This week they attempt to maintain the "flake" story a little longer by catching Bachmann in misstatements.. and again they try to catch her in a candid, on-set gotcha regarding US history.
But is she really that wrong?
Here is the exchange that is getting press today between Bachmann and George Stephanopolous:
Stephanopoulos: You have been making a lot of progress, also getting a lot of scrutiny. I am not going to get too deep into the "flake" flap from Sunday. But as you make progress in this campaign everything you say is going to get more scrutiny. And the Pulitzer Prize winning website, Politifact, has found that you have the worst record of making false statements of any of the leading contenders. And I wondered if you wanted to take a chance to clear up some of your past statements. For example earlier this year you said that the Founding Fathers who wrote the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence worked tirelessly to end slavery. Now with respect Congresswoman, that’s just not true. Many of them including Jefferson and Washington were actually slave holders and slavery didn’t end until the Civil War.
Bachmann: Well you know what’s marvelous is that in this country and under our constitution, we have the ability when we recognize that something is wrong to change it. And that’s what we did in our country. We changed it. We no longer have slavery. That’s a good thing. And what our Constitution has done for our nation is to give us the basis of freedom unparalleled in the rest of the world.
Stephanopoulos: I agree with that…
Bachmann: That’s what people want...they realize our government is taking away our freedom.
Stephanopoulos: But that’s not what you said. You said that the Founding Fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery.
Bachmann: Well if you look at one of our Founding Fathers, John Quincy Adams, that’s absolutely true. He was a very young boy when he was with his father serving essentially as his father’s secretary. He tirelessly worked throughout his life to make sure that we did in fact one day eradicate slavery….
Stephanopoulos: He wasn’t one of the Founding Fathers – he was a president, he was a Secretary of State, he was a member of Congress, you’re right he did work to end slavery decades later. But so you are standing by this comment that the Founding Fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery?
Bachmann: Well, John Quincy Adams most certainly was a part of the Revolutionary War era. He was a young boy but he was actively involved.
Stephanopoulos: Well let me move on to another one of your statements on the issue of jobs which is so central to this campaign. You said back in 2005 that taking away the minimum wage could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment. Where is the evidence for that?
So, in this gotcha question George erroneously determines tat because Slavery didn't end until the Civil War that the Founding fathers did not work to abolish slavery.
This only serves to make Stephanopolis look ignorant.
But it goes on, and Bachmann argues her case using John QUINCY Adams as he evidence of the founding fathers who worked against slavery, when his father John Adams, or George Washington or Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Paine (the last two helped found the first abolitionist movement in the US) would have been better examples.
But then the media took her statements that John Quincy Adams from from the "Revolutionary era" to mean that she said that John Quincy Adams was in the Revolutionary war... which would technically be true, in a civilian sense.
And hey, the Revere moment with Palin and this Bachmann moment intertwine since one of Revere's primary duties (and one of the few he accomplished) was to alert John Adams and his family that the British were on the March and that they were in danger... so being a target of the British troops in the Revolutionary war kinda makes you a part of it, doesn't it?
Anyway, this is getting tiresome. Stephanopoulos, like those who chastised Palin, had the added advantage of having the opportunity to be prepared for the discussion in advance and they still got it wrong.
More over, in the process of trying to catch Bachmann for her statement, Stephanopoulos goes so far as to roll out the same tired liberal "But the founding fathers had slaves!" bull crap that so completely simplifies the American Revolution as to make it unrecognizable and ignore the pleathora of evidence in the creation of the founding documents that opposition to slavery WAS one of the major drivers of the wording of these documents and for later amendments, and it was this wording that made it possible for Abraham Lincoln to declare slavery at odds with our nations founding principles and have constitutional grounds for his claim.
In fact, Stephanoloulos is so backwards in his incrimination that he is at odds with Lincoln himself as seen in possibly THE most famous American speech of all time:
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."
So Mr. Stephanopoulos, was Abraham Lincoln a flake?
Let's not move on to the next question so quickly, there, champ.
