Ahhh... Beck...

I haven't heard his show in months. His punditry (is that a word?) is so far outside of what I think as realistic that I have taken to spending all my radio time with ESPN and the Catholic Channel.

However, your news that he has endorsed Bachmann is no surprise to me. He wants (so badly) to be able to support a Libertarian candidate... but he can't reconcile his own foreign policy understanding with the daydreams and delusions of people like Barr and Ron Paul.

Gingrich has made himself irrelevant, as has Cain. Romney is simply running as the "I'm not Obama" candidate... and the last time that strategy worked we ended up with Carter. I had relegated Bachmann to the same level of "what was"... but she might be the last hope of the majority of Tea Party supporters.

Ron Paul is simply too far out there to be taken even a little bit seriously... yet he is a poll leader in Iowa right now! Were that man to win Iowa, and then go on to be even top three in New Hampshire... then I'd start checking the temperature in Hell to make sure the water pipes weren't in danger.

I think Bachmann is simply too much of the GOP now. Sure, she talks about cutting deficits and eliminating waste... but she is talking about ending Obama's policies, which does not equal the same thing. She can talk about ending the Department of Education all she wants, but she won't do it any more than Reagan did in two terms, either. EPA, FEMA, Interior, Labor... they are as safe as can be in a Bachmann administration, I promise you. She'll roll taxes back to 2008 (which is a start), but nothing more. More importantly, she won't win Congress' help any better than Clinton did after '94 and Carter did through his whole term.

In short, she isn't giving me anything all the others are giving me, too: cut spending, reduce government, lower taxes, strengthen our military. The same mantra we've heard from every GOP candidate since 1972... and without a single original idea to back it up.

Top it off with the very real possibility that, even as unpopular as Obama is right now... she might not be able to beat him in a general election. The status quo is always preferable to the unknown, and I'm kind of afraid that much of her promises and visions fall into the wildly "unknown" catagory.