As she prepares to caucus dead last in her "home state" of Iowa, Minnesota's 6th District Congresswoman insists she still has a chance to win the Republican nomination for president. Odder things have happened, like that time one day's worth of lamp oil lasted eight.

Like a lot of impossible things Bachmann says—from claiming the HPV vaccine causes retardation, to the fact Obama is grooming NASA "for outreach to the Muslim community," to the Alaskan wildlife refuge oil development being good for wildlife habitats because of "the warmth of the pipeline"—she probably believes herself. "We think people are going to be very surprised with what the vote is tonight," Bachmann said this morning in Iowa. But sometimes God calls on us to do things He never intends us to achieve. And when we pray to Him and ask why… well, He's busy helping Tim Tebow make the playoffs.

So what will God ask Michele Bachmann to do now that the Minnesota congresswoman has spent the summer telling the world she's an "Iowa girl?"

Bachmann is despised (and even sometimes loved) for her social positions. When the Congresswoman gets "glitter-bombed" at some event, it's not because last year the conservative leader of the Tea Party Caucus spent 46 cents per each mass mailing compared to the 22 to 28 cents spent by her Minnesota colleagues. When some joker programs a "Bachmann Crazy Eyes App," it's not because between 2008 and 2009, the heart of the financial crisis, Bachmann's staff salary increased 26 percent.

Bachmann, who has made it a campaign point to accuse her primary opponents of being bought and paid for, has lived the lavish life for a couple weeks nearly every summer at the expense of pro-Israel lobbyists. A new book, The Madness of Michele Bachmann, notes that Bachmann and her family "enjoyed free trips to Israel in 2007, 2008 and 2009, to the tune of $44,380." In 2009, a single trip for the rep and her daughter ran $19,414.74. All compliments of the American Israel Education Foundation. (Late last spring, Bachmann began a speech: "I am convinced in my heart and in my mind, that if the United States fails to stand with Israel, that is the end of the United States.")

A collection of reporting, insight and posts from the authors behind the blogs DumpBachmann.com and Ripple in Stillwater, The Madness of Michele Bachmann paints a finger-painting of a Congresswoman who has made a career of refusing to comply with both the explicit and implicit rules of "the game" even while making herself out to be a victim when opponents and detractors do likewise.

Though it does a remarkable job keeping the sarcastic, spiteful commentary to an absolute minimum, the book, like its authors, is biased. Yet its straightforward recounting of Bachmann's lesser known boondoggles—like personal rapid transit, or the third party commercial she unblushingly shot inside the state legislative chambers—raises a journalism conundrum: Is it actually bias to just state the facts?

To say the book is a hit piece would not be a misstatement. But it's a hit piece that reflects the authors' longstanding coverage of a politician who, even by the standards of the circus of late-stage American democracy, is a clown. (The founding author of Dump Bachmann was a Republican; another is a constituent.) While a lot of Bachmann's migraine-inducing mutterings are contained in "The Quotable Bachmann," the final chapter, the book's focus is well beyond the worn media trail of "crazy eyes" that launched one- and three-dollar-a-word profiles by Rolling Stone and The New Yorker and that controversial Newsweek cover.

For example, the book recounts Bachmann's abysmal voting record. While the average Congressional missed-vote percentage was 3.8 percent, Bachmann missed 11 percent of all votes (25th worst of 435 members). And that was before God told her to run for president. Between June and September of 2011, Bachmann missed 58.7 percent of all House votes. Since September, she's missed 91.3 percent. In a shocking display, Bachmann even missed the November vote "Reaffirming “In God We Trust” as the official motto of the United States and supporting and encouraging the public display of the national motto in all public buildings."

In the Bachmann style encountered over and over again in the book, this tardiness has not stopped her from slamming those who voted for the "gimmick" extension.

Madness is an amusing encyclopedia devoted to one candidate. But it is also a condemnation of our system.

Many know that Bachmann has never carried Stillwater, the town most often listed as her home. Less well-known is that the majority of her funding comes from outside her district. As the book notes, during Bachmann's first Congressional campaign, "78 percent of itemized campaign contributions came from outside the 6th." In the last quarter of that campaign, "a whopping 91 percent came from outside the 6th." Bachmann is a proxy for wealthy Evangelicals like Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel, who, along with his wife, eavily supported Bachmann both personally and through Target's PAC until a huge outcry by gay activists in 2010. Steinhafel lives in Minnesota's 3rd district. But many like him from outside the state have also backed Bachmann, their own modern Joan of Arc.

Another major Bachmann funder from outside her district was Frank Vennes, Jr. Vennes, currently under indictment, was the largest gravy pipe for Tom Petters, the architect of a billion-dollar Minnesota Ponzi scheme you've never heard of because it was uncovered at the same time as Madoff's larger Ponzi scheme. The book's authors have been dogging Vennes forever and dedicate an entire chapter of the book to a convincing case for how Bachmann shilled for a presidential pardon for an earlier Vennes crime in exchange for massive donations to her campaign. Incidentally, larger-profile media have recently taken interest in Vennes. Showing just how influential (and generally uncredited) their work on Bachmann has been, The New Republic recently used one of the authors' photos of Vennes for its Petters-Vennes-Bachmann cover story. Having failed to credit much info in the piece to the Dump Bachmann and Ripple blogs, the magazine probably didn't think twice about using the photo. (The author has since sued The New Republic.)

But she is also, by the very design of our representative democracy, a proxy for her electorate. Every time one sees Bachmann, the words "Anoka School District" should come to mind. Anoka, a northern Minneapolis suburb, is a core of the Congresswoman's 6th district support and also home to nine student suicides in just two years, many of them gay, others rumored to have been gay-bullied. Last year, the school was sued by students, who allege its administration has negligently and intentionally created a hostile and anti-gay atmosphere. The school maintains a policy of refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of homosexuality. It's a policy driven by the locals.

Much of the Congressional (and school) district's atmosphere of homophobia is set by pro-Bachmann groups like the Parents Action League and the Minnesota Family Council, which, as the book notes, opposes "the health risks to students who are affirmed and labeled as 'gay'" and "pro-gay activist teachers." The Minnesota Family Council is also the organization behind November's ballot initiative that, if passed, will amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage. One of the few bills Bachmann ever authored as a state senator was Minnesota's first effort to ban gay marriage in 2003. Several later bills also failed and the issue was finally made a ballot initiative in 2011 by Republican legislatures, the leader of which, Senator Amy Koch, just resigned over an extramarital affair with an aide.

Bachmann is not some fluke, an unraveled thread on an otherwise good sweater. She exists exactly as the framers of our democracy intended, to represent the primary interests of a select group of Americans.

It's a damning thing, this book. But it probably won't hurt Bachmann, whose reputation with her faithful is coated in teflon and smeared with a thick layer of Astroglide by home-schooled kids with soft hands. Even if the new book contained a naked photo of her participating in a lesbian orgy where everyone was injecting each other with HPV vaccine from Planned Parenthood, Bachmann would likely come out with about the same level of support. And that brings us to the worst possible outcome when it comes to Michele Bachmann: nothing happens.

Unlike Fred Thompson, there will be no reverse mortgage shilling. There will be no too-smart-by-half pistachios commercial. Those who say she'll join Fox News like Huckabee don't understand Bachmann. Huckabee is generally a nice guy. Nobody, even grumpy old people, want to watch an hour of the kind of fire and brimstone Bachmann sells. For that they have church.

Bachmann has committed to not running for her old seat in 2012. Bachmann frames this commitment as an issue of principle. It's really an issue of Minnesota law, which forbids candidates from simultaneously campaigning for dual federal offices. When Bachmann finally loses enough primaries, or runs out of money, she can still return to the 6th where her deadline to declare for her position is June 5th. It's worth noting Bachmann's recent behavior has not warmed her already chilly relationship with Minnesota's Republican Party, which, anyway, is now a smoking crater of debt, scandal, rudderlessness.

Despite spending like a drunken sailor, both of Bachmann's last two elections have been won thanks in part to what's been called "The Anderson Effect," in which any candidate named "Anderson" on any Minnesota ballot inexplicably pulls a large number of voters. In Minnesota's 6th, that Anderson is Independence Party candidate Bob Anderson. In both 2008 and 2010, Bob Anderson sucked votes from Bachmann's opponent.

In 2008, she was sent back to Congress with only 46 percent of her district's votes. (Coincidentally, the latest Rasmussen poll puts President Obama's approval rating at 46 percent.) In 2010, in the greatest Republican election landslide of all time, Bachmann garnered 52 percent of the 6th. To accomplish this, she spent $8.5 million, more than any other member of Congress. It was the first time Bachmann managed to get more than 50 percent of her district's votes.

When Bachmann and crusaders slouch home from their defeat in far-off lands, they may find the kingdom much changed. On January 4th, a five judge panel will begin hearing arguments about the proposed changes to Minnesota's congressional districts, as the Republican legislature and Democrat governor having been unable to reach agreement. Depending on how the justices side, Bachmann could come away sharing a district with another incumbent Republican. She might also land in a shifted district with a strong incumbent Congressional Democrat. Then there's the open race against Democrat Amy Klobuchar, a popular senator with Minnesotans.

But since Bachmann has been pitching herself as a job-creating small business owner, one would hope she could always fall back on that.

Bachmann is a national clown and a global embarrassment, an extremist so foul that she poses nearly as much of a threat to Republican legislators as to Democratic ones. She's a Republican bomb-thrower who forgets the throwing part. Both parties will certainly be glad to be rid of her. But Bachmann's repose only means the absence of the messenger, not the absence of those who paid for the message.

Photo via Bachmann 2012 Facebook page.

Abe Sauer is the author of the book How to be: North Dakota. He is on Twitter. Email him at abesauer @ gmail.com.

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MITT ROMNEY
New York Times
—February 28, 1960

By the time of this family portrait in the Times, George Romney had been on the cover of Time, having made millions as head of American Motors Corporation. His son, as a classmate would later tell a Boston Globe reporter, was still “tall, skinny, gawky [and] had a bad complexion.”

GARY JOHNSON
Albuquerque Journal—December 4, 1976



’76 was a good year for Mr. Johnson: just out of college, he founded Big J Enterprises, a construction firm he’d sell for a profit more than twenty years later, and married Denise Simms. 
Bride and groom "both of Albuquerque."

Years later, in 1993, Gary Johnson was a political unknown with a bad haircut, as evidenced in this August 14th The New Mexican profile. He now has an awesome haircut.

MICHELE BACHMANN
Winona Daily News—April 13, 1977

Michele Amble’s push for the legalization of booze on her college campus presaged her fondness for beer companies, from whom she has accepted donations.


In this AP story, Bachmann, then a junior at Winona State University, was among a group of students pushing for legalization "taken by Gov. Rudy Perpich on a private tour of a home for alcoholics." The tour evidently did not sway her opinion. Her quote: "The University of Minnesota and six private colleges allow liquor on campus. And there have been no problems because of it."


RON PAUL
The Brazosport Facts (Texas)—
July 11, 1972

Dr. Paul once went to great lengths for a box of Samoas.

NEWT GINGRICH
Daily Boston Globe—September 1, 1954

Gingrich would eventually become a standard-bearer for conservative values, but in ’54 the little moocher didn’t mind asking for a handout from the mighty producer.

An 11-year-old is fighting City Hall here in an attempt to establish a zoo in the city's Wildwood Park.

Young Newton Gingrich told Mayor Claude Robins and four city Councilmen that he and an umber of youthful buddies could round up enough animals to get the project started if granted use of the park.

As Gingrich later told CNN, "Early on in life I thought I'd be a paleontologist or a zoo director." The interest abides: "Yes, I mean, I — when you say to me about really great moments of happiness, it is hanging out at zoos."


RICK PERRY
Olney Enterprise—
September 27, 1984

Perry has long had a reputation as an excellent retail politician. As a then-unelected Democrat, he learned to press the flesh.

Two years later—as The Houston Chronicle reported on Jan. 29, 1986— he inadvertently educated a classroom of high-school students.

A state technician says a nude scene attached to the end of a videotaped program on drug abuse was not the fault of the lawmaker who provided the tape to a surprised high school audience.

The scene depicting a nude couple in bed was inadvertently attached to a taped drug program sent by state Rep. Rick Perry, D-Haskell, to the 26 schools in his district.

The discovery prompted Perry to recall all the tapes.

The story as it appeared in The Galveston Daily News.

RICK SANTORUM
Associated Press
—November 27, 1981

Santorum has famously kept children safe from gays, biology and immigration reform. His opposition to caffeine pills may have been his first crusade. Working as an aide to then Sen. Doyle Colman, Santorum advocated for a bill making it illegal to sell caffeine pills “that resemble amphetamines if the intent is to deceive the buyer.”


JON HUNTSMAN
Deseret News—October 16, 1971


As a new member of the Nixon Administration, Jon Huntsman Sr. introduced the future governor and his brother to the felonious President he would be serving.

Elon Green writes supply-sider agitprop for ThinkProgress and Alternet.

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Chelsea is distraught, because Bachmann's campaign might somehow be on the hook for the event's food and drinks. "I don't know who organized this. We don't have any money for this," she said, kind of having a small breakdown.

Bachmann's former campaign manager had recently revealed that Bachmann's operation is basically on life support—telling MSNBC that she "doesn't have the ability or the resources to go beyond Iowa at this point in time." After spending like a drunken sailor to win Ames, the only variation on her fundraising woes is the color words used by the press. The Times: "major headwinds." Minneapolis Star-Tribune: "high hurdle."

Chelsea will apologize through the evening for being "way too wired." But she feels better when I show her the invite email I received: "Food/beverages are on your own." I was invited, and so I came.

Relieved, Chelsea took me back to the empty mezzanine seating area where I and 25 or so Bachmann supporters will watch the Congresswoman's performance. Together, we will come to one conclusion: "It's like Perry was on drugs."

The Maple Grove Champps Americana is not actually in Bachmann's 6th Congressional district, but in Republican Erik Paulsen's 3rd, which acts like a vertebral disc between Bachmann's zone and the 5th—which is represented by not only a Democrat but the first Muslim Congressman, Keith Ellison. But it is appropriate we're in Champps Americana, not only because it is a favorite local Minnesota chain (that most locals probably don't know was bought by Colorado's F&H Acquisition five years ago) but also because it's a sports bar. That modern American politics are called "sport" is more than just a throwaway criticism.

As we waited, Chelsea explained to me how she "just goes wherever they send me," referring to the campaign. She was in Iowa. She has no idea where she'll go next. Asked why she's such a Bachmann supporter, Chelsea told me it's "because she's what America needs right now." I press: but what specifically? "What do you mean," Chelsea said.

Before long, the table fills with others, many of who have, or continue to, work and volunteer for Bachmann. David Fitzsimmons, a tall man whose goatee boasts poorly protected borders, seems the most in touch with the current campaign, probably because he is chairman of the Republican Party in the Bachmann's district. A former Ron Paul fan, Fitzsimmons is now behind Bachmann.

Three women join us: one prim in a trench coat, another sips white wine. Two men of a certain kind of Minnesota beefiness sit down: one wears a giant black cowboy hat, the other all Twins gear. Just before the debate begins, Scott Winer, manager of this Champps, and Rob Powell, Minnesota Senate District 32 Republican Party Co-Chair, sit next to me. Powell orders his second of three Guinnesses and, a day after Bachmann called food safety regulations “overkill," I order a delicious mountain of nachos.

For a group brought together to watch the debate, the Bachmann supporters don't stay very glued to the TV.

Bachmann fields her first question, about how much one should pay to taxes, and she lays a giant egg. "She just contradicted herself," said Winer, sipping his drink.

"What's that?" asked Chelsea.

"Jack Daniels and sour," he said.

"Is that a beer?" asked Chelsea.

David, who is constantly checking his phone for tweets, sets the bar of lowered expectations. "These things are what they are."

The first loud cheer of the night comes not for Bachmann but for Herman Cain's promise to eliminate the EPA. "But didn't he say that he'd then rebuild it?" worries the women in a "Michele Bachmann Homeschool Coalition" t-shirt.

If you have not yet read it, these debates offer the perfect opportunity to pick up Jim Lehrer's latest, Tension City: Inside the Presidential Debates, from Kennedy-Nixon to Obama-McCain. Lehrer's book appropriately bookends an era when questions for those running for the office came from a select group of elite broadcast journalists (except, as Lehrer points out, one Chicago Sun-Times editor).

For this debate, Fox invited users to submit questions via its (Google-owned) Youtube page. The questions chosen included those on immigration, gays in the military, Israel and the 10th Amendment. Coincidentally, one intriguing entry from Covington, LA that went unasked [all sic]: "I am currently in the 50% of Americans that are not required to pay Fed. income taxes. Dispite Mr. Buffet and Mr. Obama's complaints, I feel this is unfair. Will you find a way to include ALL Americans, even me, into our tax system?" Your move, Mr. Buffett.

When the group wasn't watching the debate, they were talking state politics and how Obama just simply must be defeated somehow. "You look at it, and they have the same-sized, same-looking houses. It's a microcosm of socialism up there," says the women drinking white wine, lamenting the inability of Republicans to gain traction in certain impoverished parts of northern Minnesota.

Obamacare. Goddamn Obamacare! If there was one thing everyone in this room agreed on, it's that Obamacare has got to go. Winer nodded his head in agreement as each candidate took shots at Obamacare. His only criticism was of Romney's technical answer involving an executive order to issue waivers to each state blah blah blah. He felt Romney's answer seemed weak on Obamacare. "Just get rid of it," he said. Business has not been good for Winer. "It is what it is," he said of the weak economy. "My dream ticket is Chris Christie and Rubio."

"What's Obamacare about anyway?" said Chelsea.

"You know, I couldn't even tell you," said David, clearly able but unwilling.

Bachmann's crew got rolling with the Congresswomen's answer about education. It made for the first cheers of the night for her and energized everyone.

Bachmann lucked into the immigration question and said, among other things, that she would like to build a wall along every inch of our border. Her people love hearing her be tough on immigration. They like all the immigration stances except Perry's. "I just don't understand that. Makes no sense," said the prim women in the trench, referring to Perry's in-state tuition policy for "illegals."

Big picture reports often paint Bachmann and Perry as very similar candidates. But that doesn't seem right at all. The candidates these Bachmann supporters respond best to are Herman Cain and, in a few answers, Rick Santorum. The ones I speak with admit Newt is a legend, a major brain, worthy of respect (if not a vote). They even find Ron Paul and Gary Johnson adorably goofy and lovable.

The conventional wisdom might be that, once Bachmann's gone, her evangelical base will fall in behind Perry. But this crowd seems more likely to give its vote to... Romney. With Perry already having sucked up all of the vacillating Bachmann fans, those diehards who are left see Perry as the greatest enemy in the field.

The HPV question finally comes home to roost and Bachmann backs off her original claims by dumping all the blame on the anonymous mother and then savaging Perry. "I think she did a good job actually," said one woman, her white wine now gone.

"If somebody told her that story, then what's she supposed to do?" lamented the women in the trench. "I mean, I should know if my child is having sex or not. It's my choice."

Of all the issues these Bachmann supporters could break with her on, somehow it's her HPV vaccine claims. Another women leaned in and flatly said the vaccine is a good thing: "I even heard it's for boys. They said boys can get it too."

While Bachmann takes Perry to task as a Tea Party bandwagon jumper and crony capitalist, her public easing off on Romney is seen as a posture for a VP spot. Yet she kneecapped Romney at the pre-debate event with Ralph Reed's new joint, the Faith And Freedom Coalition, when she implored social values conservatives not to settle and instead seek out a candidate whose values they "share." (Coded message, received!) Bachmann banged away at this idea of not settling again during the debate, although with not quite a strong-enough evangelical pitch.

On his way out, the man with the big black cowboy hat waved goodbye and says that Perry clearly did the worst: "It's like he was on drugs."

Bachmann has time to dawdle and find a new play. She has missed about 53 percent of Congressional votes since she announced and has not held an event in her district anytime in recent memory.

"Ours is one of the most gerrymandered districts in the country," said Bachmann's fellow Stillwater resident Karl Bremer, an investigative journalist and co-author of the upcoming book The Madness of Michele Bachmann: A Broad-Minded Survey of a Small-Minded Candidate. While her district will be redrawn, probably by the courts, between now and February, if it remains anything like it is, Bremer says, "She would almost certainly win." Bachmann has until the first week of June, 2012 to announce a run to hold her current seat. But with the GOP national convention not until September of 2012, she may be forced to decide before getting any vice-presidential nod, a goal a few of her supporters here grudgingly admit to in passing.

The table exploded in laughter. Everyone had jumped to huddle around David's phone as he read Michelle Malkin's tweet: "If Perry goes after Obama in debates like he just did against Romney, we're screwed. Just saying."

"Awesome," they said. "So true." And: "I love Malkin."

"Wait, are you Michelle Malkin?" Chelsea asked the woman in the trench coat.

Abe Sauer can be reached at abesauer at gmail dot com. He is on Twitter.

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But an open records request by The Awl found that Palin, once again, failed to apply for a license to fish in Alaska this season. The request follows our report from earlier this year that revealed that Palin had only secured commercial fishing licenses for fewer than half of all the years she's claimed to have been in the business.

Palin will continue to pass herself off as a hardcore commercial fisher despite clear evidence to the contrary. But for some time now, profiles and criticism of Palin have become far more about the profiler and the audience than Mama Grizzly herself. Then again, as Palin herself once wrote, "Never hurts to rumormonger."

Hitting what few bookshelves are left in America today is The Rogue: Searching For The Real Sarah Palin. What new information the book offers is not in its title as, currently, Amazon lists five other books about Palin with "rogue" in the title, not even including Palin's own Going Rogue: An American Life. Sure, Joe McGinniss' The Rogue is a hatchet job, but it's performed with a high quality Alaskan made-in-the-USA hatchet—built to last. For those whose own happiness comes from despising both Palin and her variety of unintellectual flyover dope, the book offers a wealth of fossil fuels. Drill baby, drill.

The Rogue is mean. Mean and uncivil and ruthless. In that sense, it is the biography Sarah Palin deserves, but it won't hurt her. The former governor has now passed into a realm where those who despise her will do so for life, and where her most ardent fans have invested so much, and believed so hard, it's now necessary to go to the grave on her side.

To those whose first presidential memories are of George Bush Part 1, that voting Americans once got their knickers in a bunch over the one-time marijuana use of Bill Clinton must seem like it's from an era with separate drinking fountains for blacks, suffrage, or when men had those separate collars they slipped onto their shirt-necks. But the Clinton episode was just 19 years ago.

Just how fast did popular opinion on presidential drug use change? Every commander in chief since Clinton has at least tried cocaine, and nobody cares. That The Rogue reveals that Palin did as well will surprise nobody.

The more subtle condemnation The Rogue makes in its coke revelation is that she did it off an overturned oil drum, an act so stereotypically Alaskan hillbilly that if it weren't real, "South Park" would have to do a sketch on it.

And when it comes to the more raunchy details, everyone has focused on Palin sleeping naked, or the affair, or the Glen Rice fling. But the most damningly redneck revelation is how Sarah's future husband saw himself. Todd, the book claims, wooed women with lines about a "great heart-shaped ass," a come-on he probably lifted from Mickey Rourke, whose character used it to describe Kim Basinger in 9½ Weeks back in 1986.

This all misses the point that conservative voters just don't care about youthful transgressions, largely because the reborn social conservative of today is vastly different from the permanently repressed social conservative of just 20 years ago (when Bill Clinton "didn't inhale"). Nowhere is this better represented than in the Episcopalian subscription of George H. W. Bush and the evangelical faith of his son, George W. Bush.

Social conservatives today have no problem supporting candidates with sordid histories because those candidates are simply echoes of the voters themselves. It's hard to be pure and young in America today. But just because you had a young and wild life doesn't mean you can't grow up to "recover" from (and then be hypocritically self-righteous against) the life you once led. It's something that began when evangelicals realized they could write new rules for who is and who is not allowed to be a legitimate politician when they took a recovering alcoholic and all-around basket case and said, "Him. Yeah, that guy!"

In essence, the electorate looked at conventional wisdom on politicians and drew themselves into the picture. Overnight, they turned politicians from a group of guys nothing at all like their own reformed deadbeat asses to a group of guys just like their own reformed deadbeat asses. A look at the current slate of banner-carrying hard right darlings and dynamos proves that "recovery" is practically a resume requirement.

• Rick Perry worked not just for any Democrat, but for GOP boogeyman Al Gore (not to mention he was a state secessionist who is now running for President).

• Michele Bachmann campaigned for Jimmy Carter and today spins her former service to (what the Tea Party considers) the most evil organization imaginable, the IRS, as "know thy enemy."

• Propaganda minister Andrew Breitbart? Former Democrat.

• Mike Huckabee has called himself a "recovering foodaholic" and made his struggles with food a core appeal of his personality.

• In Wisconsin's recent recalls, it was revealed that evangelical Tea Party candidate Kim Simac had engaged in some kind of wife (husband?) swapping arrangement with another couple, but her base did not care. (What they did care about was that she had not been paying her taxes.)

• And Newt Gingrich's 237 previous wives don't hurt him with the GOP's new base; his unwillingness to debase himself about it does. (See also: Rudy Giuliani.) He only needs to pull up his flimsy metal folding chair and say, "I am Newt Gingrich and I am a wifeaholic." His poll numbers would jump 15 points overnight, a night which he would probably spend sleeping on the couch. (But, Newt, do you want to win or be liked by your family?)

At the CNN-Tea Party debate, Perry's ability to loudly admit his own former policies were "a mistake," and to look confident and macho doing so: this was a thing not possible for a Republican presidential candidate 20 years ago. This is a demographic that gold sellers carefully looked at, and then chose as a trustworthy advertising spokesman G. Gordon Liddy. (G. Gordon Liddy!)

Further revelations about Palin, no matter how leering or vile, will do her no harm. She's born again. She needn't even address the most recent accusations, because her followers all understand. They too all once snorted cocaine off some overturned oil drum with a bunch of drunk guys playing grab-ass with them, and they too wanted more for themselves, something better. What are you gonna do at the age of 22 in goddamn Alaska?

Meanwhile, The Rogue shares much in common with Nick Broomfield's documentary, You Betcha!, due in limited release Sept 30th.

Both insert the journalists as characters in a pursuit of the Palin truth. Each make the trials of getting the scoop on her both a part of the story and a sly indictment against her—as if all other politicians were open books constantly inviting "journalists" to diary-reading parties in their Capitol Hill bedrooms. The cover of McGinniss' book even features his name in larger type than Palin's, as if it was another Tom Clancy novel. A former Seal of some kind from Worcester, Mass., whose best days are behind him, has to use his wiles and cunning to track down intelligence on an elusive domestic terrorist. But will he publish the truth, and cash in, before she becomes culturally irrelevant? You won't be able to put it down… without also taking a shower.

For Broomfield's part, what he brings to bear on Mama Grizzly might be considered the third installment of his American Women trilogy, joining his films Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer and Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam.

But what's the point? McGinniss has gone on record that 90% of what he learned isn't even in the book, which makes the author both the world's greatest receptacle of Palin trivia and its most potentially insufferable dinner guest. McGinniss says he decided what was true and what was questionable simply based on decades of journalism (and meetings in Starbucks with bloggers). Known technically in the industry as "winging it," this approach to fact checking is often used by seasoned journalists, including legends like Dan Rather.

Why not? Everyone's winging it. Publishing his own book on the same day as McGinniss, Levi Johnston says he fell into "an unintended role in America's most delicious drama." There are compensations, however. Palin's daughter Bristol has also already cashed in. Willow and Track cannot be far behind.

Meanwhile, America continues to idly wonder if Palin will run for something or other. She's caught between a rock and hard rat race. If she doesn't run, she risks irrelevance. But a Palin campaign could be even more damaging, as she would face her own party—a foe against which almost none of her rhetorical weapons will work.

Worst of all, though, would be a Palin campaign victory of some kind, where she would face the personal disaster of governing—an unwelcome fate that has, of late, eaten everyone attempting it.

But right now, in the eyes of her core supporters, Palin remains beautiful, meaningful, worthy. Listening to Palin's supporters at a rally or touring her Facebook page's comments is to wander into a world so free from reality and doubt it that can probably only be compared with North Korea.

In a few years though, when Palin's Dorian Gray lurches into the sitting room and looks at those closest to her, she's likely to find the devastating picture of spiritual and familial disfigurement, as rendered by projects like The Rogue. But by then it will be too late.

Abe Sauer can be reached at abesauer at gmail dot com. He is on Twitter.

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Bachmann had found the issue that would differentiate her from the man who stole her thunder. The Congresswoman spent the next few days slamming Perry and the HPV vaccine in interviews—and even in her fundraising email immediately following the debate's conclusion. It's a move that morphs a one-time sideshow amusement and general thorn in the side of Democrats (and thinking human beings) into a genuine public health threat.

The brunt of Bachmann's crony capitalism charge is that Governor Perry mandated the use of a drug by a pharmaceutical company—Merck—that had also donated to his campaign to the tune of $28,500.

Meanwhile, Bachman has taken somewhere north of $140,000 from pharmaceutical companies.

Those donors include Abbott Labs, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Novartis, Eli Lilly and Bayer. Yet, not a dollar of all that pharma money, from such a wide range of the world's largest drugmakers, came from Merck. Might Bachmann be going after Merck on behalf of that company's competitors who also happen to be Bachmann donors?

But really, if Bachmann is carrying water, it's likely not for her pharmaceutical patrons, but her insurance ones. Over the years, Bachmann has taken in huge donations from the insurance industry, including big names such as Allstate, American Family, Aetna and AFLAC, as well as umbrella organizations like the National Association of Health Underwriters and the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies. There are also several professional insurance association and agent PACs. In the 2009-10 cycle, "insurance" was the largest single industry donor to the Congresswoman. Of the 435 members of the House of Representatives, Bachmann ranked eighth in total fundraising receipts from insurers.

Now, if Bachmann likes a good follow-the-money insinuation, she might like the hypothetical that she is only going after Perry's Gardasil decision because, as a covered treatment, such an order would cost insurers for every injection (a full vaccination requires three shots, and they cost about $120 each). Perry worked to secure about $40 million from the state to match about that same amount from the feds to cover the uninsured and those on state health assistance.

(A note on the subject of conflicts of interest: Quaint by comparison is that the Our Country Deserves Better PAC (better known as the Tea Party Express), the co-sponsors of the debate, donated to only one candidate on stage Monday night: Michele Bachmann. That this was not disclosed is, in this day and age, a minor point, but one that should be flung in with the rest of CNN's reputation as its spirals around the toilet bowl.)

It would be a relief to nail Bachmann as a crony capitalist. But worse and far more likely is that she's just a political opportunist who sees going after Gardasil as a fast-track to headlines about America's virgin daughters threatened with the penetration of a forced injection—with her as a protector of those virgins.

After the debate, Bachmann told Anderson Cooper that immediately after the event she had been approached by a mother. Bachmann looked right into the camera and said, "She told me that her little daughter took that vaccine, that injection, and she suffered from mental retardation thereafter."

If Bachmann did not just make that whole story up, then she repeated a lie that she didn't care to elaborate upon. In the hours after her statement, health professionals and citizens alike voiced outrage at her unfounded claim. Two separate Minnesota heath researchers offered a combined $11,000 bounty on any proof of the connection.

But what about the opposition to the mandate voiced by the Texas Medical Association that so many keep mentioning? That was for tax purposes, not treatment ones, as doctors worried they would be forced to eat the costs of administration as a "pass-through" treatment where they could bill for the injection itself, but not the time spent giving it.

What would really take Bachmann's claim to the next level would be a full-on slander lawsuit from Merck. Bachmann's irresponsible, if not manufactured, claim that HPV vaccination creates "mental retardation" presents a genuine threat to Merck's bottom line—and at least a few of the jobs of their 94,000 employees, their contribution to being an "engine of the economy."

Merck's statement on the issue, with the clinical title "Merck Statement on GARDASIL®," was so sanitary it did not even mention Bachmann's name. In the battle for news worthiness, Merck's effort has all the pop of the brochure that your pharmacist staples to prescription bags at pick-up.

Asked for comment on the possibility of such an action, a spokesman for Merck referred me to the statement, saying only that right now Merck's "priority is to make sure there is accurate information about Gardasil available to the public."

Of course, the real losers here are women who will suffer horribly and die from cervical cancer.

A lesser loser, but a loser nonetheless, is Anita Perry, the wife Rick Perry threw under the bus during the debate when he spun his HPV vaccination mandate as "a mistake." (Perry has called the mandate a mistake before, but never on quite such a national stage.)

Anita Perry has a BA and an MS in nursing. In addition to her personal medical experience, her father was a doctor. She has been a champion of women's health. By accounts, she is the true driver behind the Gardasil mandate. For years as Texas' First Lady, Perry has made cancer a particular focus, attending event after event for cancer research, awareness and fundraising.

During the passage of the vaccine bill, Anita Perry headed up a sexual assault organization, which may have pushed her further toward an understanding of the value of HPV immunity.

Emails from a FOIA request by Politico show that Rick Perry was hardly a factor in the vaccine bill and instead forwarded information to Anita, who responded by writing, "[Dallas Republican] Tammy Cotten Hartnett told me at lunch today that she would help you with some conservative groups."

Putting a human face on Perry's order was 31-year-old teacher Heather Burcham who, while dying of cervical cancer, lobbied heavily for the mandate and became a health advocacy partner of Perry's in the run-up to 2007. Burcham said before her death, "I don't want my life to have no purpose whatsoever, and if I can help spread the word about cervical cancer and the HPV vaccine, then I haven't lived in vain."

The limp governor, who was tough enough to shoot a coyote but did not have the cojones to veto the bill repealing his HPV order, is now groveling in the face of outrage from mouth-breathing moralists. It's a damn shame, because if Perry was genuinely the bold leader he's been sold as, he would have just reissued his statements on the matter from 2007:

I have never seen so much misinformation spread about a vital public health issue: whether it is the effectiveness of the vaccine, the impact of the order on parents’ decision-making authority, or the impact this will have on the behavior of young women.

But the fact remains: my order always has been and always will be about protecting women’s health.... Those legislators who claim this is about their right to determine public policy have succeeded in overturning my order. But if they care about succeeding in stopping the spread of the second most deadly cancer among women, and not just asserting their power, then they will turn around and pass legislation to make access to the HPV vaccine as widely available as possible.

Instead, they have sent me a bill that will ensure three-quarters of our young women will be susceptible to a virus that not only kills hundreds each year, but causes great discomfort and harm to thousands more. Instead of vaccinating close to 95 percent of our young women, and virtually eliminating the spread of the most common STD in America, they have relegated the lives of our young women to social Darwinism, where only those who can afford it or those who know about the virtues of it will get access to the HPV vaccine.

In fact, this legislature has not only overturned an order that could save women’s lives, but they put rider language in the budget that prevents the state from funding vaccines for low-income women if it is mandated by the commission.

This is shameful.

Yes, yes it is. I wonder how Perry's mother, currently suffering from cancer, feels about his change of heart?

There is some hope though that Bachmann and her paranoid anti-vaccine comrades are on their way to the dustbin of history.

A gynecologist I spoke with said that she is increasingly seeing young women just out of high school come into her office and voluntarily ask for the HPV vaccine. Better yet, the physician said that she often sees a noticeable friend effect, where after one women is inoculated, suddenly her circle of fiends all make similar appointments, mentioning that they heard through the first.

She adds, largely lost in the brouhaha, that Gardasil has been approved for boys.

The acceptance of HPV vaccination seems to be a trend across the immunization spectrum. The CDC's 2010 National Immunization Survey found that 90% of American children aged 19- to 35-months are receiving recommended vaccines. It's a note of good news, as the new data represent an increase after a number of years of falling rates—peaking in 2009. For example, the MMR vaccination rate rose to 91.5% from 90% in 2009.

And the better news is that America may not need a vaccination against Michele Bachmann, as she's proving to be what doctors call "self-limiting."

UPDATE 9/16 PM: This is how a once-promising campaign flames out, not in spectacular fashion with an orchestral showdown and a cloud of smoke, but with grainy cellphone video, musty fabric-covered wall dividers and a fern.

After a day spent reading her press—which included criticism from her own former campaign manager and current consultant, Ed Rollins—the campaign knew its goose was cooked. Late in the afternoon, Bachmann's Youtube channel posted a video of Bachmann begging for her credibility, shot at the undisclosed location where she is being held hostage by public opinion.

Even her hair appears to have given up. Her last hope? "Perrycare."

The email to supporters that mirrored the video statement was a mess, featuring grammatical errors and a complete abandonment of the "little girls" language in favor of "our young women." What was more of a sign than anything though, for the first time in months of these emails, Bachmann did not directly ask for money.

So Bachmann's campaign ends not with a whimper, but with a "Perrycare."

Bachmann still plans to join the next debate on Sept, 22, which really will be something special.

Abe Sauer can be reached at abesauer at gmail dot com. He is on Twitter.

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The migraines I get are called “aura” migraines. I think Bachmann gets the ones where you become really sensitive to light and sound and have to go sit in a dark room for a few hours. Mine are incapacitating in a different way. They begin with a dead spot in my eyesight, like I just caught the sun’s reflection in a car windshield. Instead of fading away like an afterimage would, the spot grows, and grows, until it obscures the entire right half of my field of vision. This makes me effectively blind.

My first migraine happened during a job interview. It was the middle of On-Campus Recruiting, that period of law school when you’re quite overwhelmed with stress because you didn’t realize everything would be this difficult, and then in the thick of your panic law firms come to judge your entire career as a lawyer based only on your first year, first semester grades. It’s a time fraught with anxiety to begin with. It doesn’t help when half the interviewer’s face disappears. “So what aspect of contracts did you find the most interesting?” Answer: “I’m sorry, I think I’m having a stroke!”

After that the migraines started to show up once every few months on average, though there was a stretch last year when they showed up in strings, three over a two-day period, every week. My doctor asked if I’d made any changes to my diet and I told him I’d been cutting down on coffee after my morning intake had somehow ratcheted up to five cups. “Yeah,” he said. “I need you to not do that.” The sudden decrease in caffeine was a trigger, apparently. My prescription was like Jason Statham’s in Crank; keep my adrenaline all jacked up or face consequences to my health.

Caffeine is actually a key ingredient in many migraine treatment options. A single tablet of Excedrin Migraine has 65mg of caffeine, almost twice as much as a can of Coke. Most treatments are abortive, not preventative, meaning you can’t really protect yourself until you’re in the midst of an attack. When that happens, you have to act quickly, or the treatment has no effect. Usually the window closes a couple minutes after the point I realize it’s a migraine aura and not the afterimage of reflected sunlight. If I miss the window, I get to watch the whole thing unfold.

The actual aura itself, the blind spot, looks like a fishing wire held up to a light bulb, with a whole bunch of zig-zaggy pulsating lines coming out one side. If someone made an animated GIF of dazzle camouflage, that would be a pretty close approximation of this phenomenon. Except, the lines look less like paint, and more like the translucent ridges of a lenticular postcard. The spot eventually expands past my field of vision, allowing me to see again, but it leaves in its wake a nasty headache, followed by one or two days of crippling depression.

It’s this last bit that’s the most unnerving. Doctors call it a “postdrome” or a “migraine hangover.” It’s certainly splitting like a normal hangover, just slightly more dull, like your left hemisphere has been cleaved by a toy hatchet. And where regrets are specific during an alcohol hangover (“whose idea was the Goldschläger?”), during my migraine hangovers they’re much more all-encompassing. Waves of generalized anxiety shoot out from the toy hatchet blade. As an adult, you’re not supposed to let the anxiety win, so the idea of staying in bed to let it pass just smacks of failure. So I force myself to be social, which leads to a lot of people asking why I’m sulking. I wonder if Bachmann makes the same choice. She strikes me as pretty moody, as well.

The only people I talk to about migraines are other people who get them. We’re an ad-hoc secret support group. Most of these people are high-functioning members of society. There seems to be a correlation between voluntarily taking on a lot of stress and getting migraines, at least from what I’ve seen. And this personality type is also well-suited to not letting a migraine get in the way of anything they want to achieve. I’m not going to defend Michele Bachmann’s politics. But in at least one small way I do feel like I’m on her team.

Eric Spiegelman is a proprietor of Old Jews Telling Jokes.

Photo by Gage Skidmore.

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As she posed for pictures with fairgoers, Palin insisted to the dozens of reporters jockeying for position around her that she was not there to steal the spotlight—nevermind the fact that she had arrived on the same day that most of the GOP presidential candidates (and thus much of the national political press) were at the fairgrounds. By some miracle, I was jostled into a spot right next to her. I asked if she ever wished she could walk through a state fair unmolested. She didn’t bite, offering only a rote response about how much she values the chance to meet all these good, hardworking Americans. (When I asked Todd Palin the same question, he was more introspective: “This,” he said, “is the life we chose.”)

In Ames the next day, minutes after she had been declared the victor of the Iowa straw poll, Rep. Michele Bachmann's campaign bus stopped next to the outdoor tent where Mike Huckabee was shooting a “special edition” of his Fox News show. As Bachmann made her way over to the tent, Huckabee was explaining to his Fox News viewers why Iowa deserved its exalted place in the presidential process.

Iowans, he said, were not star-struck by the parade of politicians who sought their votes every four years. This was the most shameless kind of pandering: Huckabee had been swarmed all day as he worked the straw poll. In case the adoring crowds weren't enough to demonstrate his rock-star status, he had played bass guitar onstage at three of the candidates' tents (Herman Cain, Rick Santorum and Tim Pawlenty). Now as Bachmann approached, straw poll voters stood on tiptoes around the rope barriers, shooting camera phone pictures and shouting, "We're praying for you!" at Bachmann.

Bachmann's greeting for Huckabee was warm but efficient, that of a cocktail party veteran with a hundred dear friends in the room. Over the course of two segments, Huckabee served her up a stream of deferential softballs, never once acknowledging what he surely knows: That the straw poll is a sham. In 2007, Mitt Romney spent lavishly to beat Huckabee here, busing in supporters, paying their entry fees and giving them free food and entertainment. Huckabee went on to embarrass the free-spending Romney in the caucuses, which can’t be bought so easily.

The story was much the same this year: Bachmann, Pawlenty and Ron Paul each spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy a few thousand votes. (Bachmann even brought in Randy Travis.) Their campaigns knew that the political media, desperate for a hook on which to hang a new narrative, would inflate the results—even as they dismissed them privately. Unfortunately for Pawlenty, that cuts both ways: The day after he came in third place—he got 2,293 votes, while Bachmann got all of 4,823—he dropped out of the race.

As Bachmann began to leave the stage, Don Lemon, the CNN anchor, was standing in front of me. He was holding up his phone, showing his cameraman a Gawker post about his claim that Bachmann’s security detail (and her husband Marcus) had shoved him earlier in the day.

Lemon was now clearly itching for a repeat incident. A Bachmann staffer had asked reporters to stay behind a rope barrier erected to give Bachmann a path back to her bus; Lemon told his cameraman to start rolling, and then promptly stepped under it. The staffer tried to physically restrain Lemon, who stated that he was on public property, asked sarcastically, “Are you a police officer?” Eventually, an actual police officer came over and stood in front of Lemon. Bachmann and her security detail passed by in a blur, the candidate ignoring Lemon’s shouted questions.

Then came Marcus Bachmann. As he walked by, Bachmann turned toward Lemon and gave him a taunting look. “Oh, yes, you’re the one who elbowed me before,” he said. Lemon asked Bachmann if he wanted to talk about the incident. Bachmann turned his head away and kept walking, leaving Lemon clutching his microphone, his arm extended over the police officer’s shoulder.

Once the Bachmann entourage was safely aboard the bus, the candidate came to the door to bid goodbye to her supporters. A screamer during her rallies, Bachmann is a model of clipped efficiency offstage, her warmness edging toward the perfunctory. She spoke briefly, offering promises to her supporters that she’d be back soon. As the door started to close you could just briefly see her smile drop as she turned to walk back into the bus, her face a mask of steely determination.

Brian Montopoli last wrote for the Awl about porn valley and Mormon temples.

Photo courtesy of IowaPolitics.com.

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After years of ratcheted-up rhetoric, it was only a matter of time before some right-winger deduced to take what he saw as the natural next step. Still, it's a surprise that Anders Breivik's manifesto argues for creating "a cultural Euro-version of a Tea Party movement"—since one already exists. Norway's Progress Party is a smaller-government, low-taxes, culturally conservative movement based on Christianity that, besides the diacritics, is nearly identical to the Tea Party. Breivik belonged to the party for some time. Progress Party leaders have made it a point to note that he left the party; Breivik himself still endorses the party in his 1,500-page diary, writing that he "strongly recommends followers extend their Facebook networks to like-minded individuals overseas and to, amongst others groups, join the Progress Party."

The Progress Party is no lunatic fringe. In 2010, speaking on behalf of the Republican Party of the United States, then-Chairman Michael Steele sent a letter beginning "To My Friends at the Progress Party of Norway." He wrote: "I look forward to your continued growth."

Also in 2010, the head of U.S. Tea Party seed group Americans for Prosperity, Tim Phillips, addressed the Progress Party convention, cementing the relationship. It makes sense; the Progress Party is simply a populism movement and, despite all its rhetoric, that's all America's Tea Party is as well.

Phillips and Steele needn't be embarrassed to have their associations with European extremists exposed. They regularly travel in the similar company of U.S. counterparts.

In America, it is becoming increasingly easy to find those like-minded individuals Breivik spoke of not just in the United States but also in the halls of power.

In March, Rep. Peter King held national hearings on the Muslim threat. Despite widespread criticisms, he announced that he would go ahead with a second June round, titled “The Threat of Muslim-American Radicalization in U.S. Prisons." King is on record saying the nation has "too many mosques" and has addressed criticism thusly: “To back down would be a craven surrender to political correctness."

For those obsessed with Islam, "political correctness" is a code word. Breivik constantly blamed political correctness as a weakness that would allow for Islamification. He wrote, "Multiculturalism (cultural Marxism/political correctness), as you might know, is the root cause of the ongoing Islamisation...."

Meanwhile, Michele Bachmann lashed out at critics for "applying a veneer of political correctness to national security," calling King's hearings "common sense."

Bachmann has long cozied to anti-Muslim activists, understanding that the passion behind their single-issue support makes noise for candidates. As a presidential candidate, she signed the anti-Sharia pledge, which won her praise with the likes of bloggers like Robert Spencer, author of Jihad Watch, a blog cited numerous times by Breivik as inspirational.

One of the American anti-Muslim crusaders Bachmann partners with is Minnesota "punk preacher" and radio host Bradlee Dean. Dean is no mere nut—in addition to Bachmann, Dean's ministry has ties with Tim Pawlenty and Tom Emmer, the Tea Party candidate for governor who lost by a hair.

In May of this year, Bradlee Dean gave the opening prayer for the Minnesota House of Representatives. During his address, Dean, long having hinted that Obama is a Muslim, praised all denominations of Christianity, and said: “The head of the denomination is Jesus as every President up until 2008 has acknowledged, in Jesus' name.”

When Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim to serve in Congress, took issue with the address, Dean took to his radio show in reply: “What is it you don’t like about who we are, Keith? Our laws say no to Sharia law in this country. Is this your problem?" It wasn't his first scrap with Ellison. In 2010, Dean said, "There is a correlation between the Muslims and the homosexual agenda, and we have a couple of fools in the state of Minnesota that are putting a rope around their neck and they just don’t realize it."

Speaking of Obama: Those who argue that Breivik's politics were those of the EU, and not of America's Tea Party, will have a hard time explaining why the shooter featured Photoshopped anti-Obama imagery in his video opus. And in his manifesto, Breivik ranted about the "War on Christmas."

Compare Breivik's now-famous sole tweet, the paraphrased Mill quote ("One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100 000 who have only interests"), to, say, the Adams quote on TeaPartyGroundZero.com: "It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds."

And for those familiar with the Tea Party, seeing Breivik posture with his firearm was a familiar sight.

When it comes to national leaders, Bachmann and King are hardly the only ones flirting with the anti-Muslim crowd. Herman Cain caused a stir when, citing Sharia law, he said he would only hire Muslims if they swore a loyalty oath.

Then, at the conservative conference RightOnline, Herman Cain defended his statements by saying, "There is this creeping attempt, there is this attempt to gradually ease Sharia law and the Muslim faith into our government… This is what happened in Europe. And little by little, to try and be politically correct, they made this little change, they made this little change. And now they’ve got a social problem that they don’t know what to do with hardly."

For those looking for it, "creeping Sharia" can be found anywhere. "Sharia creep" is a favorite term of Michelle Malkin—herself a religious fundamentalist who sought to live amongst the like-minded in Colorado Springs, a city that's become a "mecca" for Evangelicals.

American Sharia creepers may even be having an impact on American business (our "job creators"). In June, American bloggers created a headache for Delta when they concocted a conspiracy theory about the airline's partnership with Saudi Arabian Air and their "discrimination against Jews." Soon, Delta was being plastered with comments from ignorant people under the spell of racist paranoids. One commenter wrote, "I will not be flying Delta Airlines again. Your silly excuse is sickening. You should refuse to enter any relationship with any county in which it is illegal to carry a Bible openly. You make me sick!"

Sharia creep is just one more item of proof that the EU nationalists and American Tea Party right-wings are speaking the same language (even when they're not speaking the same language). When Progress Party leader Siv Jensen warned about the Islamic threat, she used the term "snikislamisering"—"sneaking Islam."

A proven influence on Breivik were American anti-Jihadists and Sharia creepers Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller. (Spencer is the author of the books The Truth About Muhammad and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam.) In an age when everyone laments American's distaste for reading, both of those books made the New York Times Bestseller list. Spencer often writes about Obama's partiality for Islam, such as his ties to the Islamic Brotherhood.

Pamela Geller authors the blog Atlas Shrugged, where she rails against Sharia creep. She is a regular marquee speaker at Tea Party events. In his manifesto, Breivik recommended both Geller and Spencer for guidance.

Those two are among numerous right wing and Tea Party bloggers who sound the same alarm—many of whom see putting "infidel" in Arabic on their sidebars as heights of intellectual counterpoint.

Even more mainstream writers are tied to the populist vilification of Islam. The National Review now regularly partners with the topic, as its reader base longs for more information on the impending threat of America's Islamification. National Review writer Andrew McCarthy put his name on a book called "Shariah: The Threat to America."

The scaremongering is paying off both in votes and legislation. Tennessee and Oklahoma now both outlaw Sharia law. In Tennessee, the law even defines Sharia as "a legal-political-military doctrinal system." Lawmakers said the bill was necessary to prevent "homegrown terror," which would be funny today if it were not tragic.

At least ten other states are currently considering similar laws.

Then there are the anti-mosque movements. New York, most famously, but so many other states have seen them now, like Florida and Wisconsin. In North Dakota, the webpage of a planned mosque features comments such as "A mosque was not welcome by ground zero & is surely not welcome here" and "shariah laws are trying to change our country. Look what you've done to France and England!!! India is no longer allowed to practice their faith due to muslims."

Ross, North Dakota, is the site of the first recorded mosque in the United States.

With all of this noise, one would expect to find Muslims coming out of America's ears. The very highest estimates of Muslims in the U.S. top out at 2 percent of the American population. (Estimates range from 1.3 million to 7 million, with a 2011 Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life study finding that Muslims make up less than 1 percent of the U.S. population today (2.6 million) and that by 2030, 20 years from now, they will still only account for 1.7 percent of the nation's population.)

The anti-Muslim sentiment that in its extreme bred Norway's shooter has only manifested so far in the U.S. in individual assaults and community "incidents"—such as the one in February in Yorba Linda, California, where a Muslim relief organization with perceived ties to terrorism was protested by attendees waving American flags and yelling "terrorist go home" to women and children.

Lost on nobody, in condemning the acts, right wing radicals in the U.S. and Norway sounded exactly like the Muslim community they so suspect—"We never advocate violence" is parroted by many, who then blame violent acts on lone, misled members of their ideology. (Familiar story.)

This is to be expected from a populist movement completely barren of self-awareness. In his comparison of Norway's dead to the Hitler Youth movement, Beck asked, "Who does a camp for kids that's all about politics? Disturbing." Well, in July, the Tea Party 9/12 Project offered a summer camp for kids ages 8-12 where they learned about socialism, the gold standard and the Constitution, among other things. In 2009, Beck was an early champion of the 9/12 movement, writing, "Become a 9/12er and don’t be afraid of it." (Beck got what he wanted though, attention, in the form of legitimizing criticism from Al-Jazeera that compared the talking head to al-Qaeda.)

Undeterred from continuing to churn the butter that makes their bread tasty, Sharia creepers vowed to be undaunted by the events. After jumping to condemn Islam and jihad for the attacks in Norway, Michelle Malkin wrote that she would offer "no apology" and "I will continue to be vigilant in thoroughly covering the global jihadist threat." Like many other Sharia creepers, Malkin defended herself by saying that "reading the signs and connecting several large, obvious dots," the event "definitely suggested jihad." Malkin was finally right, it was jihad.

Abe Sauer can be reached at abesauer at gmail dot com. He is on Twitter.

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