Remember when Michele Bachmann was the darling of the tea party and the woman who could rally rabid supporters to defend her? Those days appear to be over.
On Saturday night, Bachmann and her campaign accused CBS of making a concerted effort to marginalize her at the network’s foreign policy debate. Her campaign pulled out all the stops: the manager called CBS Political Director John Dickerson “a piece of shit” and demanded he be fired. A fundraising email based on the bias claim was dispatched to supporters and and a Facebook post with the offending emails Bachmann’s campaign says proves her allegations was posted.
In earlier days, this kind of thing would rouse an army of Bachmann defenders. Take for example what happened when Bachmann was featured on the cover of Newsweek with that crazy photo. The right wing went all out, accusing the magazine of trying to destroy her.
But that was months ago, when Bachmann’s star was rising in advance of her Ames Straw Poll win. Since then, she’s seen a steady decline in support among polls and the accompanying shrink in media presence that goes with it.
To see how far she’s fallen, look at the result of Bachmann’s attempt to make hay out of the CBS bias charge. As Ben Smith reports, the Bachmann campaign request that supporters tweet nastygrams at Dickerson and CBS fizzled out.
That Bachmann Facebook effort? A healthy mix of the comments right from the start attacked Bachmann for suggesting the debate was biased instead of attacking CBS.
When she appeared on Meet The Press Sunday, the subject of Bachmann’s attack on CBS didn’t even come up.
The Bachmann campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment on the success of the attacks on CBS and Dickerson.
For their part, the network at its political director have stood their ground, which is not the norm for mainstream outlets under attack from the right these days. The offending Dickerson email that raised the alarm at Team Bachmann — but didn’t ruffle feathers among Republican sponsors of the debate — doesn’t appear to have fazed CBS so far.
“This was the classic Washington gaffe,” Dickerson told the New York Times. “I said what was true. But instead of saying it out loud, I hit reply to all.”
