The Editorial Board didn't get a chance ask Bachmann, who declined repeated requests for a meeting. But voters deciding whether to send her back for a third term deserve an answer. While Bachmann primps for the cameras, her district struggles with unemployment, clogged roads and foreclosure-pocked neighborhoods. Four years of media razzle-dazzle have made Bachmann a political headliner, but it's done little for her beleaguered constituents back home.
... and it gets worse:
The 2010 bills Bachmann has introduced speak volumes about her priorities. While families in her district worried about jobs last year, Bachmann was fighting an imaginary threat: a global currency. Badly misconstruing statements by U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Bachmann wrote an embarrassing bill steeped in conspiracy theory calling for a constitutional amendment to prevent the United States from adopting another country's currency. Keep in mind that Bachmann also spread fears about the Census, anti-American members of Congress and has argued that health reform would lead to abortion field trips at schools. Is this paranoia an act or a ploy to keep the TV cameras trained on her? It's disturbing to have to ask this question.
An embarrassing back story about another 2010 bill raises troubling questions about Bachmann's effectiveness as a legislator. The bill would have allowed the U.S. secretary of the Interior to approve a bridge over the St. Croix River. But she undercut the bill's chances when she alienated some colleagues by not following traditional processes -- essentially she did the lawmaking equivalent of driving on the shoulder while others waited in traffic with their bills. Bachmann's bill, tellingly, had zero co-sponsors.
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