FAREWELL MICHELE BACHMANN

What better way to break the seal for the 2014 Election season than this recently breaking news story....

Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (Batcrap Crazy R, MN-6) announced (VERY) early this morning that she is not running for her seat in 2014.

Representative Bachmann has a long documented list of outrageous statements. If I was to list them, it would be the longest post ever and I would never get done.

Think Progress gave us the 8 most outlandish statements in the time Michele Bachmann was in Congress.

Only EIGHT.... man, I thought there would be more than that.

Bachmann is a former tax litigator who was first elected to the Minnesota State Senate in 2000. In 2006, she was elected to Congress during an election that saw Democrats reclaim both chambers for the first time in 14 years. In 2008 she appeared on Hardball to defend the content of robo-calls the McCain-Palin campaign was making as the election season was winding down. In the interview she made the outrageous claims that Democrats and liberals were "unAmerican" and wanted to investigate these claims.

For a moment there I thought I saw the ghost of Joseph McCarthy returning...

During the Obama presidency, Bachmann has been a rallying point for the Tea Party and was one of the founders of this caucus in the House. She opposed ObamaCare, was a staunch opponent to LGBT Rights, and the most shocking... she sits on House Subcommittee on Inteligence. Her husband and she had well documented connections to "Pray-Away-The-Gay" Clinics.

In January 2011 she gave the Tea Party Response to the State of the Union. It was widely ridiculed for being odd that the opposition was given TWO responses to the State of The Union and also that the Congresswoman was LOOKING AWAY FROM THE CAMERA!

Representative Bachmann was part the clown show deep Republican Presidential Primary that took place in 2012. Bachmann suspended her campaign days after a 6th place finish in Iowa, the first caucus of the primary season.

Bachmann ran for Congress in 2012 and escaped with victory by less than 4,300 votes or 1.2 percentage points. By percentage wise, it was her narrowest victory.

A narrow victory such as that might cause a politician to moderate their positions in order to set up for later success, but Bachmann continued her outrageous statements. Her Democratic opponent, Jim Graves, hinted that he will run for her seat in 2014.

Bachmann's presidential campaign is currently under investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics for campaign finance violations. Former Bachmann campaign staffers told The Daily Beast that the investigation was concerning allegations of improperly transferring funds and under-the-table payments by the campaign. The violations are so severe that they involve an Iowa State Senator and an special prosecutor has been appointed in the case.

And all this time Representative Bachmann was calling for Obama's impeachment....

Me thinks Obama will be in office past January 2015. Unlike her...

There has been talks that Bachmann might run for higher statewide office in Minnesota such as governor or even Senate.

First.... on running for governor, Minnesota became the 12th state to pass a marriage equality measure. I doubt that the good people of the Land of 10,000 Lakes would ever put HER in office because of her anti-LGBT positions.

Second... on running for Senate. Former SNL cast member and writer Al Franken scored a surprising upset victory in his 2008 election. Senator Franken's policies has mirrored that of his constituents and resulted in him being the favorite going into 2014. Public Policy Polling (PPP) gives Franken a 51% favorable rating vs. 42% unfavorable. Franken against all potential candidates is polling 50% or BETTER. His highest rating: Franken 55, Bachmann 38.

My thoughts on this is that everyone and most importantly, her constituents are tired of her antics. Eventually you have to get to governing and House Republicans are more interested in creating crises than governing as shown with their continuing politicizing of the attacks on our consulate in Benghazi. Even after the faux outrage, Obama's polls have IMPROVED as the most recent CNN-ORC poll shows the President's approval numbers jumped from 51% to 53%. Meanwhile the latest Pew Research Center Poll on PollingReport.com shows Congressional Republican's approval ratings at 22% vs. 68% disapprove.

Bachmann and her Tea Party cohorts are one of the many reasons why Congress's Approval Ratings remain in the teens.

I think she knows (or at least her campaign staff) knows what is going on. A potential ethics violation and the amount of nonsense she has put out will cause her (and several other Republicans) to lose. Former Minnesota Governor Arne Carlson (a Republican by the way) posted on his blog in September 2012 about how Bachmann's star was waning within the GOP at the time. He is also critical about how her Presidential campaign led to an increase of recording absent votes. From July 2011 to October 2011, Bachmann missed half of the roll call votes in the House. From October 2011 until January 2012, that number jumped to 90%.

I won't subject you to her announcement video. You can watch it for yourself. It was smart of staff to disable the comments section and that was the only smart thing about this video.

As for her future, she'll probably get absorbed the conservative bubble. She'll end up on Fox News or whatever the conservative media machinery looks like as we gear up for another presidential election. Wouldn't shock me if she writes another book and sells it to her masses on the speakers' circuit. I could see her starting to campaign for Republicans in this cycle and the next one. There's a lot of money and influence to be made in the conservative movement.

Though, this is most likely, and it is from this quote from the 1957 film "A Face in The Crowd" directed Elia Kazan.

Suppose I tell you exactly what's gonna happen to you. You're gonna be back in television. Only it won't be quite the same as it was before. There'll be a reasonable cooling-off period and then somebody will say: "Why don't we try him again in a inexpensive format. People's memories aren't too long."

And you know, in a way, he'll be right. Some of the people will forget, and some of them won't. Oh, you'll have a show. Maybe not the best hour or, you know, top 10. Maybe not even in the top 35. But you'll have a show. It just won't be quite the same as it was before.

Then a couple of new fellas will come along. And pretty soon, a lot of your fans will be flocking around them. And then one day, somebody'll ask: "Whatever happened to, a, whatshisname? You know, the one who was so big. The number-one fella a couple of years ago. He was famous. How can we forget a name like that?"

"Oh by the way, have you seen, a, Barry Mills? I think he's the greatest thing since Will Rogers."

- Mel Miller (played by Walter Matthau)

Anyways, Representative Bachmann, this video is dedicated to you: