Michele Bachmann Worked For Jimmy Carter, Was Ruined By Gore Vidal

Michele Bachmann opened up to a gathering of Michigan Republicans on Tuesday about her shameful, Jimmy Carter-loving past. "I was a reasonable, fair-minded Democrat. And another secret you need to know: My husband and I met in college. We worked on Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign. It's true, it's true. This is like a 12-step meeting here today, you know that." Say it isn't so! What a disgusting secret! You have to kill like 50,000 Muslims to absolve a sin like that! (Check.) So what happened? "I was reading this snotty novel called 'Burr,' by Gore Vidal, and read how he mocked our Founding Fathers." And then Alexander Hamilton sank his teeth into her, releasing founder venom that turned her into a super-dooper Constitution protector.

I didn't realize until I went off to college one day -- this is the honest to God truth -- I was going off to college, and I was reading this snotty novel. It was written by Gore Vidal, and I was maybe like a junior in college, or -- yeah, I think was maybe a junior in college. [...]

And as a reasonable, decent, fair-minded person who happened to be a Democrat, I thought, 'You know what? What he's writing about, this mocking of people that I revere, and the country that I love, and that I would lay my life down to defend -- just like every one of you in this room would, and as many of you in this room have when you wore the uniform of this great country -- I knew that that was not representative of my country.

And at that point I put the book down and I laughed. I was riding a train. I looked out the window and I said, 'You know what? I think I must be a Republican. I don't think I'm a Democrat.'

But then, somehow, she didn't become merely a moderate Republican. Just because she thought Gore Vidal said something mean about some very dead guys, she became the most insane one of all.

So if we send her something a conservative wrote mocking the founding fathers, she will instantly become a communist Alan Grayson? Sounds entertaining.

Or maybe it will unsettle that brain of hers so much she goes and stabs Jimmy Carter whilst belting out an aria of insanity. So on second thought, maybe it's a bad idea. [ TPM ]