepancy may account for why some Tea Party leaders don't buy Bachmann as a champion of small government. "Michele Bachmann is-- what's the old-school term?-- a poser," says Chris Littleton, an Ohio Tea Party leader troubled by her support of the Patriot Act and other big-government interventions. "Look at her record and see how 'Tea Party' she really is."

When Bachmann finished her studies in Oklahoma, Marcus instructed her to do her postgraduate work in tax law-- a command Michele took as divinely ordained. She would later profess to complete surprise at God's choice for her field of study. "Tax law? I hate taxes," she said. "Why should I go and do something like that?" Still, she sucked it up and did as she was told. "The Lord says: Be submissive, wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands."

Nope, not Petty's American Girl by any stretch of the imagination... except in Michele Bachmann's.

P.S.: NOAH'S BEEN THINKING ABOUT MICHELE TOO

Coming up at 10am PT: "It’s The Bachmanns! A Brand-New Show in a Brand-New Genre: Horror-Comedy!"

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