Yesterday Matt Ortega caught Michele Bachmann mistakenly taking credit for being from the same town as serial killer John Wayne Gacy. She had attempted to say that Western acting star John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa, when in fact he is from three hours away.
The normally astute Dave Weigel quickly jumped to Bachmann's defensive and tried to explain away her gaffe as a non-gaffe in a post titled Bachmann Was Right (Sort of). Weigel points out that John Wayne's parents met in Waterloo and he writes:
Bachmann's problem, if we even want to call it that, is that she's been hopelessly defined as a gaffe-machine who flubs silly things. But she didn't pull this out of thin air! Waterloo has more of a claim on John Wayne than most other towns in America, excepting Winterset, Iowa and Los Angeles.Yes, this is really grasping at straws and I'm not sure why Weigel went there other than to point out that this is being seen as a gaffe because Michele Bachmann frequently makes gaffes.
Unfortunately for Weigel, Bachmann herself has now come out and admitted that it was a mistake and she was wrong:
The GOP congresswoman told CNN on Tuesday her comments "were just misspeaking" and that her main intent was to show she identified with Wayne's patriotism.Patriotism - the catchall excuse for Republicans who have a bad habit of being wrong about even the most basic details. While this doesn't quite rise to the level of Sarah Palin re-writing the history of Paul Revere's role in the colonial revolution, it's still an instance where reality is less important than the feelings a Republican pol is seeking to evoke with her words.