Michelle Bachmann for County Fair Beauty Contest Judge

This whole thing with Michelle Bachmann last night made something clear to me that I’d never considered before. Maybe the Tea Party doesn’t really have any aspirations to real power. It’s a huge movement, and it’d be impossible to sum up the political motivation of every office-holding member, let alone the wealthy middle class and Iowan supporters who we make fun of for being racist and wanting to own guns, but from the viewpoint of the establishment, and what the establishment looks like, maybe it’s really more about being a sort of very vocal peanut gallery, and there isn’t any real idea of taking anything over. I mean just looking at the differences between Paul Ryan’s speech and Bachmann’s; Paul Ryan is an economist turned politician with fears about the deficit that legitimately weigh on him. He’ll never have the charisma, but he used a lot of the same tactics that made us fall in love with Obama: he’s more direct than average, more willing to saddle blame on the system than on members of the system, and more willing to speak ideologically about specific issues. He’s not shiny enough to be the next Barry, nor is he savvy enough to be the next Nixon, but he’s ambitious, and we’ll be hearing from him for awhile.

Michelle Bachman on the other hand spent 6 minutes pretending that—given the forum and the circumstances of the night—the same points that go over at Tea Party pep rallies make an actual tenet-establishing speech. I won’t go into how she wasn’t looking at the camera. I don’t have to. I won’t even go into the fact that her ideas had no substance. What struck me is that they aren’t real on any platform in any reality. Nobody in this Matrix believes that Obama is going to sign a repeal on healthcare, which is why Republicans were talking about their mandate and not our future. And whether or not Michelle Bachmann believes in her heart of hearts that she’s doing the right thing, when she tells her supporters that that’s what Obama needs to do, she in the end accomplishes only personifying the symbol that the House meant to send with their repeal vote. She’s not interested in actually being change. Or maybe she’s just not capable; but I think the Tea Party representatives have a funny relationship with their representees that doesn’t necessarily require them to make change. Again, they want to make noise, and they’re glad they have such a huge platform to make noise, but I’ve seen no indication that they’ve ever acted like they’ll actually ever have any power.

Which is why she shouldn’t have been broadcast on CNN last night. She didn’t even ask to be. She was perfectly happy broadcasting solely to her supporters through a website her supporters are probably checking anyway. Which makes me wonder, if the Tea Party doesn’t actually want to have real power, than would they if the average American wasn’t so lustfully fascinated with what they have to say? CNN decided to broadcast Bachmann, and I’m quoting a Salon writer now, because she’s “must see TV.” Because the chances that she’ll say something we can write about tomorrow are astronomically higher than they are with Paul Ryan, who throughout the day was quietly acknowledged for not fucking up and then we went back to talking about Egypt.

If Bachmann had only been seen by the 50,000 people that love her the most, she would have said what they wanted to hear, made them happy, kept them vocal and pissed off. Everyone would have been satisfied, and nothing would have changed. Instead she was broadcast to, let’s say ten times that number, and still nothing changed, except the rest of the world was given one more reason to hate a group of people that at the end of the day are self-containing. Not that they’re not bad. But maybe it’s not their fault we all know they’re bad.