Seriously, y’all, there are ACTUALLY a number of women in the Republican party that are not walking jokes.   To be sure, many of them wouldn’t win any beauty pageants, but that’s not any reason to pick a…oh…right…  

Anyway, here’s the latest from this election season’s gaffe machine.

Rep. Michele Bachmann kicked off her presidential campaign on Monday in Waterloo, Iowa, and in one interview surrounding the official event she promised to mimic the spirit of Waterloo’s own John Wayne.

The only problem, as one eagle-eyed reader notes: Waterloo’s John Wayne was not the beloved movie star, but rather John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer.

Mrs. Bachmann grew up in Waterloo, and used the town as the backdrop for her campaign announcement, where she told Fox News: “Well what I want them to know is just like, John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That’s the kind of spirit that I have, too.” (Someone has already posted the clip to YouTube under the name BachmannLovesGacy)

[full post…on the WashTimes…which tells you that this is game-on for the  Republican Primary]

I mean, it’s on honest mistake to make while pandering.  Oh, this isn’t the first one either...so it’s more of a MO than anything else.

And yes, this is the same reason I made so much fun of Palin [1].  She was a hoot. 

Bachmann’s pandering is *extremely* well done it turns out, and she’s currently running neck and neck with Nominee Romney in Iowa.

It will be even funnier to watch if the WSJ keeps propping her up for even longer.   They’ve been puffing her for a while.

By STEPHEN MOORE

That’s something good to know before you read the Bachmann puff piece.  Stephen Moore will *always* pimp anyone who says the best way to deal with the deficit is bigger and deeper tax cuts.   Michelle Bachmann happens to be good enough at math to believe this….

“In my perfect world,” she explains, “we’d take the 35% corporate tax rate down to nine so that we’re the most competitive in the industrialized world. Zero out capital gains. Zero out the alternative minimum tax. Zero out the death tax.”

And that’s how she’d pay down the debt.  Really, you couldn’t make up people like this if you started with banal, spliced in stupid, mixed in some political instinct, poured on the hot sauce, and then convinced the resulting concoction it was actually God’s gift to the world.

“I am a Christian as is my husband. I became a Christian at 16 years old, I gave my heart to Jesus Christ and since that time I’ve been a person of prayer.

When I pray, I pray believing that God will speak to me and give me an answer to that prayer, and so that’s what a calling is. If I pray, a calling means that I have a sense from God which direction I’m supposed to go.

It means I have a sense of assurance about the direction I think that God is speaking into my heart that I should go.”

There you have it, Michelle Bachmann says that God tells Michelle Bachmann she should run for President.  BTW, for those that didn’t get that from the quoted context…well…you can’t.  That’s one of the fun things about saying you are doing what God wants, no matter what you do.   The same exact speech can be used for the alternative. (it’s a bit  like Huckabee’s “Aww, shucks I know where this ride ends (New Hampshire)” bow out speech…the difference…Huckabee has learned to blame his own heart for his own choices).

This whole God wants me to do it (and so should you subtext) is not a new phenomenon either.   We currently have two candidates (Romney and Huntsman) who would testify if pressed that God currently talks to the Prophet that runs their Church, and who will no doubt decline to even subtlely suggest that perhaps supporting a Member is what God wants.  Heck, there are two other candidates that have also revealed that God revealed to them “he” wants them to run, and win.  

So we’ll see who God wants to be President when the world ends in 2012 in 2012.  Unless Obama wins again, then, according to some of Bachmann’s most avid fans, Satan will have won again (yes, they are this crazy).

[1] Crazy, attractive (to 50-60 year old males mind you), conservative lady somehow pushed to the forefront of the Repbulicans who constantly embarasses the country with a disconcerting lack of basic knowledge about stuff and things and crazy ideas and constant pitch-perfect right-wing talking points.