By Jeffrey Page

The Republican victory was not yet two days old when Michele Bachmann informed the House GOP leadership that she wants a piece of the pie by being named the party’s conference chairwoman when the 112th Congress convenes in January.

In most other countries – with the possible exception of Saturn – Bachmann’s ambition would be considered a joke. Bachmann is the Minnesota backbencher whose brain and mouth have never quite connected as evidenced by her bizarre request to the press a few years ago. “I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America?” she said. Listen carefully and you can hear Joe McCarthy whispering, “That’s my girl.”

Bachmann, a two-term member of the House, is a favorite of the Tea Party movement and thus has some clout. Many Tea Partiers believe – with good reason – that they helped make the difference on Election Day and that because of them, the Republicans have the House. (Of course, they don’t talk much about their failure – Angle, O’Donnell, possibly Miller in Alaska, et al. – to take over the Senate.)

Maybe the Tea Party people have a legitimate claim to a place in the House GOP leadership. But Michele Bachmann? Michele Bachmann, who informed CNN listeners last week that President Obama’s Asian trip is costing $200 million – a day. That Michele Bachmann?

John Boehner, the next Speaker of the House, has a problem with her that rivals the Democrats’ dilemma of 2000. Ten years ago Democrats watched as many of their members gave up on Al Gore and cast their lots with Ralph Nader. As a result, we got two wars and lost several thousand of our young men and women. We watched New Orleans nearly float off and sink. We got Rumsfeld and Cheney and their idiotic mission to find Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. We got Chief Justice John Roberts.

Good old St. Ralph.

And now, Boehner must deal with his fringe, which, like Ivory soap and the Gore defectors, considers itself 99 and 44/100 percent pure. And he must be careful. Never forget that during the campaign, any number of Tea Party activists were quoted as saying they may despise the Democratic Party, but they’re not at all crazy about the GOP either.

Message to Boehner: Watch your back because here comes Bachmann and her demand for respectability, and here’s Boehner who understands he’s got to do something to calm her down. But he can’t hand the GOP over to her and her Tea Party allies. How about a committee chairmanship? Then again, maybe not. The heads of congressional committees must at least pretend that they’re listening to the minority. But it was Bachmann last year who declared: “I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I’m not blaming this on President Obama; I just think it’s an interesting coincidence.”

How about an interesting lie? Because you know damn well that Bachmann knows damn well that the president at the time of the flu outbreak of 1976 wasn’t Carter the Democrat but Ford the un-Democrat. And of course she blames the more recent flu outbreak on President Obama.

How can House Republicans ever be thought of as anything but the Party of No if Michele Bachmann gets a leadership position? After all, it was Bachmann, speaking on health care, who said, “What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn’t pass.”

So far, Boehner is resisting Bachmann’s demands It will be interesting to see how long he can ignore her once the Tea Party activists organize around her.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com.

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