Michele Bachmann was a liberal visionary, according to Michele Bachmann. When she voted against the sequester, she says, it was
because:
“There were numerous Republicans that voted against the sequestration because we knew all of these calamities were in the future. And so it reminds me of the Shakespeare line: ‘Thou protestest too much.’ Didn’t you know this was going to happen? We knew it. That’s why we voted against this bill.”
"All of these calamities" being excessive cuts. Or, as she previously claimed, she
warned that it "was a very bad idea because it indiscriminately hurts the most vulnerable among us."
Ahem. Not so much. Bachmann did vote no. But her real problem was not that sequestration would cause too much pain to poor and vulnerable people. She wanted deeper cuts:
She especially decried the fact that the debt ceiling was increased, arguing instead that the government could avoid default simply by making immediate and steep cuts. “We needed real cuts and a fundamental restructuring in the way Washington spends taxpayer dollars to solve the spending crisis we are in,” Bachmann said in a statement after the bill was passed. “Someone has to say NO to more spending. I will.”
While Bachmann made no mention of the impact on poorer Americans, she added: “This deal puts our national security at risk because of the severe cuts to defense that kick in should the President not do his job in the next few months.”
Being hypocritical is one thing. What Bachmann is doing here is straight-up lying about her record. Hypocritically, also, too. But as Jed Lewison
said when Bachmann started this routine, the key point is that Republicans know they're losing the austerity argument—and Democrats have to work extra hard to keep them from slipping out of the fact that they own this policy. Michele Bachmann's attempts to rewrite history may be especially clumsy, but they should be taken as a warning of more sophisticated attempts to come.