Michele Bachmann Should Fire Ed Rollins For His Comments About Sarah Palin

by John Hawkins | June 9, 2011 5:18 am

I’m a Michele Bachmann[1] fan and, yes, she is one of the people I would seriously back for President. I also like and respect Ed Rollins, even if I don’t always agree with him and am forced to note that his track record has been awfully spotty over the last 15 years.

That brings us to Rollins’ FANTASTICALLY STUPID[2] comments about Sarah Palin.

Sarah has not been serious over the last couple of years,” Rollins said. “She got the vice-presidential thing handed to her. She didn’t go to work in the sense of trying gain more substance. She gave up her governorship. You know, I think Michele Bachmann and others have worked hard. She has been a leader of the Tea Party, which is a very important element here. She’s an attorney, done extraordinary things with family values and what have you. So I think she will connect. She’s a great, great communicator and I would say in the race right [now] today, she is probably the best communicator.

Let me tell you why these comments merit Bachmann kicking Rollins to the curb.

First off, Palin isn’t in the race, it’s entirely possible she won’t run, and she has famously sensitive supporters. For all of Rollins’ comments about substance, there’s not much substance to his criticism. Sure, you can note she gave up her governorship, but saying she has no “substance” or hasn’t “worked hard” is exactly the sort of aery-faery, nearly meaningless, “I just don’t like that woman” criticism that really grates on her fans. So, since Palin and Bachmann would probably have a lot of the same fans, why needlessly aggravate them? Why make millions of conservatives who support Palin today think, “I don’t know who I’ll be supporting if Palin doesn’t get in, but it won’t be Bachmann.”

Who is Rollins even trying to impress with this? The Left? The David Frum/Meghan McCain crowd? The inside-the-beltway, Washington insider cocktail crowd?

Newsflash: None of these people are going to be supporting Bachmann in a primary for many of the same reasons that they won’t support Palin. Bachmann’s too conservative, too blunt, and too closely identified with the Tea Party for those people to ever really be comfortable with her. So, there’s no upside to doing this.

Additionally, does Ed Rollins want to run Bachmann’s campaign or does he want to be a cable news commentator — because those are very different jobs. The comments he made would be fine for a commentator to make, but they’re extremely unprofessional comments for a campaign manager to make. The last thing a candidate like Bachmann needs is a shoot-from-the-lip campaign manager trying to make headlines so he can keep his name in the news.

When you work for a candidate, the story is supposed to be the candidate, not you. Rollins knows that, but apparently doesn’t care. If Bachmann actually wants to win the nomination — and she is a potentially viable dark horse candidate — then she should take note of that fact and do the right thing. Firing Rollins would be genuinely presidential and it would have the added benefit of allowing her to hire someone to run her campaign whose first priority is actually running her campaign.