Michele Bachmann is an idiot, but she’s not stupid. She can’t reason, but she knows what she’s saying. So when she says that an earthquake and a hurricane are messages from God that DC liberals just can’t hear, don’t believe her later when she says that she was just kidding.
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Republicans, and especially evangelical fundamentalists, know how to speak to one another in code. They are fully aware that they can only spread their ignorance across the whole continent, subsuming even the coastal populations and our greatest cities, if the tripe they peddle is dressed up as something more palatable to those less crazed than the religious right.
In teabagger circles, it’s okay for Bachmann to be batshit crazy; indeed, she has to be batshit crazy to get a nod from the contemporary Republican electorate. But batshit crazy doesn’t sell so well in purple states; one must communicate with the batshit set and keep Pennsylvania in play at the same time.
Here is part of Wikipedia’s entry on ‘dog whistle politics’:
Journalist Craig Unger writes that President George W. Bush and Karl Rove used coded “dog-whistle” language in political campaigning, delivering one message to the overall electorate while at the same time delivering quite a different message to a targeted evangelical Christian political base.
One group of alleged code words in the United States is claimed to appeal to racism of the intended audience. The phrase “states’ rights,” although literally referring to powers of individual state governments in the United States, was described by David Greenberg in Slate as “code words” for institutionalized segregation and racism. In 1981, former Republican Party strategist Lee Atwater gave an interview discussing the matter, quoted:
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968, you can’t say “nigger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”
It was fully to be expected that Bachmann, after blowing a dog whistle that her evangelical base would hear clearly, would wink and nod at the mainstream media and say oh, just kidding … don’t mind me. 
Right-wing pols persistently whitewash their own beliefs, knowing that they can only sell their program if the consumer doesn’t know what she’s buying. It’s backdoor evangelism. And the whitewash is splashed over right-wing dogmas and fairytales because millions of voters would be horrified to behold the unvarnished reality: people like George W. Bush and Michele Bachmann really do think that their gut feelings come from Jesus; they really do think that America would work better as a theocracy; they really do think that the rich are blessed and the poor are cursed; and they really will make foreign-policy decisions with prophesies of the End Times at the fore of their consciousness.
Bachmann was not kidding when she talked about God sending natural disasters; she was talking to her base. And once they’d been clued into her ‘thinking,’ she pivoted to a saner audience and said she’d been kidding. Look for the mindless mainstream media to buy it. And when Rick Perry is the Republican nominee for president, look for the mainstream media to keep on buying it.
-Brendan Beery
Robert Post
August 31, 2011
Bachman went on to say, if I recall correctly, that God’s was trying to make the point that politicians should “listen to America”. To Baggers, America means Tea Party America, since all other Americans are not “real”, “true”, patriotic Americans but foreign, socialist, Kenyan, muslim, fetus-murdering anti-Americans who are not as in love with America as Rick Perry and Michelle Bachman. God could only make himself heard, of course, by causing calamities and natural disasters that destroy billions of dollars of property and kill people. Whatever happened to the burning bush? Is there no finger to write upon the wall, in words of flame, “You have been weighed in the balance and found to be un-American?”
Vicky Enea
August 31, 2011
In an unusually busy week of in-depth telephone interviews, Helga Hewston talks to republican presidential candidate and so-called ‘Queen of Rage’, Michele Bachmann, at her family home in Minnesota. Criticized for her anti-gay and pro-life stance, Mrs Bachmann has recently been in the news for associating extreme weather systems in America with divine anger at Washington.
Helga: Mrs Bachmann, in your speeches, you infer that God is showing his disapproval of Obama’s government by sending earthquakes and hurricanes. You don’t really believe this do you?
M.B: Call me Michele or Mrs President! You know, Helga the American people are angry, and we are sick and tired of Washingt…
Helga: uh-huh, whatever. So Mrs Bachmann, isn’t your view rather erm,…unchristian-like?
M. B: Well, every speech that I make, I pray about, as does my husband. Did you see my neat picture on the front cover of Newsweek?
Helga: No. Is this the same husband who has a string of ‘Pray Away The Gay’ clinics and describes gays as “barbarians who need to be disciplined”?
M.B: Yes, isn’t Marcus a wonderful godly man? Do you know that some liberal types are suggesting that secretly he’s a homosexual?
Helga: Hmmm. So, why is ‘Mincing Marcus’ so virulently anti-gay – are the rumors true?
M.B: You know Helga, the American people are ANGRY right now!! Are you aware of the fact that I have 5 children and 23 foster children?
Helga: Oh yes, your foster children – they were all girls right? Is that because, as some have suggested, Marcus couldn’t be trusted with b….?
M.B: HAVE TO RUN! Marcus and I are hosting a BBQ to celebrate Elvis’ birthday
Helga: Would that be Elvis, whose birthday is in January?
M.B: Hey it’s starting to pour down…wow! Windy too….OH MY GOD, my utility room has just been hit by LIGHTNING !!!!!…..forgot…..iron….Marcus’ …..pink shirt………before………cut…off…………………………..
Helga: Hello? Mrs Bachmann! Mrs Bachmann?? Are you there? No…I see now, you’re not all there, are you?
William
August 31, 2011
Praise the Lawduh, I have finally seen the light.
The celestial impact which caused the extinction of the Dinosaurs was an expression of God’s anger with the homosexuality rampant among their masses. What I still don’t understand is, what did the moon do? Whenever I look up on a clear night, I see the man in the moon, a feature which comes as a result of impact craters. This would suggest that God was really pissed at the moon to keep throwing rocks at it.
Can anyone help me here?
beeryblog
August 31, 2011
Well, I’ve always thought the moon was kinda gay with all its glowiness. And the moon shone on the homer-sexial dinos just like the god-fearing dinos, so it tolerated their existence. Shame on the moon!
Guy Boucher
August 31, 2011
LOL!
Bob
August 31, 2011
You start out in 1980 saying “welfare queen, welfare queen, welfare queen” and “abortion, abortion, abortion” and “government is the problem”. By 2009 that starts to hurt you, so you say stuff like “individual freedom” and “rights”. You claim Christians are being oppressed and the results of deregulation and the economic policies of your own previous administrations prove government has already failed and debt will destroy the country because of social programs and unions. At this point you’re talking about different totally abstract things and a byproduct is that the working and lower middle classes get hurt worse than the upper. But one way or another we’re doing away with the messy concept of a democratic Republic – you follow me? Because all this stuff is more abstract than saying the upper classes and corporate interests want an empire and don’t want to invest in the people or improve the infrastructure and don’t want rules to stop them from hurting the environment or economy or exploiting cheap labor in other countries or anything else.
How much farther can this go?
beeryblog
August 31, 2011
This is a great update of Atwater’s quote!
Irwin B. Platzner
August 31, 2011
Bachmann speaks with forked tongue!!!
Guy Boucher
August 31, 2011
She believes in the word of God? Maybe she forgot the part that says the meek shall inherit the earth…
Robert Post
August 31, 2011
Who is “The Base”, really? We know that it’s the same-old, same-old right wing of the Republican party, and that the Tea Party faction is largely evangelical Christian. That leaves out Jews, Catholics, Muslims, and Mormons, as well as all other religious and philisophical groups. But beyond longing for more deep-South Christian religion in government, what do these unhappy white folks really want. They are deeply nostalgic for some time in the past when white folks like them ran the country, and uppity niggers knew their place and America was the unchallenged supreme power on earth. Most would like to go back at least to the 1950′s and the rosy-cheeked Norman Rockwell vision of small town America. Some would like to go back further. Ron Paul proudly boasted of how the folks of Galveston, TX in 1910 managed to recover from the storm on their own, without no stinkin’ FEMA or helping hand from the Federal gummint. Rachel Maddow pointed out that about 8000 people died, in that worst of US catastrophes, and there were so many bodies that they couldn’t be buried, so they had to be stacked up and burned. The gummint passed out barrels of whiskey to the burial parties, so at least they could be drunk while they worked. Yep, those were the self-reliant, libertarian good old days.
Rick Perry would like to go back to about 1859, when the idea of secession was the suggested remedy for the excesses of Washington and it’s job-killing, anti-slavery ideas. Perry ,of course, is nostalgic for the good-old states-rights Confederacy, whose world view he deeply shares. Michelle Bachman yearns for the Constitution of 1789 and a bunch of founding fathers who never existed – fighting to eliminate slavery and determined to uphold every man’s right to possess automatic weapons.
In other words, Bachman and the Tea Party are all about nostalgia for various worlds that never really existed or were far more complex, dangerous and difficult than the Bagger fantasy vision. These nice folks are happy to be manipulated by the rich and the mega-corporations….just so long as they get the nigger out of the White House and the 21st Century out of their lives.
beeryblog
August 31, 2011
Yep … and it really is time for the MSM and the general population to get a clue about the term ‘states’ rights.’ It means tribalism and racism, plain and simple. There is no call for getting all frothy-mouthed over the ‘rights’ of an inanimate entity like a state unless there’s a lot more going on than federalism, which I’d venture to say most Baggers couldn’t explain if you gave them a civics book to read about it from.
Ric Bauer
August 31, 2011
Keep up the good work!
ami
August 31, 2011
I read this and wept–
http://news.yahoo.com/9-11-coloring-book-criticized-depiction-muslims-011401931.html
pboyfloyd
August 31, 2011
The trouble with the, “God is showing us the way.” bullshit is that it is a one-sided argument.
Why, for example, isn’t it obvious that God is telling us that we’re wrong to be fighting in Afghanistan? How obvious does God need to make it, it’s bankrupting us. Nono, God doesn’t work by bankrupting us, he works by blowing the wind around and shaking the earth and such.
Apparently God works through his little helpers to bankrupt us, because that, it turns out, is somehow a good thing.
Sean Ulam (@SeanClayton825)
August 31, 2011
I wonder sometimes if the reason certain smears against Obama and other left-leaning politicians and public figures gain such traction amongst the RW “base” is because they’ve become so inured to their own political heroes lying to the mainstream about their true motives.
This is how Obama can secretly be a Kenyan Muslim Socialist in league with Terror and Nazism, despite the complete lack of any evidence. “Of course he’s a Manchurian Candidate for a radical leftist agenda! He’s gotta be a Manchurian Candidate for somethin’!”
Jacob Woods
August 31, 2011
I would have to agree completely that she is smart. But she uses her intelligence for stupidity.
William
August 31, 2011
I think the term you were looking for is likely ‘clever.’ Smart is not an attribute I would assign this screeching harlot.
Rosetta Stoned
August 31, 2011
“Dog whistle politics” … ?
I never even realized there was such a thing.
But then, the last few years have been so FULL of uncomfortable lessons about the difference between being politically naive vs. purposely trying to remain ignorant (aka “hiding your head in the sand”).
Question: is there any “dog whistle” to English translation for the recent clip of Bachmann in which it sure sounds like she’s greeting a crowd with “Who here likes white people ?”
It’s being claimed that she actually said “Who here likes WET people ?” The “proof” is that she next says “Yeah, that’s right. Because we have the God of the winds and the rain, don’t we?”
Does “dog whistle” go so far as to include words which sound a lot a like ?
Or has the psychopathic Bachmann merely succeeded in making some of us sandy-headed folks paranoid ?