Michelle Bachmann, how quickly you’ve fallen. Usually a campaign is seen as being in trouble when major staff members take a hike, but the real death knell is when you start closing campaign offices. Team Bachmann, once riding high after winning the Iowa Straw poll, has already made it clear they won’t be in this game for the long haul. With the closing of her Virginia campaign office, the Bachmann campaign has announced that they will stay around at least till New Hampshire – which is about as re-assuring for her supporters as John Huntsman saying “Don’t Count me Out.”
This is sad on a larger level though because it appears that the Republican Party elites are just dead set on clearing the field for Mitt Romney the longer this campaign goes. The winnowing of candidates has become so intense that it would not surprise me if the first primaries only had 4 participants (Cain, Perry, Romney and Paul) which would not be good for American democracy or the party. But since when have campaigns been about what’s best for America?
This article originally appeared on Politic365.com.
