Michele Bachmann has decided not to run for another term in the House. She was facing a tough reelection fight against Democrat Jim Graves, and she's under an ethics cloud:
The most glaring problem for Bachmann, though, may be a swirl of investigations into her campaign finances. The Federal Election Commission and the Office of Congressional Ethics are investigating whether her campaign concealed payments to an Iowa state senator who did work for her 2012 presidential bid. (A state ethics law bars senators from doing paid campaign work.)Wait: a proud constitutional conservative and fervent believer in limited government is under investigation by the FBI -- part of Antichrist Eric Holder's Justice Department -- and the GOP and right-wing noise machine aren't rushing to her defense? No one's calling this a witch hunt? No one's claiming that this is part of the Obama jihad against True Patriots? No one's dismissing the other investigations as traffic-ticket stuff?
And late last week, Minnpost.com reported that the FBI would be joining the investigation and interviewing a former Bachmann chief of staff.
Well, obviously the GOP establishment considers Bachmann a liability -- it's done no pushback on her behalf. A couple of months ago there was speculation that she might run for the Senate against Al Franken (even though polls showed that she'd be crushed) -- but whether she ran for the Senate seat or just for reelection, she was likely to be a Todd Akin, a loose cannon saying things that would rub off on other Republican candidates across the country, at a time when party establishmentarians like Karl Rove are hoping to hold the House and win back the Senate by de-Akinizing their candidate list.
(Recall that just before the Iowa straw poll in 2011, a story appeared in the Daily Caller claiming that Bachmann engages in "heavy pill use" to combat severe migraines, after which Rove called for her to release medical records. She won the straw poll anyway, driving establishment favorite Tim Pawlenty out of the race, though her campaign imploded a few months later.)
So, yeah, the GOP wanted to nudge her out of the way, and not gently. She's outlived her usefulness.
