Michele Bachmann's next target? (Photo credit: Jake Liefer)

Michele Bachmann's next target? (photo by Jake Liefer)

I love this story so much that I have actually proposed to it:

On her victory lap of Iowa yesterday, Straw Poll winner Rep. Michele Bachmann paid repeated tribute to her local roots, and repeatedly mentioned her family reunion that day, citing it as an excuse for her late arrival at a local party event in Waterloo.

But Bachmann’s mother and two cousins told POLITICO’s Emily Schultheis that Bachmann didn’t attend the reunion, though her husband and children did. Her spokeswoman, Alice Stewart, didn’t respond to two emails asking for an explanation of the disparity.

And then there’s this:

Iowans – and reporters – have started to take note of Bachmann’s late arrivals.

So in the all-important caucusland where retail politics is everything, Michele Bachmann regularly shows up late to events, tries to make up a bullshit family-values-sounding excuse for one of them, and her own mother won’t even cover for her!  That’s bound to win over those finicky heartland voters!

Sure, on the one hand it’s a frivolous, silly story of Michele Bachmann being a dishonest idiot again, but for someone who’s supposed to be some kind of populist darling, Bachmann doesn’t quite seem to be on the same page with her fans.  It’s not just the serial tardiness and bogus excuses – she’s also managed to offend American Revolution fans, Elvis fans, and John Wayne fans (and probably John Wayne Gacy fans too, come to think of it), which has to make a up a pretty hefty percentage of Tea Party/GOP base voters.

Michele Bachmann may have the same kind of shiny folksy frosting as Sarah Palin, but underneath it all she’s just another out-of-touch phony.*  Like a more hateful Mitt Romney who REALLY likes corndogs.

*Not intended to imply that Sarah Palin is not an out-of-touch phony.