Ben Smith at Politico reports that in her new book, presidential candidate Michele Bachmann goes out of her way to praise Garrison Keillor, the arrogant liberal host of A Prairie Home Companion on NPR. This is the guy that wrote for Time magazine that "The Republicans are going to be the Party That Canceled the Clean Air Act and Took Hot Lunches from Children, the Orphanage Party of Large White Men Who Feel Uneasy Around Gals."
How would Bachmann process that one? She oozed in the book: “His politics are very different from mine, but I love his gentle, knowing humor. Keillor understands Minnesota, from Lutherans to lutefisk, and his ability to squeeze laughs out of serious-minded midwesterners makes him a legend.”
And: “The way he writes, it’s as though he was present at our grandmother’s Sunday table,” she writes. “Clearly, looking at his skill, he received a good education at Anoka—I know I did.”
Keillor makes no secret of his political leanings, since he's donated more than $61,000 to Democrats (especially Minnesota ones) over the years. But Keillor even wrote a fundraising letter in the 2010 cycle for Bachman's opponent, Tarryl Clark, which was recirculated on The Huffington Post:
Dear Friends,
Thirty years ago, when I started telling stories about Lake Wobegon, I put it smack in the middle of Minnesota - in Minnesota's 6th Congressional District, in fact - where staunch Republicans and loyal Democrats know how to live together without yelling at each other and do what needs to be done to work out our problems.
It's embarrassing to me and a great many Minnesotans that Michele Bachmann, a politician who is so busy grandstanding and giving interviews on Fox News that she doesn't have time to serve the people who elected her, represents the 6th District in Washington.
That's why I'm proudly supporting Tarryl Clark - and I hope you will join me by contributing before today's midnight deadline.
Minnesota's 6th District has some of the highest foreclosure and unemployment rates in the state, but in an interview with the St. Cloud Times, Congresswoman Bachmann was unable to name any "substantive" legislation she had passed.
Michele Bachmann may still be counting on sliding through to re-election on November 2nd, but this year she is running against a smart and hard-working State Senator, Tarryl Clark, who is determined to make the talking heads of Fox News sit up and take notice.
Tarryl founded Central Minnesota Habitat for Humanity and served as youth minister of her church for nearly twenty years. She grew up in a Navy family and has worked on behalf of veterans, families and children in the legislature. Service to her community is a part of who she is, and that spirit of service is sorely needed in Washington these days.
I hope you'll join me in making a financial contribution to her campaign - $25, $50 or $100 - before midnight tonight!
Tarryl Clark will never embarrass our state in Congress. Let's restore some respect for the Minnesota tradition of working together sensibly by electing her this November.
Thank you,
Garrison Keillor
P.S. Instead of working to solve problems, Bachmann talks about us as a "nation of slaves" and about the need for smaller government even though she knows better - the biggest part of big government is military spending, Social Security, and Medicare. Which would she do away with? Bachmann's so-called policies are just the old Bush economics that Alan Greenspan characterized as "disastrous." Help Tarryl defeat her by donating today.
Obviously, the first spending Bachmann might do away with is NPR funding -- one of the biggest frivolities in the budget. That money's obviously being funneled into Democratic coffers through the biggest stars of NPR. Smith noted that Bachmann has voted in favor or NPR defunding bills.
