Bachmann Wins "Craziest Person In Congress" Contest!

by William Prendergast


The place: the Daily Kos, one of America’s most widely read political blogs, crawling with liberals and progressives and leftists and Bush haters from all over the United States.

The challenge: name a member of Congress who is crazier than my crazy congresswoman, Michele Bachmann (R-MN, 6th District).

I set up the challenge because I’d written about Michele on the Kos before. I described her in the headers as “My Crazy Congresswoman,” and I claimed that most people would know, from that phrase alone, that article was going to be about Bachmann.

Well, some of the Kos contributors took exception to that claim. A couple of them had the nerve to claim that *their* congressional representatives were nuttier than Bachmann.

Okay, I said—put up or shut up. Let’s see what you’ve got, folks. If you’ve got a congressional representative who’s said or done more "crazy things" than Bachmann—on the record, in the news—I want to see 'em. I sent in my proof, and I asked them to send their proof, so we could settle this like men.

The response to the challenge was overwhelming, given the fact that I’ve only been writing in to the Kos for a month and nobody knows or cares who the f I am. Here are some of the names that were entered:

Tom Tancredo (R-CO, 6th District) kept coming up regularly. Representative Tancredo has apparently suggested bombing Mecca and adopting a policy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) against the Muslim world. He has helped to found the "Americans Have Had Enough" Coalition and appeared at one of their functions to sing "Dixie" wearing a Confederate officer’s uniform. (Tancredo’s a pretty good entry, I must admit. Trying to revive the MAD doctrine to ensure the destruction of billions of Muslims if we are once again subjected to a terrorist attack, and singing Dixie while wearing a Confederate officer’s uniform—well, that certainly puts you in the Michele class. But it does not make you the champ.)

Steve King (R-IA) sounds like a contender. According to a commenter on Kos, King has:
...compared Abu Ghraib to a frat party.
...insisted that Baghdad was safer than Washington DC.
...played with a Lego border wall on the House floor.
...equated illegal immigrants with serial rapists and cattle.
...professed his admiration for Joe McCarthy, "American hero."
(Not bad, not bad. But when I looked at the footage on C-Span, it wasn't really a "Lego" wall. It was little wall, with pieces that fit together, and tiny little barbed wire. He might have been a contender if the wall had actually been "Lego" and if it had tiny little Mexican action figures climbing over it.)

Another Kos commenter insisted that he had won because Dan Burton (R-IN) was crazier than Michele. He reported that Burton had attempted to feel up a Planned Parenthood representative and once invited reporters into his backyard to watch him shoot a watermelon with a pistol (to prove that Bill Clinton had Vince Foster murdered.)

He noted the extraordinarily sleazy nature of Burton’s career; extraordinary since Burton had been chair of the House Government Reform Committee. (But "endless sleaze" does not equal "craziness." I gave Burton big points for inviting the national press over to his house to watch him shooting up a watermelon (which, in his mind, proved that Clinton was a murderer.) Very, very good, but simply not enough to get you into the Bachmann League. One swallow does not a summer make; one home run doesn’t make you Ted Williams.)

Among the other suggested contenders were Sue Myrick (NC-9), Virginia Foxx (NC-5), and of course "Mean Jean Schmidt" (R-OH). Schmidt is the one who drew national attention to herself by suggesting that 38 year Marine Corp veteran Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) was a cowardly, cut-and-run type. (Okay, that’s stupid and mean and represents the worst in politics—but "crazy?" As for other contenders, it’s no good just to send in the name, you got to give the evidence to play.)

But at the end of the day, I had to declare Bachmann the winner(so far)--on the basis of the sheer weight of documented evidence that I provided when I entered her name in the lists. I gave ten examples of things she’d said and done, on the record—and it blew the competition away. (examples included her claim that God sent her visions and told her to study tax law, the fact that she made up a new terrorist states during a newspaper interview, telling a radio audience that the Minnesota public schools were going to teach homosexuality—all that stuff put us way over the top at the outset, and we stayed there.)

Tancredo and King were good, but even their supporters couldn’t come close to providing ten-plus documented incidents of craziness by a single legislator. Even fans of other crazy legislators were finally forced to bow down (reluctantly) to Bachmann.

WE WON! (Picture Michele and me on the dais, I'm holding her hand up in the air; we’re smiling—still the champions. Cue the balloons, confetti and tickertape, music: Heart, singing: “Let me go Crrraaaaazy On You! Let me go Craaaaazy On You!”)

And we fought with one hand tied behind our backs. There was a lot of other documented stuff I could have used. But I didn’t use it—the quotes on why evolution is bullshit, the "let’s keep the nuke option available for Iran," etc. We didn’t even have to go there, to clinch the title.

But Michele and I will go there--if we have to--to keep the crown. (It is an actual crown, by the way. It is made out of tin foil and has twinkling Christmas lights and keeps the aliens from taking over her mind.) And remember—Bachmann’s only been in Congress three months. Keep watching the skies...