Reason Rejoices!

Reason, Rationality and Sanity are planning a gala celebration to mark the announcement today that Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota) is retiring from office: Huff Post. While claiming her support for term limits is the reason she is calling it quits after eight years in office, charges of corruption and a two-point deficit to the opponent she barely sneaked past in the election last year appear to be playing a large role. Bachmann, one of the most visible members of the Tea Party and a failed Presidential candidate, has been fodder for liberal critics for her entire time in office. Let’s take a look back at some of her most memorable moments:

 

·        Criticized fellow GOP Presidential candidate Rick Perry for supporting an HPV vaccination for teenage girls, claiming it could cause mental retardation.

·        Claimed in October 2006 that “a majority of the scientific community” discredit evolution.

·        Earlier this year, refused to take back her comment that the Obama Administration ran a “gangster government”: “I don't take back my statements on gangster government. I think that there have been actions taken by the government that are corrupt."

·        Speaking about the financial regulatory reform legislation proposed in 2012, she argued: "Let's remember really what this is. This has a lot in common with Italy in the 1930s and the way Italy dealt with economics. It still continues private ownership of business but government is in control. So government control of private business, while it's private ownership, that's still at the end of the day the federal government virtually having a say over private business. We lose freedoms; we lose economic competitiveness.” Then she reminded us … "And don't forget, Italy is in tough shape financially, and that's not what we want for the United States." Of course, arguing Mussolini’s policies affect one of the most corrupt governments in the world today is unquestionable, isn’t it?

·        Bachmann got a little confused about Revolutionary history when she claimed New Hampshire was where the “shot heard round the world” was fired. When caught in the act of this absurd error, she used it as an opportunity to decry the “double standard” of the media.

·        After citing John Jay’s incantation “'We are determined to live free or not at all. And we are resolved that posterity shall never reproach us with having brought slaves into the world,'" she added … "We will talk a little bit about what has transpired in the last 18 months and would we count what has transpired into turning our country into a nation of slaves."

·        In attacking the widely popular bipartisan Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, Bachmann claimed it was a cleverly veiled plot to create “reeducation camps” where young Americans “forced to work for the government” would be proselytized to liberal philosophy.

 

And a few quotes for the road (all false) …

 

The IRS is going to be "in charge" of "a huge national database" on health care that will include Americans’ "personal, intimate, most close-to-the-vest-secrets."

"Scientists tell us that we could have a cure in 10 years for Alzheimer's" were it not for "overzealous regulators, excessive taxation and greedy litigators."

Of every "three dollars in food stamps for the needy, seven dollars in salaries and pensions (go to) the bureaucrats who are supposed to be taking care of the poor."

"After the debate that we had last week, PolitiFact came out and said that everything I said was true."

"Under Barack Obama's watch, we have expended $805 billion to liberate the people of Iraq and, more importantly, 4,400 American lives."