Bachmann made her remarks immediately following Monday’s tea party debate. She had dogged Texas Gov. Rick Perry on the issue of the vaccine during the debate because she disagreed with Perry’s past attempts at mandating it for public school children.

“The problem is it comes with some very significant consequences,” Bachmann said of the vaccine on FOX news following the debate. “There’s a woman who came up crying to me tonight after the debate. She said her daughter was given that vaccine. She told me her daughter suffered mental retardation as a result of that vaccine. There are very dangerous consequences. It’s not good enough to take, quote, ‘a Mulligan’ or you want a do-over. Not when you have little children’s lives at risk.”

It wasn’t simply a gaffe, because on Tuesday morning Bachmann repeated the same story on the Today Show, alleging that the vaccine can have “very dangerous side effects” and that ”people have to draw their own conclusions.”

Later Bachmann added, “There is no second chance for these little girls if there’s any dangerous consequences to their bodies.”

‘Dangerous and Irresponsible’
On Tuesday evening, Dr. O. Marion Burton, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics released a statement criticizing Bachmann’s statements.

“The American Academy of Pediatrics would like to correct false statements made in the Republican presidential campaign that HPV vaccine is dangerous and can cause mental retardation,” Burton said. “There is absolutely no scientific validity to this statement. Since the vaccine has been introduced, more than 35 million doses have been administered, and it has an excellent safety record.”

Burton pointed out that the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the American Academy of Family Physicians all recommend that girls receive HPV vaccine around age 11 or 12: “This is a life-saving vaccine that can protect girls from cervical cancer.”

The Global and Regional Asperger Syndrome Partnership also released a statement.

“Congresswoman Bachmann’s decision to spread fear of vaccines is dangerous and irresponsible,” said Evan Siegfried, a spokesman GRASP. “There is zero credible scientific evidence that vaccines cause mental retardation or autism. She should cease trying to foment fear in order to advance her political agenda.”

Dr. Paul Offit, author of Autism’s False Prophets, told Mother Jones that Bachmann’s comments could misinform people who are genuinely trying to educate themselves about vaccines.

Even Merck, the maker of Gardasil, the brand name for many HPV vaccines used by American physicians, weighed in. “We are confident in the safety profile of Gardasil,” Pam Eisele, a spokeswoman for the company told Financial Times. “Leading health organisations throughout the world have reviewed all the safety information available and continue to recommend its use.”

By Tuesday night, the Washington Post already had published an editorial harshly criticizing the congresswoman.

“Ms. Bachmann’s hysterics about hapless little girls being forced to get injections has us wondering if she would roll back requirements for what has come to be routine immunizations against polio, chicken pox, measles and other diseases,” the paper wrote. “‘Cervical cancer is a horrible way to die,’ Mr. Perry said Monday. Equally horrible is the thought that small-minded political arguments could sabotage the means that are on hand to stop the spread of this deadly virus—and could undermine the control of many other diseases besides.”

Conservatives React
Right-wing talker Rush Limbaugh said the Bachmann jumped the shark with her statement.

“Alright, now she had scored the points in the debate. But now this comment has become a news item for Bachmann today, rather than what she said at the debate last night,” Limbaugh said. “That’s what I mean by ‘jumping the shark.’ She scored the points and should have left it there.”

Perry himself attacked Bachmann’s comments.

“You heard the same arguments about giving our children protections from some of the childhood diseases, and they were.. autism was part of that. Now we’ve subsequently found out that was generated and not true,” Perry told NBC. “I would suggest to you that this issue about Gardasil and making it available was about saving people’s lives.”

Conservative blogger and Minnesota native, Ed Morrissey, was perplexed by Bachmann’s statement.

“The most charitable analysis that can be offered in this case for Bachmann is that she got duped into repeating a vaccine-scare urban legend on national television,” Morrissey wrote. “It looks more like Bachmann sensed that she had won a point and wanted to go in for the kill, didn’t bother to check the facts, and didn’t care that she was stoking an anti-vaccination paranoid conspiracy theory, either. Neither shines a particularly favorable light on Bachmann.”

“After the last two years, many would view gridlock as progress,” said Morrissey. “A lot of [the Tea Party's] platform was negatives: to stop what the administration and Democrats had been doing. … If they see the House working hard and passing things, keeping up with all of these issues, even if not all of them get through the Senate, or if the president vetoes them, they’ll understand.”

The most interesting discussion, however, came in response to a question about entitlement spending and whether the Tea Party and the next Congress will find the resolve to tackle the issue, as all three panelists offered different views that nicely summarize the divergent takes on the issue.

“We know it is a problem,” said Tucker. “We know we can’t talk about doing away with spending without talking about entitlements. But we don’t like thinking of Social Security as an entitlement. … We paid into a system. The problem is corruption happened and they didn’t do with the money what was supposed to happen with the money…. When it comes to entitlements for poeple who are not willing to work, we’re willing to talk about that, but [we need to] take care of people who pay into the system.”

“Social Security and Medicare are not two equal entitlement areas,” said Morrissey. “Medicare is an utter disaster just waiting to happen and you just can’t get around that. It will be a measure of the new Congress’ seriousness whether or not they’re willing to address it. … Whether they’re willing to do something about it is really going to be a function of how much the Tea Party holds them accountable.”

“When they were drawing up their pledge, Republicans debated about what to include in terms of entitlement spending and ultimately left it out,” said York. “My guess is you won’t see any serious action in the next two years in terms of entitlement reform.”

So you’ve got three competing takes within the GOP in a nutshell. Morrissey’s take represents the true fiscally conservative approach to the issue, while York is the realist about what the GOP will actually have the political courage to take on. Tucker, meanwhile, channels the debate into a common undertone of concerns among the Tea Party: the belief that if the government rooted out corruption and only rewarded those who paid into the system, there would be no problem. No talk of demographic realities, an aging population or the rising cost of health care — just a sense that the program is being dragged under by government corruption and/or poor people.

The third view won’t close the deficit, but it might give Republicans a free pass to focus on smaller yet more visible instances of waste, fraud and abuse, or unemployment insurance, and yet stay in the good graces of the Tea Party.

The full post, titled “Conservatives can kiss off ‘Hot Air’ blog”:

Wow. Just as soon as the “Hot Air” blog was purchased by the Christian conglomerate Salem Communications from conservative commentator Michelle Malkin, it has suddenly become an advocate for all things gay. What in the world is up with that?

For background, GOPROUD is an organization dedicated to advancing special rights for homosexual behavior, and advocates the overthrow of the Defense of Marriage Act and the overthrow of the law banning homosexual service in the military.

Not only was GOPROUD welcomed at CPAC, an event which is supposed to be the annual showcase for conservative values, the organization was allowed to sponsor the event, giving visibility and recognition to its effort to legitimize sexual deviancy.

In other words, for David Keene and the others who run CPAC, natural marriage is not, in their judgment, a fundamental conservative value. This conference, for the sake of truth in advertising, should be relabeled “The Libertarian Political Action Conference.” It has forfeited any legitimate claim to the “Conservative” moniker.

A Saturday post, from Republican, takes one of my new heroes, Ryan Sorba of California Young Americans for Freedom, to task for making the common sense statement at CPAC that homosexual sex cannot lead to reproduction. For this obviously correct observation, he was booed off the stage. And “Hot Air,” now under Christian management, has made Sorba out to be the bad guy.

Sorba showed the courage of his convictions by simply declaring the truth. Said Sorba, “Civil rights are grounded in natural rights, and natural rights are grounded in human nature…and the intelligible end of the reproductive act is reproduction…civil rights, when they conflict with natural rights, are contrary…” At this point, his remarks were drowned out by a chorus of vitriolic, angry boos. (View video of his remarks here.)

Consequently, Sorba said, “I’d like to condemn CPAC for bringing GOPRIDE (he meant “GOPROUD”) to this event.”

For speaking truth to power, “Hot Air” accused Sorba of “bombthrowing,” and said his remarks represented a “gratuitous and public…slam on homosexuals.”

The lead blogger of “Hot Air,” Ed Morrissey, has apparently experienced a new-found freedom under Salem’s Christian leadership to bash proponents of morality grounded in natural law. Said Morrissey, “At some point, Republicans will need to get over their issues with homosexuality.”

Sorba was certainly right to condemn CPAC for this move. The bottom line here is if conservatives are looking for an annual convocation of genuine conservatives – those who are fiscal, national security and social conservatives – the place to be is the Values Voter Summit.

VVS, sponsored each fall by the Family Research Council and the American Family Association, will never waver on the truth that protecting one man – one woman marriage is the most fundamental conservative value of all.

While I had several great conversations with Floyd Brown and believe him to be genuine about his pursuit of impeachment, it was made clear to me by several sources at the conference that they included it primarily as a fund-raising mechanism instead of a serious argument. The general theme of the conference appeared to be mainly a sales job for the personal benefit of the sponsors, and not the promotion of real conservative ideas.

I’ve talked to Tea Party activists who do want Obama impeached, so I don’t think this is something Brown cooked up. I do know that some conservative activists, after a dry spell, are looking hungrily at the Tea Party movement for new sources of revenue. Also, Morrissey filmed a clip of John Ziegler, the conservative documentary filmmaker who was kicked out of the conference for his antics, pulling a failed stunt: Holding up money and asking if it was enough to get the American Conservative Union’s David Keene to write a positive column about Sarah Palin.

Letterman and his ilk can continue to make all of the coverage about Palin revolve around her daughters, forcing her to respond and to look less serious as a politician … if enough of them do it, the downside for her attackers will be small, and the upside will be to kneecap Palin before she can threaten Democrats in a future election.

Do any Democrats actually fear Palin as a national candidate anymore? We’re talking about the first woman on a Republican ticket that got only 43 percent of the female vote, the lowest in a two-way presidential race since, I believe, 1964. If anything, I think Democrats will regret anything that eliminates Palin from a 2012 primary, where should would drain the oxygen from all other candidate coverage while battling (perhaps unsuccessfully) a party establishment that considers her unreliable and unelectable.