Where Is Ed Rollins Going Now?

It’s clear that Ed Rollins, who was the brains (well, some of the brains) behind Nixon, Reagan, Bush-the-First, and Ross Perot, has totally decamped from no-brains Michele Bachmann’s campaign. Rollins is still listed as a Bachmann “senior advisor” and he cited the usual suspect—health reasons—as to why he stepped down from the day-to-dayness of keeping Bachmann from killing her own campaign with her stupidity. Still, the NYT reported this morning that he told Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC, that Mrs. Bachmann does not have the money or resources to compete with her better-financed rivals, Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. 

“Right now,” Rollins said, “she’s competing hard in Iowa, but she doesn’t have the ability or resources to go beyond Iowa at this point in time, where Perry and Romney can go into South Carolina, Arizona and other places.”

The NYT said Rollins had pinpointed Bachmann’s biggest roadblock to winning the Republican nomination. The NYT did not say that she can’t get the dough to go further than Iowa because people are realizing what a total know-nothing and loose cannon she is.

So, okay, Rollins’s reasoning is pretty elemental. But, as the NYT notes, why is Rollins making these statements now?

Where is he going? And what candidate is he going to be using his "guerilla campaign" tactics on? Stay tuned.

Malaprop Michele Blunders Away

To paraphrase Calvin Trillin about George W. Bush, obliviously on she sails.

Whether Michele Bachmann will have malapropped herself into an entire book of gaffes, misstatements, flubs, slip-ups and outright lies before she gets the bad-act hook, only the GOP backroom boys know.

Her latest effort to show she is capable of being on equal footing with presidential candidates Texas Governor Rick Perry and Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, had her claiming that Perry issued an order for Texas schoolgirls to be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted virus and that the vaccination caused mental retardation.

In fact, Perry’s order never was enacted because the Texas legislature decided against it. Bachmann made her mental retardation claim after talking to a woman who said her daughter got the vaccination and then became retarded. Experts quickly said there is no evidence whatsoever linking the vaccine to mental retardation.

No attempt was made by Bachmann to check out the woman or her statement. And Bachmann’s minders either didn’t know she was going to blurt out her non-fact on Fox News and NBC’s “Today” show, or they didn’t care.

Even folks close to the campaign who spoke to the New York Times on the condition of anonymity say Bachmann is influenced by the last person she talks to.

In attempting to put the best face on Bachmann’s shoot-from-the-hip habit of making uninformed statements, the members of her staff who are paid to clean up her messes, say she is “real”, “driven” “emotional” and “impulsive”.

Great. Just the kind of president we need in this age when our biggest enemies are also real, driven, emotional, impulsive, and ignorant.

Add to that, after particularly tense situations, our Mrs. Malaprop winds up in the hospital with severe migraine attacks requiring medication (read, knockout drops).

Bachmann said recently that little girls who have a negative reaction to the papillomavirus vaccination don’t get a do-over.

Hey! Neither do we if a president makes an asshole statement and the conversation leads to a nuclear attack.

Well, I’m just saying…because Michele Bachmann hasn’t a prayer to become president or dog-catcher. But I wonder what the GOP is going to do to rid itself of its prime clown act?

Enter Sarah Palin.

GAIL COLLINS NAILS IT

Collins’s New York Times op/ed tagline this morning: “It is the genius of the Republican Party in recent decades that it continually selects candidates who make the ones who went before appear better. Remember how great George H.W. Bush seemed once we’d lived with his son for a while? And I have a strong suspicion that whoever the nominee is this time will make us yearn for the magic that was W.”

Collins column was about the Republican candidates’ first debate Wednesday night and the paucity of serious discussion. I didn’t watch it. Apparently, the big aim of all contenders is to be the front-runner in the Anyone But Romney horserace. Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman, Jr., Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul were participants in this first silly-season event.

And, of course, the candidate field is still open to the come-lately crowd. Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin are fidgeting in the wings, waiting for their big moment. Now that puppet-master Ed Rollins has ditched Bachmann, one wonders where he is going to land next. And who will Karl Rove bless with his encyclopedic knowledge of below-the-belt campaign tactics?

Already, we see ultra-conservative groups like the Liberty Institute in Texas coming out with erroneous facts about Obama. Today, it is saying it was Obama who passed legislation against groups offering unwanted prayers at veterans’ funerals against the family wishes. In fact, it was George W. Bush who enacted this ruling.

As we come closer to Sunday’s 10th anniversary of the 9-11 attack and the lugubrious, contentious, sentimental, fact-ignoring memorials that are sure to take possession of TV and cyberspace, let us not forget the woeful response of the leaders at the time. Particularly President George W. Bush who sat as though paralyzed and uncomprehending for seven minutes while he waited to be told what to do. And let us not forget the ways the Republican administration used the 9-11 attack and the lies it told in order to further its nefarious political aims. 

The best memorial to 9-11 this Sunday would be to turn off our computers and TV, sit quietly at home or in church, offer prayers for the dead and contemplate making the world a more peaceful planet.

ED ROLLINS SIGNALS BACHMANN'S DEMISE

Ed Rollins has worked for Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George Bush the First and Ross Perot. He joined Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign this past summer and guided her to a straw-poll victory in Iowa. 

But the New York Times reported this morning that Rollins has stepped down from the “day-to-day operations” (health reasons were cited) and is now a senior advisor. Add to that, the fact that Rollin’s deputy David Polyansky is leaving the Bachmann campaign and campaign bullshit aside, the message is clear: Ed Rollins fulfilled his contract and has opted out.

But another message is even clearer: The GOP back-room boys are finished with Bachmann as their clown act so they gave Rollins the high sign

However, from the reports about the Republican presidential candidates’ Labor Day activities, the GOP is going to have to forge a more powerful platform than pro-forma grousing about Obama having single-handedly put the United States in the woeful situation it finds itself in.

Because that is not going to fly.

Too many journalists, Democrats and Republicans themselves know the blame for our collapse lies in the Republican Bush administration and the GOP itself.

And by the way, when “the Republican Party”: or “the GOP” is cited in any news report, it means the people pulling the strings and making the decisions in Republican political matters including the Tea Party. The Tea Party is another clown act that is just about to get a notice from the bosses about the rules of the game. Whether Sarah Palin can acquiesce to the requirements is a big question. But the GOP has made it clear Bachmann is out, fun-times are over and it will give Palin a chance to prove she has grown up enough to act like a real contender.

I'm betting she will blow it due to her narcissistic pathology because that's her nature.