Rarely do days go by without some controversial and embarrassing gaffe from Tea Party darling and failed Presidential hopeful Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.). In her last two wins, she and her network of ultra-conservatives probably thought once near certain polling numbers meant she had the latitude to even run for the G.O.P.’s 2012 Presidential nominee with her congressional duties safely on autopilot.

In a “safe” conservative, Republican House district outside of Minneapolis-St.Paul, oft-factually-challenged Rep. Bachmann could spin wild conspiracy tales and keep her $175,000 salary with near impunity. To keep the Tea Party ball rolling, Bachmann is seeking reelection to a third term.

Despite a redistricting, Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District remains fairly safe Republican territory, as well as Bachmann’s $16 million conservative war chest. In past contests, try as they may, Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) nominees always came up short against Michele, the rightie juggernaut.

Why is the Bachmann campaign beginning to panic, except perhaps for the most delusional loyal chanters?

Enter one Jim Graves, a locally based hotel magnate, and thus an unlikely candidate for the center-left DFL party. I guess that, in the competitive realm of politics, someone was bound to challenge Bachmann as king of the hill. As sports broadcasters are wont to say, Bachmann has a real ball game on her hands.

Late night comedy writers and Democratic opposition researchers have long grazed at the record bumper crops of vacillating “Swiss Miss” Bachmann missteps and blunders to keep comedians with a bevy of misstatements and downright gaffes in order to keep audiences rolling in laughter.

Well, this year, Graves’ own company record of creating hospitality industry jobs is starting to make Michele and hubby “Pray Away the Gay” reparative therapist Marcus Bachmann look rather lame as once touted “job creators.” Add to that an undercurrent of district unease at Rep. Bachmann spending more time as a Tea Party fundraiser and glad-handing “Iowa native daughter” Presidential candidate instead of tending the Minnesota constituents’ knitting in Congress, and challenger Graves’ standing in the polls has come within striking distance of sending Michele home in defeat to “create” more “professional homophobe” counseling “jobs” with the election clock running down.

What’s a once unbeatable Tea Party megaphone in Congress to do when her hold on that once “safe” seat starts to look shaky? A conservative candidate might mind her words. Not Bachmann. The gal who once spied gay rights advocates from the State House hedges, and fled a Ladies’ Room fearing the lesbian potty peril instead doubled down on the crazy.

Never mind that Bachmann’s legendary inability to control her own staff’s high turnover. Forget her oblivious handle on factual information, as when she sounded the alarm with wildly exaggerated reported “costs” of the President’s trade and diplomacy trip to India. A HPV fighting, cervical cancer preventing vaccine for girls “causes mental retardation”, according to Bachmann’s heard hearsay. I probably could write a book on Rep. Bachmann’s multitude of fact-challenged gaffes.

“Free enterprise” chanter Michele attacks Graves’ being a successful millionaire hotelier. Rich, given Bachmann’s latest financial disclosure that SHE’s a millionaire, but her money didn’t come from producing a winning product or service.

What’s next, Michele? Jim Graves is a cross-dressing lesbian Anti-Christ? Huma Abedin as bin Laden’s Secret Santa?

As one headline put it: “Bye Bye Bachmann.”



