If you’ve read or heard anything having to do with Michele Bachmann over the last year or so, the chances are very good that it had its origin in one of three places: The Dump Bachmann blog, G.R. Anderson’s 2006 City Pages article “The Chosen One“, and Ripple in Stillwater, the blog home of famed and longtime Minnesota journalist Karl Bremer.

Hey, you know what conservatives really really hate? Conservatives just can’t stand it when rich people and corporations use their vast wealth to game the system! Just don’t ask them to support any kind of public campaign financing or limits on corporate political spending…

To the extent Santorum can make this a race, he’s helped by winnowing the field. Michele Bachmann cancelled planned events in South Carolina and will hold a press conference back in Iowa this morning. Similarly, Rick Perry, in his campaign concession speech, said he would go back to Texas and “reassess” the results.

Right after he appeared with Bachmann at a 4 o’clock afternoon campaign stop in Indianola, state senator Kent Sorenson, Bachmann’s Iowa campaign chair, defects to the Ron Paul campaign.

This is fantastically good news for Ron Paul. Fan-tas-ti-cally good news.

How do you spot the fringe candidate when they’re ALL fringe candidates?

The GOP Prez candidates continue to astonish. I can’t decide which one of these items is more mind-numbing, but I’ve not seen such a pathetic bunch of pols running for President of the United States in years, maybe ever.

According to the latest poll of likely Iowa caucus goers, Herman Cain leads with 23 percent, effectively tied with Mitt Romney who is at 22 percent. Ron Paul, the only other candidate in double digits, is in third place with 12 percent. This faces Mitt with a choice: go all out to win Iowa and try to wrap up up the nomination quickly, or risk finishing second after the effort, losing momentum going into New Hamshire.

With Halloween coming up on Monday, there’s going to be a lot of grown-ups attending masquerade parties this weekend. Which, unfortunately, has meant a lot of long, last-minute lines in crowded costume stores — including the one in Washington, D.C., where all the Republican presidential candidates went shopping earlier this week.

“Bradlee Dean wants it both ways: he wants to be a public and private citizen. Bradlee Dean wants to be a prominent, public figure when he broadcasts on AM 1280 every week and delivered a prayer at the Minnesota Legislature and gives speeches at Tea Party rallies. The courts should not grant him the same right to privacy that a private citizen enjoys. But, Bradlee Dean is too chicken to take criticism for his incendiary, bigoted statements he has made on his websites and on the public airways, so he and his ministry files complaints with the police, You Tube and with the courts.”

So, let’s see… where did I leave off when I last posted here, two weeks ago? Oh, yeah, something about how the short-lived front-runner status of GOP presidential wannabes like Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry demonstrated that “there’s something inherent about Republican party politics that makes being new and untested a plus and sustained public exposure a problem.”