Malaprop Bachmann On ‘Palestine’

Michelle Bachmann has a well-earned reputation for bungling facts, like confusing Concord, Mass., with Concord, N.H., and movie legend John Wayne with mass murderer John Wayne Gacy, but it would be a mistake to read much into most such incidents beyond sloppy thinking and perhaps a lack of brain-mouth coordination.

Her latest gaffe was to refer to "peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine." For many of Israel’s hardline friends that would be a shonda; she should have said "Palestinians."

I’m sure that’s what the presidential wannabe, who has said she "grew up with a love for Israel," meant to say. The whole thing should be treated as just another Bachmann blunder and dropped, but I can’t help wondering if someone on the left had made the same gaffe would they be accused of having inadvertently revealed their true thinking and mercilessly attacked for being anti-Israel?

And what does that say about the quality of political discourse today?