Craziest Republican of the Day: Michele Bachmann (and the Republican push to privatize Social Security and Medicare)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Yes, it's Bachmann... again (our previous post on her are here) -- for saying, at a right-wing conference in St. Louis on Saturday, that people need to be weaned off Social Security and Medicare and that, essentially, the American social safety net ought to be privatized.

We've been here before, haven't we? It wasn't popular when Bush talked it up, and it won't be popular now. Which is all the more reason for Democrats to hit back hard and to force Republicans to vote -- to go on the record -- as proponents of privatization.

And, can you believe it, they're doing just that. In response to GOP Rep. Paul Ryan's appalling and "violent" proposal to privatize Medicare and Social Security (and to cut health-care costs by requiring seniors to buy private plans with increasingly less money, meaning less coverage and less care), House Democrats are looking to force a resolution vote on Social Security privatization. Republicans would have no choice but to vote cynically against something they support or expose themselves for what they are and what they support. Either way, Democrats would win, and the American people would get a good look at just what the GOP is all about.

As if the crazy, and revealing, comments of the likes of Michele Bachmann aren't already more than enough.