The HPV vaccine issue is ideal for Bachmann, who is the most intellectually irresponsible candidate in the Republican field. In the nineteen-nineties, when she was travelling around the state of Minnesota warning that new federal and state education standards would lead to totalitarianism, she often mentioned the tale of a little girl who was forced to clean toilets at a motel under the new laws—a story that produced audible gasps from her audiences. When Bachmann crusaded against same-sex marriage, she warned that children were the “prize” for the gay community. She is just getting started on HPV, and in front of much larger audiences than she ever had access to in her home state, she is already falsely linking the vaccine to mental disabilities.
““If the medical community developed a vaccine for lung cancer, would the same critics oppose it, claiming it would encourage smoking?”
— Governor Rick Perry
Didn’t watch it (no cable) but it sounds as if the audience thought they were at a taping of the Jerry Springer show.