GOP Boys' Club Targets Michele Bachmann

Aw, come on, boys. If John F. Kennedy can do it on all the drugs he chugged, so can Michele Bachmann.

Stress-related condition ‘incapacitates’ Bachmann; heavy pill use alleged.

It cannot possibly be a coincidence that with Rep. Michele Bachmann surging we now are privy to a potentially devastating report about the presidential candidate allegedly popping pills to alleviate pain.

Women have worked for over one hundred years to be taken seriously and considered as strong candidates for commander in chief. One has to wonder if this was leaked to make voters question her health, but also her strength. Headaches are not considered by most to be something serious, maybe even a frivolous complaint by someone with a weak constitution.

With such incredible details, it seems obvious Mrs. Bachmann has a very serious problem:

The Minnesota Republican frequently suffers from stress-induced medical episodes that she has characterized as severe headaches. These episodes, say witnesses, occur once a week on average and can “incapacitate” her for days at time. On at least three occasions, Bachmann has landed in the hospital as a result.
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“She has terrible migraine headaches. And they put her out of commission for a day or more at a time. They come out of nowhere, and they’re unpredictable,” says an adviser to Bachmann who was involved in her 2010 congressional campaign. “They level her. They put her down. It’s actually sad. It’s very painful.”

As someone who has worked tirelessly to cure myself of migraines, I find this report alarming.

There is something horribly wrong with a professional person who isn’t dealing with deeper issues that trigger a migraine. As the Daily Caller reports, she’s been hospitalized and had to recuperate at home, away from her job, because of them, after having been incapacitated by them. Being treated with medication is dealing with the symptoms and staving off the results of something in your life that precipitates the event.

You cannot get rid of any health issue without finding the root of the cause of your problem, whether it’s diet, lifestyle, maybe a spouse or even your job.

Now, I don’t pretend to know any specifics about Mrs. Bachmann’s debilitating pain issues, but as someone who once had to live with migraines from the time I was a kid, had to perform while throwing up off stage between numbers because of them, as well as having my long ago past riddled with 24-hour vomiting over 3 days before they broke, I sure as hell know the answer isn’t medication, which offers no definitive solution. Thankfully, I cured myself. Solving the riddle of pain means discovering what in your life is causing the stress that leads your brain to the pain seizures of migraines.

But if you don’t, can’t or won’t, pills it is. At least today there are new drugs that make the days of injections a memory.

Of particular concern to some around her is the significant amount of medication Bachmann takes to address her condition.

The former aide says Bachmann’s congressional staff is “constantly” in contact with her doctors to tweak the types and amounts of medicine she is taking. Marcus Bachmann helps her manage the episodes.

Sources who spoke to The Daily Caller said they did so because they are terrified about the impact the condition could have on Bachmann’s performance if she actually became president. They also worry that the issue could blow up in the general election campaign, giving President Obama an easy path to re-election.

The drugs that kept Pres. John F. Kennedy alive went well beyond migraine medications, as historian Robert Dalek wrote in “An Unfinished Life,” which was just one of the hundreds of sources I relied on for my one woman show on J.F.K. If he had run for office today, let alone been president, there is no way he could have kept his double digit list of medications a secret. He had his women, his doctors and all the drugs that kept him alive:

Anesthetic procaine, for his Addison’s disease
Cytomel, for thyroid deficiency
Lomitil
Metamucil, now there’s a commercial for you
Paregoric
Phenobarbitol
Trasentine, to control his colitic diarrhea
Testosterone, to increase his energy and boost his weight after bouts of colitis
Penicillin, for urinary tract flare ups
Fluorinef, to increase his salt absorption due to Addison’s
Cortisone
Tuinal, for insomnia – a side effect of the cortisone
Antihistamines, for an array of allergies
Codeine
Steroids… Oh, and Vitamin C and calcium.

J.F.K. also had lots of doctors who gave him his “vigah,” including injections. They also led to rumors that Nixon tried to steal his medical records. He had an allergist; an endocrinologist for his Addison’s disease; a gastroenterologist for his colitis; a urologist, because he’d gotten a urinary tract infection from venereal disease; an orthopedist for his degenerative spine, but no one knew.

What this report is meant to conjure up is Rep. Bachmann’s physical frailty. It’s a political attack by “former aides” trying to take the broad out.

There’s a reason Tim Pawlenty had a former aide of Bachmann do an op-ed hit piece in Iowa. A reason Rick Perry is being pimped by the conservative boys’ club. It’s not that he’s got anything Michele Bachmann hasn’t. He’s chock full of crazy, too. But at least he’s not a girl.

Taylor Marsh is a Washington based political analyst, writer and commentator on national politics, foreign policy, and women in power. A veteran national politics writer, Taylor’s been writing on the web since 1996. She has reported from the White House, been profiled in the Washington Post, The New Republic, and has been seen on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera Arabic, as well as on radio across the dial and on satellite, including the BBC. Marsh lives in the Washington, D.C. area. This column is cross posted from her blog.