Gravitas

I went to a town hall meeting featuring Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN6), DFL-and-Independence Party endorsed challenger Elwin “E-Tink” Tinklenberg, and unendorsed Ventura “Independence” Party challenger Bob Anderson.

The shorter version:

• Tinklenburg:  Platitudes.  Lots and lots of them.  Look, I’ll cop to it; I’m singularly unimpressed by E-Tink.  His performance during the 35W Bridge Collapse was uniquely loathsome, and I won’t be forgiving that for quite some time.  That said, even by the low standards I expected, his performance was unimpressive; loads of platitudes, no real answers.  That he’s even a contender is a sign of how dire things are for Republicans these days. 
• Anderson:  Seemed like a good guy, albeit not a politician.  Confessed to being a fiscal conservative, which introduces an interesting question; given that the Ventura “Independence” Party endorsed E-Tink for CD6 over him, and Dean “Like Ed Schultz, Only Here” Barkley over the Lars Ulrich Skeet Uldrich Jack Uldrich for Senate, where indeed is the notion that there is a place for disaffected Republicans in the IP?
• Bachmann:  I won’t kid you; I went in rooting for Michele.  She’s conservative, she’s sharp, and she’s got the one thing that the left hates most from conservative women; she’s uppity.  And instead of hiding behind platitudes, she grabbed a dry-erase marker and spent five minutes at a whiteboard explaining the numbers behind her opposition to the bailout bill – the trillions of dollars for which we the taxpayers are now on the hook.  It was a pretty polarized crowd – about half of them were obviously fans, and the other half were not (and some of them were pretty rude about it, nattering and chattering away in the audience as the Representative explained her position, although Rep. Bachmann did a great job of fielding their questions). 

It wasn’t a debate – call it a “forum” – and I’ll cop to my biases in advance.  But how anyone who isn’t voting on pure ideology could choose E-Tink over Bachmann is…

…well, finding an analogy is irrelevant, since that’s about the only reason in play at the moment.