On yesterday’s Your World, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) did her part to exploit the White House controversies by a) likening them to Watergate, b) suggesting that the Obama administration stole the election via the IRS, c) calling for the repeal of Obamacare and d) suggesting that President Obama deliberately let four Americans die in Benghazi because he thought it would help him get re-elected. Host Neil Cavuto was on hand to help make her look credible. He introduced her appearance by saying she’s “demanding a lot more answers from the White House and, Congresswoman, you’re saying you’re not getting any, right?”
Bachmann said:
There’s this freaky coincidence across federal agency lines that decision after decision after decision was somehow coincidentally made would further and help the President’s re-election chances last fall, and thereby they were rewarding their political allies while at the same time they were punishing their political opponents. Coincidence? Maybe, but I think now is when we need to get some real answers.”
…I’m a former federal tax litigation attorney for the Treasury Dept. I was an IRS lawyer, and we had very strict jurisdictional limits. It would be impossible for any of us to have gone rogue and do something like we saw within the IRS. This is a tremendous infringement on people’s liberties, and again, think of what’s been happening as you and I speak, there’s a large national database never seen before; the scope and breath and width of all of our personal information …is inputted into that national database. …Because someone is a political opponent of the administration, could they potentially be denied health care or denied access? CMS is supposed to run that data, but what will the interface be with the IRS?
She called those “reasonable questions to ask” and Cavuto didn’t challenge her.
She continued: “My bill is to repeal Obamacare within the next few hours, we are going to repeal Obamacare.”
Cavuto mustered up enough will to make a small challenge: “Even though that likely wouldn’t go any further in the Senate, right?”
Bachmann answered:
Not today under Harry Reid, but I will tell you, the 2014 elections could be very different. We could see a Republican-controlled Senate. ..I believe that if the Senate flips, we will see a repeal through the Senate, and then President Obama will have millions of Americans who have been thrown off their employers health insurance, millions of Americans who are jobless, millions of Americans who have seen spikes in their health insurance premiums, and I think he may have to in an historical setting, repeal his signature piece of legislation that will be bringing so much misery to this economy and millions of Americans.
Cavuto did note that “a lot depends on those midterm elections.” What he didn’t say is that a serious challenge to Bachmann’s own tenure in Congress is already underway. Mother Jones reported last month that the same opponent who narrowly lost to Bachmann in 2012 will run against her again in 2014 and that her opposition feels that starting early is the key to victory this time. Bachmann is also mired in several campaign scandals.
Cavuto also ignored the many benefits of the Affordable Care Act that Bachmann is so eager to undo. Nor did he say a word about how the IRS picked on liberals under George W. Bush.
Instead, Bachmann went on to say she “hopes” it doesn’t come out that President Obama “failed to send in American military rescue support because of his own re-election chances. We’re not saying that’s what is happening. But that would be the worst-case scenario.”
Besides the fact that her unsubstantiated allegation was outrageous on the face of it, it’s contradicted by the Accountability Review Board report on Benghazi:
The interagency response was timely and appropriate, but there simply was not enough time given the speed of the attacks for armed U.S. military assets to have made a difference. Senior-level interagency discussions were underway soon after Washington received initial word of the attacks and continued through the night. The Board found no evidence of any undue delays in decision making or denial of support from Washington or from the military combatant commanders. Quite the contrary: the safe evacuation of all U.S. government personnel from Benghazi twelve hours after the initial attack and subsequently to Ramstein Air Force Base was the result of exceptional U.S. government coordination and military response and helped save the lives of two severely wounded Americans. In addition, at the State Department’s request, the Department of Defense also provided a Marine FAST (Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team) as additional security support for Embassy Tripoli on September 12.
Again, Cavuto gave credence to the crazy. He nodded in understanding as she spoke. “So much we don’t know,” he said agreeably, to close the interview.