Michele Bachmann Wants Obama Spanked and his Imaginary Magic Wand Taken Away

In a video put out by World Net Daily, Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has created another straw man to be bashed down by her, the relentless champion of all that is wholesome about America.

President Barack Obama, she claims, has a “perpetual magic wand,” (as opposed to a one-use magic wand?) and he is using it with impunity. She says Congress needs to take this away from him and give him a spanking.

Watch courtesy of Right Wing Watch:

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“It’s my prediction that the House Republicans could put themselves in a position where they could actually lose the gavel in 2014. Because I think the president, even by executive order, could again wave his magic wand before 2014. And he’d say, ‘Now all of the new legal Americans are going to have voting rights.’ Why do I say that? He did it in 2012. Do you remember?”

No, we don’t remember, because it never happened.

What did happen is that on June 15 of last year, Obama used an executive order, which by no stretch of the imagination (of sane people, at least) is a “magic wand” and gave a temporary reprieve to young people – and not even all of them – to remain in the country another two years, at which point their application must be renewed.

Bachmann insists something very different happened:

Anyone was here as a Latina under age 30, he said you get to vote. What? He decides you get to vote? If he did it in 2012, know — take it to the bank — he’ll do it in 2014.

And then guess what’ll happen? Democrat in the White House. Democrats controlling the Senate. Democrats controlling the House. At that point they will change election law and it will be almost impossible to ever see a Republican majority again. Do we get how important this is? I’m not crying wolf here.

So Obama is going to do something again in 2014 that he never did in 2012? Is that what you want to go with, Michele? You have just invented a bunch of facts, and you’re not crying wolf?

She says the result of Obama’s use of a magic wand will be Democratic presidents and Democratic majorities in Congress (because Latinos will never be stupid enough to vote Republican) and Republicans out of power forever, ignoring the fact that if Obama truly had a magic wand he would not need Democratic majorities.

This is so deliciously Beckian – invent an issue and they cry about nobody talking about it. Hello, Michele, people can’t get outraged about things that exist only in your fevered imagination.

According to Bachmann, the solution to this problem she has invented is that the president’s non-existent “perpetual magic wand” must be “(taken) out of his hand” and he must be given “a spanking” for something he never did.

That’s what Congress needs to do: give the President a major wake up call. And the way we spank the president is we do it through the checkbook. We’re the ones who say, ‘No, you can’t have the money!’

Really? I’m certain nobody by now has noticed how the Republicans have used the checkbook to bring America to a grinding halt since 2008. Does she think there is some checkbook-related measure the GOP has somehow overlooked five years down the road?

Michele Bachmann may be on her way out but her clown car is still on the road, if as out of control as ever. We might forgive honest opposition to his political positions but Bachmann has never had an honest position. Like Glenn Beck’s brain, hers seems to operate outside our shared reality, a distorted Alice in Wonderland-type place where whatever she can imagine becomes real.

When dealing with an audience operating out of the same head-space, that works out just fine. I’m talking about the Republican base, who all seem to prefer some fuzzy fantasy America to the real thing. But you don’t win elections through shared illusions unless everyone is drinking the Kool-Aid.

It is easy to see in all this a reason why the Republicans detest the idea of an educated electorate (educated people see instantly how vapid their arguments are). In a perfect GOP world, they could sell this pabulum like snake oil and every voter would cast worshipful eyes at people like Bachmann and Beck and thank them for being modern-day messiahs.

Republicans will, of course, never forgive President Barack Obama for being a black man in a big white house. We get that. It’s racist and cracker-ignorant but we get it.

But the GOP forgets: sane people vote too.

Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.