The Books And Beliefs Shaping Michele Bachmann - Ryan Lizza

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/09/139084313/the-books-and-beliefs-shaping-michele-bachmann

This woman is gaffe proof because everything she says and does is a gaffe already. She stays within the bounds of our constructed reality for her, which is to say that because we already think and know that she is dim and batshit crazy, we're never phased by the insane things she does or says.

"For a number of years, Michele Bachmann's personal website had a list of books she recommended people read. It was called 'Michelle's must-read list.' I was looking over the list and noticed this biography of Lee by Wilkins. [I had] never heard of Wilkins and started looking at who he was. And frankly couldn't believe that she was recommending this book."
"Wilkins has combined a Christian conservatism with neo-confederate views and developed what is known as the theological war thesis. This is an idea that says the best way to understand the Civil War is to see it in religious terms, and [that] the South was an Orthodox Christian nation attacked by the godless North and that what was really lost after the Civil War was one of the pinnacles of Christian society. This insane view of the Civil War has been successfully injected into some of the Christian home-schooling movement curriculums with the help of [Wilkins]. My guess is this is how she encountered the guy at some point. ... She recommended this book on her website for a number of years. It is an objectively pro-slavery book and one of the most startling things I learned about her in this piece.