Clownette-in-Chief

Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) -- Congressional "Clownette-in-Chief" -- is at it again. She's on a roll, rarely passing a day without some choice bit of nuttiness.

I know, I know. The best way to counter such ignorant, attention-grabbing silliness is to ignore it. But she's just so jaw-droppingly absurd that it's hard to resist poking fun at her.

Her latest, shared by TPM:

On Monday night, our friends at Dump Bachmann reported, Bachmann took to the House floor and paid tribute to the economic policies of Calvin Coolidge and the "Roaring 20s" (the era that ended with a massive monetary contraction and the Great Depression). One particular line really does stand out, though -- saying Franklin Roosevelt turned a recession into a depression through the "Hoot-Smalley" tariffs.

Here's what really happened: When Franklin Roosevelt took office, unemployment was already about 25%. And the tariff referred to here was actually the Smoot-Hawley bill, co-authored by Republicans Sen. Reed Smoot of Utah and Rep. Willis Hawley of Oregon, and signed into law by President Herbert Hoover.

She intrigues me. Can she really be this stupid and silly? Or is it an anti-intellectualism act that the Republican voters in her district like?

Is this what Minnesota voters really prefer? In a state that once was a progressive leader with its Democratic-Labor-Farm Party and gave us Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale?

She would seem more at home here in Georgia, with our tradition of political clowns such as Lester Maddox, Saxby Chambless, and (bless his heart) good ole' boy Roscoe Dean, who never did anything to distinguish himself but kept getting re-elected because his rural constituents appreciated the birthday card he sent each one every year.

Well, that's not quite true. Roscoe wanted to make his mark, so he got a colleague to write a speech for him to give on the State Senate floor. Roscoe got up and read the speech. When he came to the part where his speech-writer had inserted [now tell a joke], Roscoe just kept on reading, "now tell a joke," and didn't seem to realize what he'd done until the house erupted in laughter. He made his mark as a clown.

Ralph