OPINION: You Would Think Bachmann Would Know The Adams Family

By Kenneth R. Bazinet

Rep. Michelle Bachmann is having a tough time sticking to the script in her bid for the Republican nomination for President.

A day after she confused the actor John Wayne with the serial killer John Wayne Gacy, the Minnesota Republican was at it again, this time mixing up John Quincy Adams with his father John Adams.

The newly crowned queen of the Tea Party made the gaffe when she defended to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos her statement that the Founding Fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery.

“Well if you look at one of our Founding Fathers, John Quincy Adams, that’s absolutely true. He was a very young boy when he was with his father serving essentially as his father’s secretary. He tirelessly worked throughout his life to make sure that we did in fact one day eradicate slavery,” Bachmann said.

Stephanopoulos responded, “He wasn’t one of the Founding Fathers – he was a President, he was a Secretary of State, he was a member of Congress, you’re right he did work to end slavery decades later. But so you are standing by this comment that the Founding Fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery?”

Bachmann retorted, “Well, John Quincy Adams most certainly was a part of the Revolutionary War era. He was a young boy but he was actively involved.”

This is at least the second time Bachmann flubbed an issue related to the Revolutionary War era. The first coming when she suggested the “shot heard ‘round the world” was fired in New Hampshire as opposed to Massachusetts, where of course it was fired.

But Bachmann is not the only Tea Party celebrity who does not know her Revolutionary war-era history. The woman Bachmann deposed as the queen of the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, recently suggested that Paul Revere in his historic ride to warn that “the British are coming” did so to warn the British.

Is is too much to ask that people associated with something called the Tea Party actually know what was going on during the era of the actual Boston Tea Party?

Read more from Kenneth R. Bazinet at The Baz File