By now it’s common knowledge that Michele Bachmann is being Palinized by the legacy media/Democrat propaganda corps. The flak Bachmann caught over her John Wayne remark and the sordid spectacle of former Clinton flunky George Stephanopoulous warning her in an interview that the 23 foster kids she and her husband took in will now be researched in an effort to find dirt make it very obvious that hell is coming for the Minnesota Congresswoman, who has become the flavor of the month lately due to her official announcement yesterday she’s in the race and some strong poll showings in recent days.

I’m going to propose a strategy for handling this which would likely cause the consultants to stroke out. But the common way to handle legacy media feeding frenzies hasn’t really worked and since Bachmann is explicitly running as an outsider against the Beltway elite, she needs something new if she’s going to avoid having the media do to her what they did to Sarah Palin.

Maybe something like this, in a speech somewhere in Iowa by the end of the week that the press will cover.

“…Of course, our campaign hasn’t found much favor with the snobs in Washington and New York. You folks must have seen that in the last few days. I made a statement about Waterloo being the hometown of John Wayne, and the toughness and character the famous actor showed throughout his career being emblematic of what folks in our part of the world have to offer. And how that toughness and character are crucial to bringing this country back from the condition it’s in right now.

“But Mr. Wayne wasn’t born in Waterloo. His parents did live there for a time, but he was actually born in Winterset 150 miles away. I’m going to claim him for Waterloo anyway. But most of all, I’m claiming him for central Iowa. Waterloo is bigger than Winterset, which is on the other side of Des Moines, but they’re nevertheless similar communities with similar folks and similar values and lifestyle. And that’s good enough for me, and I believe it’s good enough for most folks who understand what I was saying.

“So there. Call it a gaffe if you want, but I’m not going to apologize for it.

“But certainly I understand the crucial importance of identifying which central Iowa town John Wayne comes from to this presidential campaign. Nothing affects American families more.

“After all, we’re now 100 days into this adventure our president has taken us into in Libya. And 100 days after we began bombing Libya there is still no effort at getting Congressional authorization for it as required by the War Powers Act. Under that Act, at 90 days this war became an illegal war.

“I’ll say that again – an illegal war.

“The same superstars who are up in arms about the critical importance of which central Iowa town John Wayne comes from contributed greatly to the narrative that the previous president got us into an illegal war in Iraq because he supposedly took us in there on the basis of a lie. I didn’t subscribe to that line  and still don’t. But even if I did, I’d have to concede that at least George W. Bush sought and received congressional authorization before we fired a shot in Iraq. And in Afghanistan as well.

“But in Libya, we were nine days into a campaign of bombing runs before President Obama so much as bothered to make a speech to the American people. And not only has he not asked Congress for authorization of this war, as he is required to do by law, he has his people promoting the absurd fiction that because the other side isn’t really shooting back it’s not really a war.

“Remember, Bush lied us into a war, and that was bad. Obama took us into a war without consulting with the American people and now he’s lying about whether it’s even a war. I know this isn’t as important as where in central Iowa John Wayne comes from, but is anybody concerned about the inconsistency here?

“And by the way, what’s the mission here? Seems to me our support for the local Al-Qaeda affiliate we’re helping there isn’t going to depose Qaddafi unless we put boots on the ground. The best we’re going to get there is a stalemate, and an endless low-level involvement. And as we saw the last time we crossed swords with this man, he has lots of international terrorists in his Rolodex. This plan actually makes us less safe and it certainly doesn’t further our strategic interests – so it would be a foolish idea even if it wasn’t illegal.

“Sure, sure. John Wayne! I know.

“OK, how about this? In testimony at the Senate this week, it turns out that the president’s plan to pull us willy-nilly out of Afghanistan was just as creative as his interpretation of the War Powers Act in Libya. Specifically, we learned that drawing down our troops in what was called an aggressive fashion wasn’t even presented as an option by Gen. Petraeus. Our Commander-in-Chief, who ignored Petraeus’ advice in setting our policy in Afghanistan in the first place, has ignored him again.

“It’s not like what we’re doing in Afghanistan is working. The president sent in civilian advisors by the thousands and we’re spending money there like, well, like we’re spending it everywhere else. To such an extent that a recent study says if we pulled out of Afghanistan we’d be taking 97 percent of their economy with us. That looks like failure to me – and what happened yesterday at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, which was supposed to be the one of the safest places in the whole country but nevertheless was the subject of a Mumbai-style attack with lots of dead and wounded to show for it, looks like failure, too.

“I’m with most of the American people in that I’m ready to see us out of Afghanistan. But I don’t want us out of there if it means we’re going to lose that war. And that’s precisely what this president is preparing to do – by pulling our troops out of there in a fashion the generals don’t believe is wise and by giving the enemy a timetable by which we’ll be gone, he’s given them a victory in a box. All they have to do is bide their time while hitting a few civilian targets here and there until we’re gone, and they’ll be able to claim they chased us out. And credibly so.

“I know the specific central Iowa town John Wayne came from trumps all, but I kinda think this is significant. But I’m a bit of a flake in that regard, I guess.

“There’s something else of importance going on as well, you know. In Washington the president and his vice-president – who by the way never says anything stupid at all – have been negotiating with House Republicans over the debt ceiling. We have about a month to figure out a plan for the federal government’s spending and what to do about the fact that we’re about to max out our national credit card.

“It’s obvious that our deficit problems are the result of reckless, irresponsible spending on the part of this administration – spending which makes the previous administration look like mere pikers in comparison – and what looks an awful lot like an economic depression that isn’t getting any better thanks to President Obama’s policies.

“And amid this obvious, unsustainable reality, the president and his oddball Senate Democrat friends seem to think that raising taxes on people who have the means and ability to spend, invest and create jobs to get the economy going is non-negotiable. He seems to be bent on having the federal government default on its obligations unless he can stick it to the people we need to move the economy ahead.

“We have one month to go, and there is no sign this president is serious about this issue. He’s not engaged, he has no ideas and he won’t even acknowledge reality.

“But John Wayne was born in Winterset.

“This bizarro-world scenario isn’t really a surprise. Because what’s increasingly clear is that Obama and the mainstream media are more or less the same. Certainly the media is invested in this man – they have been from the start.

“George Stephanopoulous told me the 23 kids my husband and I fostered over the years are going to get full scrutiny from the national media looking for dirt. And I don’t doubt he’s right. It wouldn’t be the first time the watchdogs have been turned into attack dogs – I think Alaska probably escaped the recession as a result of the last time the media chose to vet a candidate for national office.

“But does anybody believe Barack Obama would be in the White House if the media had been as committed to vetting candidates in 2007? I submit there is no chance of that. Obama wouldn’t have had a prayer of even getting the Democrat nomination had the media informed the public about the folks who fostered him during his political career.

“If I was connected to the likes of Bill Ayers, Rashid Khalidi, Tony Rezko, Frank Marshall Davis, Penny Pritzker, Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan and George Soros like Obama is, I wouldn’t think there was any chance of being elected president. To this day nobody seems to know the full extent of Obama’s involvement with those folks; past presidential candidates have seen their campaigns die on the vine based on far fewer suspicious ties.

“But Obama skated on all of those issues. And the same mainstream media who wants to investigate kids our family took into our home couldn’t uncover a single woman Obama dated before he met his wife, any academic or medical records from his past or even anyone he hung around with while he was at Columbia. This was the least-vetted president in modern American history, and so far in his term he’s clearly unqualified for the job. And the country is suffering for it.

“So while John Wayne’s birthplace is clearly the issue of the day, I’d respectfully submit that maybe we’d all be better off if the folks in the New York and Washington media were to reassess what their job actually is and start serving the public rather than their friends at the Democrat National Committee and the White House. In the meantime, I’ll go on talking about what I think is important. And if I want to take a little license here and there, I’ll feel free to do so.

“Because after all, this is a long campaign. Iowa’s just one of the 57 states we’re going to have to slug it out in if we want to take back this White House.”