By Amber Phillips
September 2
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/02/did-michele-bachmann-just-predict-the-death-of-american-democracy-if-hillary-clinton-wins/We can't tell precisely what it is that former Minnesota congresswoman and current Donald Trump evangelical adviser Michele Bachmann is predicting would follow a Hillary Clinton win: The end of the Republican Party? American democracy? The country itself?
Whatever it is, it sounds pretty bad.
Bachmann told the Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody in an interview published Thursday that if Clinton becomes president, the nation is in for a rough ride:
[float=left]"Well, I don't want to be melodramatic, but I do want to be truthful. I believe without a shadow of a doubt this is the last election. This is it. This is the last election. And the reason why I say that David is because it's a math problem. It's a math problem of demographics and a changing United States. If you look at the numbers of people who vote and who live in the country and who Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton want to bring into the country, this is the last election when we even have a chance to vote for somebody who will stand up for godly moral principles. This is it."[/float]
It's a good thing she didn't want to get melodramatic.
Bachmann's analysis is likely rooted in the already changing demographics of the nation. Republicans have an electoral map problem that has nothing to do with Trump's unpopularity, wrote The Fix's Chris Cillizza recently. And the self-segregation of people into communities that agree with them politically has made it easier for Democrats to win the White House and Republicans to win Congress.
Bachmann isn't the first, nor will she be the last, Republican to predict some kind of apocalyptic result to the 2016 presidential election. But most other Republicans are predicting doom and gloom if the opposite outcome occurs — especially if Trump wins.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) has suggested Republicans could lose their historic majority in the House of Representatives in November.
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) recently said the Trump drag on Republicans "will last decades."
Longtime Iowa state Sen. David Johnson, who suspended his party registration in June over concerns about Trump, said: "If Mr. Trump is the nominee, he becomes the standard-bearer for a party that's on the verge of breaking apart."
And Georgia state Rep. Allen Peake, a Republican leader, wrote a manifesto in which he said: "As a party, we are basically working ourselves toward extinction."
Bachmann, a former Ted Cruz supporter and 2012 presidential candidate, urged "Never Trumpers" to get over themselves and vote for Trump, lest Republicans be cast in the electoral doghouse for all eternity.
By contrast, Bachmann told Brody that Trump has "1950s sensibilities" and is "not ashamed of our Judeo-Christian underpinnings." Though she was frank that Trump "doesn't pretend to really know a lot of the details and specifics about the Bible."
" ... all I know is that he was churched," she said. "He was brought up in a churched background, he respects and loves his church background and he’s had interactions with Christians throughout his life, and he is not opposed to Christianity."
"Not opposed to Christianity" may not make the best campaign bumper sticker. But if the alternative you're predicting is the end of the United States, it's probably not a bad pitch.
