Topic: Decline of the West
She just ended her presidential campaign after a poor showing in Iowa, so let’s begin with Michele Bachmann. Why did she crater?
In my opinion, her failure to make an impression comes down to one thing: lack of presidential profile. Though she has the conservative credentials that so many Republican primary voters are looking for, Bachmann came across as something of a lightweight. The more people watched her, the less they could imagine her as president. Maybe that’s unfair to the candidate. But there it is.
For me personally, the deal breaker was her attack on Governor Rick Perry’s Texas vaccine initiative. As a polio survivor, I loathe and revile the whole Bobby Kennedy Jr./Jenny McCarthy anti-vaccination cult, which I regard as an authentic case of mass child abuse. When Bachmann tried to damage Perry by appealing to these irrational fears of vaccination, she lost me. It was such an Obama-like thing to do.
