After her failed presidential bid, Michelle Bachmann is dipping into the familiar well of witch hunt and Islamophobia.
Bachman is not content with an abstract witch hunt, and is naming names. This time around, she is identifying Huma Abedin, the traveling chief of staff to Hilary Clinton.
Abedin is an American citizen, a committed Muslim and a patriotic civicly engaged American. Bachmann's project seems precisely designed to go after Muslims who are civicly and politically engaged in American politics.
The most serious direct challenge to Ms. Bachmann has come from Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim American member of the US Congress. He has put up what one columnist has identified as a “put up or shut up” challenge to Ms. Bachmann, that she provide his “office with a full accounting of the sources you used to make the serious allegations against the individuals and organizations in your letters. If there is not credible, substantial evidence for your allegations, I sincerely hope you will publicly clear their names.”
Ms. Bachmann has issued a laughable, 16-page document clarifying her sources, available here:
Keith Ellison dismissed the above as “16 pages worth of nothing”, and a phantom.
Anderson Cooper of CNN had the following measured response to Ms. Bachmann:
To paraphrase, Ms. Bachmann is engaging in a global, fantasy-ridden witch hunt of the famed Kevin Bacon game variety.
There is now serious bi-partisan refutation of Ms. Bachmann, this time from Senator John McCain, arguably the most senior Republican voice on foreign policy affairs. In a rare move, Senator McCain took to the floor of the Senate, and issued the following speech in defense of Ms. Abedin, and refutation of Ms. Bachmann.
Senator McCain stated:
“Ultimately, what is at stake in this matter is larger even than the reputation of one person,” McCain said. “This is about who we are as a nation and who we still aspire to be. What makes America exceptional among the countries of the world is that we are bound together as citizens not by blood or class, not by sect or ethnicity, but by a set of enduring, universal and equal rights that are the foundation of our constitution, our laws, our citizenry, and our identity. When anyone, not least a member of Congress, launches specious and degrading attacks against fellow Americans on the basis of nothing more than fear of who they are and ignorance of what they stand for, it defames the spirit of our nation, and we all grow poorer because of it.”
McCain’s concluding words were: “I hope these ugly and unfortunate attacks on her can be immediately brought to an end and put behind us before any further damage is done to a woman, an American, of genuine patriotism and love of country.”
We are all waiting for the retraction of these spurious charges and the apology, Congresswoman Bachmann.
Somehow I suspect we shouldn’t be holding our breath.
Sadly, these types of witch hunts have a legacy in American political history: McCarthyism.
We as Americans deserve better than this, and should insist on something more noble.