DAMAGING THE REPUTATION OF THE GOP

Politico reports that elements within the GOP are concerned that the “bomb-throwing” Rep. Michele Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, may be inflicting damage on the party’s reputation with her incessant incendiary rhetoric.

The report is buried in an article by Glenn Thrush on House Minority Leader John Boehner’s unsuccessful attempts last week to cajole South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson to apologize for heckling President Barack Obama at the Sept. 9 Joint Session of Congress with the retort “You lie!”

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John Boehner Struggles to Keep Up With Base

By Glenn Thrush

September 17, 2009

Excerpts

House Minority Leader John Boehner spent much of last week trying to persuade a stubborn Rep. Joe Wilson to apologize to the House — telling associates he needed to “get to” Wilson before the weekend to elicit an apology.

But as the days dragged on, Boehner had to back off: Wilson’s spine was stiffened by $1.5 million in campaign contributions, the Democrats’ anti-Wilson rhetoric had become increasingly extreme, and the South Carolina Republican was rapidly accumulating support from the conference’s dominant right wing. …

Like a surfer riding the heavy waves before a hurricane, Boehner, a conservative with a penchant for compromise, has spent the past few months trying to harness the anger of the GOP base without allowing his conference to veer too far to the right. …

Long before the tea parties or Wilson’s outburst, Boehner and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) had struggled to moderate the rhetorical excesses of House conservatives hammering away on Obama’s birth certificate, decrying the creation of “death panels” and ferreting out signs of creeping socialism.

Sources say they have been especially wary of the possible damage inflicted on the party’s reputation by bomb-throwing Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), who last fall called for an investigation into whether members of Congress are “pro-America or anti-America.” [link added] …

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Related reports

Eric Kleefeld notes on Talking Points Memo:

[Republicans] certainly are in a bind when it comes to Bachmann. On the one hand, the base loves her and she’s frequently invited on television. On the other hand, she calls for revolution and warns against the government using Census data to round people up into internment camps. [links added] …

Dump Bachmann gets straight to the point:

Until the GOP refutes or otherwise officially distances themselves from Rep. Bachmann, she will remain the face and shrill voice of the party. [link added]

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann: New “face and shrill voice” of the GOP?

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: One Year Ago — September 18, 2008

Foreign fighters return home from Iraq to launch new attacks against U.S. targets. Smoke billows from the U.S. Embassy complex in San’a, Yemen, after a deadly car bombing on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2008. (Photo credit: Yemen News Agency)

After the Primary Election: Day 9

One year ago today, on the ninth day after losing my 2008 primary challenge against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, in line with my focus on national security, I reported that the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 turned it into a terrorist training ground for jihadists around the world, with militants converging on Iraq to learn increasingly sophisticated insurgency techniques and then exporting those tactics to other hotspots, including Afghanistan, turning the war against terror “global” in a way not foreseen by the Bush administration.

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Background context

Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat

By Mark Mazzetti

September 24, 2006

A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks. …

Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,” it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official. …

National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative documents that the intelligence community produces on a specific national security issue. …

In early 2005, the National Intelligence Council released a study concluding that Iraq had become the primary training ground for the next generation of terrorists [emphasis added], and that veterans of the Iraq war might ultimately overtake Al Qaeda’s current leadership in the constellation of the global jihad leadership. …

Full story

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Related report on this site: Statement on the Iraq War