Another Village Axiom Fails To Be Disproven

There's a reason the old saw that states "There is no punishment for Republicans lying, only reward" is an old saw. CNN's Rebecca Sinderbrand unintentionally reinforces the rule as she tries to dissect the Bachmanniac.

In many ways, Michele Bachmann is the ideal political creature of the Tea Party era. Her path to power doesn't lie in moving up the GOP leadership ladder, but in ignoring it entirely, drawing her power more from cable TV hits than committee assignments.

And that power is growing: A University of Minnesota study released in August found she had already doubled her media appearances from the previous year. In 2008, when she was running for re-election, Bachmann hit the airwaves every 16.6 days, Minnesota researchers said. In 2009, that frequency had nearly doubled, to once every 9.1 days.

Nearly all of those appearances made news, featuring a supremely confident and combative Bachmann.

"If you look at FDR, LBJ, and Barack Obama, this is really the final leap to socialism," she said in March on CNN contributor Bill Bennett's national radio show. "The Democrats are about to institutionalize cartels -- that's what they're very good at -- they're trying to consolidate power, so we need to do everything we can to thwart them at every turn to make sure that they aren't able to, for all time, secure a power base that for all time can never be defeated."

In other words, the more loopy and batshit crazy the lie she tells about Obama and the Democrats, the more often she gets to go on TV to tell her loopy, batshit crazy lies. There's something fundamentally wrong with this, or in any sane universe there would in fact be something fundamentally wrong with it and Bachmann would be relegated to the tinfoil hat fringe along with the rest of the Teabaggers.

But no, she's being actively rewarded by the Village for calling this administration the "final leap to socialism" and other crazy things. The rest of the piece goes on to be quite the hagiography for the woman who basically equated Americorps to Hitler Youth re-education camps and the 2010 Census to Japanese internment during WWII.

And why shouldn't the Village reward her? She's good for ratings. The news business ain't in the business of news, folks. Never was. But it sure does love to reward Republican lunatics.