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October 19, 2008 at 17:00:39     Permalink Fellow Republican Norm Coleman Tries to Distance Himself from Michele Bachmann Diary Entry by E. Nelson (about the author)

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The Republican fallout from Michele Bachmann's calls for McCarthyism like investigations is being felt by fellow Republican Norm Coleman in Minnesota and across the nation.

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An unrepentant Michele Bachmann reiterated her divisive comments on a Sunday morning Minnesota TV news show and again called for a media expose on whether liberal leaning Barack Obama and liberal leaning congressmen and congresswomen had dangerous anti-American viewpoints.

On the same Sunday morning TV show Republican Norm Coleman, who had previously appeared with Michele Bachmann at campaign events in Blaine Minnesota, tried to quickly distance himself from Bachmann and her toxic comments made during her Chris Matthews interview on Friday. Coleman rejected Bachmann's view on Obama's anti-Americanism and said, "I would not label his views as anti-American."

Coleman's comments were in reference to Bachmann's Friday TV appearance on MSNBC with Chris Matthews. During that interview Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) called for an investigation of 'anti-American' Congress members and slammed Barack Obama as anti-American. Congresswoman Bachmann went on to say, "What I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think the American people would love to see an expose like that."



Bachmann's divisive and polarizing comments generated such outrage among the American public that it galvanized national support around her opponent Elwyn Tinklenberg (D-MN) and translated into contributions to Tinklenberg's campaign totaling more than $620,000 in less than 48 hrs. According to the Tinklenberg spokesperson this was almost twice the total they had received in contributions for the prior 3 months.

After endorsing Barack Obama on 'Meet the Press' this morning retired 4-star general Colin Powell was interviewed by reporters and condemned the divisive comments by Representative Michele Bachmann. Colin Powell said, "This business, for example, we've got a congresswoman from Minnesota whose going around saying, 'Let's examine all congressmen to see who is pro-America and whose not pro-America.' We've got to stop this kind of nonsense and pull ourselves together and remember that our great strength is in our unity and our diversity."

Republican Norm Coleman is rightly concerned that this national outrage and subsequent democratic support could spill over for his democratic challenger Al Franken. Coleman's support among Minnesotans has been falling for months both because he has not been able to articulate what he has done over the past 6 years for Minnesotans and because of the negative ads he has been running against Franken. In the most recent polling data the Republican incumbent Coleman was running a few points behind Al Franken.

With just over two weeks left in the campaign Norm Coleman has been desperately trying to separate himself from George Bush and the policies of George Bush that Norm supported. Al Franken on the other hand has been trying to remind Minnesotans that Norm Coleman, in his first five years in Senate, voted 86% of the time with Bush. It appears that Norm Coleman will now have to try and distance himself from another Republican, a fellow Minnesotan Republican and colleague by the name of Michele Bachmann.

 

Eric Nelson is freelance writer, an editor at OpEdNews, and a spiritual progressive from Minnesota who has become more politically active. The reasons for this should be obvious to most; rising poverty, a broken health care system, and a growing (more...)
 

 

 
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