Rick Perry knocks Michele Bachmann's HPV story - Jonathan Martin

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/63526.html

And there is Michelle's greatest mistake. She has allowed Perry's weakness to become something he can attack her on because she overshot and ventured into a conspiracy about vaccines and mental retardation.

There were one of two things going on.

First, a lot of Bachmann's support was simply a 'protest vote', the voters who had previously championed Sarah Palin, then moved on to Trump, then settled on Bachmann. These are the neo-Birchers and cranks. Perry has taken a lot of those from her and her support has deflated accordingly. The conservative media's cattle drive in the last couple of days to spurn her and move on to another hasn't helped either.

Second, Bachmann's 'crazy eyes' problem has always kept her from being a viable candidate. She is not pretending to believe crazy things in order to court the darker corners of the electorate. She is very serious in her belief in crazy things. She is renowned for venturing into conspiracy theories and views wildly outside of the mainstream, most notably on gays. For whatever reason, this outburst of hers stuck at a time when she really needed the wind at her back to keep the voters we just talked about in her coulmn. It could have caught afire and started yet another crazy conspiracy championed by her beloved neo-Birchers. Instead it provided an opportunity to the GOP Establishment to label her a kook and drag her under.

The Gardasil-retardation gaffe will be her epitaph.