No money, no ideas: Ed Rollins on Michele Bachmann

By Michael J.W. Stickings

ABC News:

Michele Bachmann has "run out of money and ideas" and can no longer expect to win in Iowa, her former campaign manager told ABC News on Monday.

Ed Rollins, who left the campaign in September, said the Minnesota congresswoman had backed off earlier comments by her campaign that Iowa was a "must-win" state because she lacked the finances, campaign structure, and ideas to win the first-in-the-nation caucus state.

"She's still saying the same things she said in the first the debate. There's no substance. She says, 'I'm going to repeal Obamacare.' But she's been saying that from Day 1. I told her: That's your Tea Party speech, now you have to say what you’re going to do next."

Rollins saw the writing on the wall a long time ago and was quick to get the hell out while the gettin' was good. But didn't he see this coming all along? Did he really think Bachmann had potential, that she actually had serious ideas? Perhaps he thought he could mold her -- and perhaps all he's doing now is saying that she's nothing without him.

And yet, doesn't he sell her short? She's not just about repealing the Affordable Care Act, after all. What about converting gays? She and her husband are really into that. What about that anti-gay, anti-porn pledge? Was she not serious about that? What about her affinity for "intelligent design"? And all of her conspiracy theories, like the one about the dollar giving way to some international currency and about the U.S. giving way to the nefarious global economy? And what about her various crazy right-wing views generally? And her radical fundamentalist theocratism?

Hey, you can't say there aren't ideas there. Crazy, extreme ones, yes, if also fairly mainstream Republican ones.

It seems to me that Rollins, who obviously made an embarrassingly bad move going to work for her, is just trying to excuse himself of any and all responsibility for the pointless mess her campaign has become.