Crank

I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the  politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?’ Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we’ve got to rein in the spending.—Michele Bachmann

I don’t point this out as another example of a GOP politician saying something nutty. These days, that’s nothing remarkable. But she is also a serious contender for her party’s presidential nomination. If Bush had uttered these words back in 2000, he would have been widely ridiculed. It’s one thing to profess one’s faith, but it used to be that only the fringe candidates resorted to this kind of loopy doomsaying.  A decade of middle-class stagnation and a rapidly changing world have propelled the fringe to the mainstream. And if the economy keeps sputtering along for another year and Obama continues to seem ineffective, voters may be desperate enough to give the fringe a turn at the wheel.