Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is one of Minnesota’s most effective spokesmen for conservatism, so our local media have collaborated with Democrats in trying to defeat her. The most recent attack on Michele arose out of my radio show last Saturday.
One of her staffers emailed us to ask if she could come on the show to talk about some public meetings she will be sponsoring in her district on the Obama administration’s cap and trade legislation. We said sure, and I interviewed Michele for ten or twelve minutes. She explained some of the evils of cap and trade, and said that she is bringing an expert on the subject to speak at two meetings, one in St. Cloud and one in Woodbury. She encouraged the public to attend.
Not very controversial, one would think. But here is the headline in today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune: “Obama’s energy cap-and-trade plan has Bachmann talking about a revolution.” If you read far enough, you find that she was quoting Thomas Jefferson:
“Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing, and the people — we the people — are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country,” Bachmann said in the interview on WWTC-AM.
She said it with a laugh, and I don’t think any of our listeners misunderstood her call for a taxpayer’s revolt against the disastrous policies of the Obama administration. The Strib wove the Jefferson quote together with Bachmann’s statement that she wants “people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back.” As the paper implicitly acknowledges, Michele was saying that she wants citizens armed with information, which is why they should attend one of her public meetings with the cap and trade expert.
All in all, this shouldn’t be fodder for a scare headline; and it wouldn’t be if it didn’t fit the local paper’s campaign against a politician with whom it fervently disagrees. It’s not hard to understand why Bachmann cruises to victory after victory, while the Star Tribune is in bankruptcy.
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