Former congressperson Michele Bachmann says she is waiting to hear back from God about whether to run for the US Senate seat vacated by Al Franken.
Saying she “had people contact me and urge me to run for that Senate seat,” Bachmann told televangelist and convicted felon Jim Bakker last week that she has asked God whether it is “His will” that she run.
“The question is: Am I being called to do this now?” she said, worrying that “the swamp is so toxic.”
Donald Trump’s phrase has become a virtue signal among white evangelical culture warriors. Roy Moore used it in Alabama as a way of conflating the Washington Post with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in a vast establishment conspiracy.
For Bachmann voters, “the swamp” includes every media outlet that would accurately report the crazy things that have come out of her mouth.
“If you stand for biblical principles in DC…the blades come whirring,” Bachmann said. Her public piety is red meat to fellow culture warriors.
I’ve counted 16 lib journos so far tweeting snide mockery of Michele Bachmann for asking God’s help in deciding whether to run for Senate.
Keep openly mocking people who lean on their faith when making momentous life decisions, geniuses.
Marginalize yourselves into oblivion.
— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) January 2, 2018
In a flash of class consciousness, Bachmann complained that she and her husband are “normal people” rather than “money people” who can afford to run for office. But that momentary gleam of insight melted away in the fires of her cultural resentment. When Bachmann describes herself as “normal,” she is projecting a minority view.
Of course, Bachmann may have doubts that her god really is “calling” her to run. If so, the massive Democratic midterm wave building up in America explains her doubts much better than soft whispers from her sky-daddy. Democrat Tina Smith, Minnesota’s lieutenant governor now taking over the Senate seat, might actually prefer to run against Bachmann in the 2018 environment.
Bachmann’s remarks echo an interview she gave to wingnut website World Net Daily eight years ago. Responding to a question about whether she would run for president, she said “If I felt that’s what the Lord was calling me to do, I would do it.”
When I have sensed that the Lord is calling me to do something, I’ve said yes to it. But I will not seek a higher office if God is not calling me to do it. That’s really my standard. If I am called to serve in that realm I would serve, but if I am not called, I wouldn’t do it.
Bachmann had first heard a “call from the Lord” to run for office after she looked at her foster children’s homework and discovered that they were being instructed to identify with children raised in other cultures and religions — quelle horreur! Thus Bachmann was an early adopter of the wall-building, exclusionary conservatism that made Donald Trump possible. (In fact, Stephen Miller — the glowering Nosferatu-like creature running white nationalist immigration policy in the Trump White House — was her press secretary at one time.)
Bachmann was the battiest member of Congress, passing exactly zero legislation, so kooky that her own leadership (“the swamp”) pushed her to the sidelines. She was the loudest purveyor of goofy conspiracy theories that have become “truths” in the pro-Trump echo chamber: she channeled the ghost of Joe McCarthy with an anti-Muslim witch hunt. She accused Huma Abedin of being a Muslim Brotherhood spy. She led Reps. Louie Gohmert and Steve King on a weird, Breitbart-infused mission to Egypt.
Then came her “call” to run for president, a miserable failure that ended after the Iowa Caucus. But as Bachmann explained to Bakker, that was all part of God’s plan to shift the conversation towards repeal of Obamacare.
“I honestly believe I was supposed to run for president,” she said. “I didn’t even run because I thought I was gonna win. I ran to put the issue of Obamacare front and center before the American people.” By using this very low definition of success, “I feel like I was wildly successful,” Bachmann explained. “I felt like, you know, I fulfilled the calling that God gave me.”
Maybe there is a God. Maybe She has a plan. Maybe the plan is for Michele Bachmann to run for Senate and to lose to Tina Smith. After all, Her divine plan was for Roy Moore to win the primary and then lose to Democrat Doug Jones.
We are told that She does move in mysterious ways.
Featured image via Gage Skidmore Flickr under Creative Commons license