COMMENTARY | There is good reason to believe the reason campaign manager Ed Rollins stepped aside to a distant supervisory position and his assistant David Polyansky stepped away altogether from the Michele Bachmann presidential campaign was that the grade-A steel brakes they were attempting to apply to Bachmann's jawbones were nowhere near strong enough to slow, never mind stop, the Minnesota congresswoman from making crazy comments and ill-advised assertions.
There is little doubt Rollins and Polyansky advised her to dial back on her domestic energy rhetoric after she alienated voters in Florida by stating she would consider "responsible" drilling for oil and natural gas in the Florida Everglades. She didn't. Rollins then said her vaccine remarks were a "mistake."
But now that the two advisers have distanced themselves, Bachmann has reverted to type, making outlandish statements without substantiation. Case in point: She is now saying America should be wary of Hezbollah, the Middle Eastern pro-Iranian terrorist organization, placing missiles in Cuba.
Esquire has reported Bachmann, while on the campaign trail, took exception to normalizing relations with Cuba. She told an audience, "Why would you normalize trading with a country that sponsors terror? There's reports that have come out that Cuba has been working with another terrorist organization called Hezbollah. And Hezbollah is potentially looking at wanting to be part of missile sites in Iran and, of course, when you're 90 miles offshore from Florida, you don't want to entertain the prospect of hosting bases or sites where Hezbollah could have training camps or perhaps have missile sites or weapons sites in Cuba. This would be foolish."
Has Rep. Bachmann started watching Glenn Beck's again, perhaps going online and subscribing to his new two-hour Internet show? Where in the world would she get such an idea that Hezbollah might be operating camps and/or missile sites in Cuba?
As a matter of fact, she most likely got her information from the website, The Blaze , which reported earlier in the month, citing Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera, that Hezbollah members had made their way to Cuba to set up operations. The Blaze also noted reports that a House of Representatives committee mentioned Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had had several meetings and that Hezbollah was known to be operating in Latin America.
Still, missiles were not mentioned in the Italian newspaper account.
The Blaze, incidentally, is owned by Glenn Beck.
Does this mean the U.S. and other nations should ignore the reports of the Hezbollah presence? Hardly. But it also does not mean a Minnesota congresswoman should be extrapolating the Second Cuban Missile Crisis (just 11 more months until the 50th anniversary of the first one) from the alleged presence of a group of terrorists on the island.
And it would appear intelligence organizations are tracking the group's movements rather well if a House committee has discussed their presence in Latin America. If not, perhaps reading an Italian newspaper would get them caught up on Hezbollah's daily movements.
But weren't Italian reporters those that broke the story of an informant named "Curveball?" Wasn't he the guy that freely divulged information about there being Weapons of Massive Destruction in Iraq?
Perhaps that is a false correlation, considering that Bachmann simply derived her missiles (read: WMDs) from nothing.
But, then, so did "Curveball." All he needed was an audience.
One day Rollins and Polyansky will admit the actual reasons they stepped away from the Bachmann presidential campaign, and it is likely because they couldn't attach brakes to an unstoppable off-the-rails locomotive.
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