Michele Bachmann, dumbest member of Congress?

To be deemed the stupidest member of Congress in these times would be quite a distinction. For years Michele Bachmann has been campaigning for the honor. Her bizarre misunderstandings about basic financial matters, for example, are legendary. Now I wonder whether she’s finally taken clear possession of that title. Speaking in New Hampshire on Friday about one of her favorite topics, the American Revolution, she showed that she has no understanding of the war’s most famous incident:

“It’s your state that fired the shot that was heard around the world, you are the state of Lexington and Concord (sic), you started the battle for liberty right here in your backyard,” Bachmann told a group of Republican activists at a fundraiser here on New Hampshire’s sea coast. “And the question to my fellow members of the House, and there are some, when will we start the battle for liberty in Washington D.C.?

This ignoramus then apparently repeated the same mistake to at least one other audience in NH on Saturday morning…and indeed more than once in the speech.

"What I love about New Hampshire and what we have in common is our extreme love for liberty," the potential GOP presidential candidate said. "You're the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord. And you put a marker in the ground and paid with the blood of your ancestors the very first price that had to be paid to make this the most magnificent nation that has ever arisen in the annals of man in 5,000 years of recorded history."

Politico’s story seems to refer to the same blundering speech on Saturday.

It’s bad enough to be ignorant of this seminal moment in American history. Worse still, Bachmann can’t be bothered to get basic facts straight even as she’s revving up a presidential bid. And she repeats her mistake without any apparent concern for accuracy, nor even an awareness that she’s blathering away in front of an audience that is surely far better informed than she is.

She must find that it pays to be ignorant.

crossposted at unbossed.com