Meanwhile, Bachman has taken somewhere north of $140,000 from pharmaceutical companies. Those donors include Abbott Labs, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Novartis, Eli Lilly and Bayer. Yet, not a dollar of all that pharma money, from such a wide range of the world’s largest drugmakers, came from Merck. Might Bachmann be going after Merck on behalf of that company’s competitors who also happen to be Bachmann donors?
She’s claiming a vaccine manufactured by Merck (Gardisil) causes mental retardation. Meanwhile, she’s taking campaign donations from Merck’s top HPV vaccine (Cervarix) competitor, GlaxoSmithKline.
Hey, that’s not at all suspicious.
Weren’t we talking about cronyism, Michele? Yes, I believe we were. Tell me, does viciously attacking — on national television — the competitor of one of your big donors qualify as cronyism? I believe it does.
She’s actually managed to embarrass Ron Paul.
“We are pretty pissed off about it,” says one confidant. “She messed up, making it harder for other candidates to speak up. Taking on Perry on this front, with serious arguments, could have been a long and very successful line of attack. She went a step too far and embarrassed the field. She polluted the issue.”
Congratulations, Michele. You managed to embarrass a guy who is willing to blame the United States for 9/11 on national television. Job well done.
17. September 2011 at 2:33 pm
I hope Sarah comments on this. Sarah dug down on Rick Perry when she felt he was displaying cronyism and she needs to nail Michele also. Sarah has always called it like she sees it and I hope she continues.