The latest prominent Republican figure to blast Michele Bachmann for her "Muslim-Brother-penetrating-the-U.S.-government" statements is Ed Rollins, a long-time Repub political operative who, coincidentaly or not, served for a while as Bachmann's campaign manager during her campaign for the Repub presidential nomination.
"Shame on you, Michele," Rollins wrote on the website of Fox News, a network that Bachmann has treated as a home away from home.
"You should stand on the floor of the House and apologize to Huma Abedin and to Secretary [of State Hillary] Clinton and to the millions of hard working,loyal, Muslim Americans for your wild and unsubstantiated charges,:" Rollins wrote. "As a devoted Christian, you need to ask forgiveness for this grievous lack of judgment and reckless behavior."
Abedin is the top aide to Clinton whom Bachmann has suggested should not have security clearance to hold her position because of a connection that Abedin's long-dead father had to an organization that had a connection to the Muslim Brotherhood. Bachmann sits on the House Select Committee on Intelligence.
Bachmann's Minnesota colleague in the House, Keith Ellison of Minneapolis, had taken the lead earlier in rejecting Bachmann's allegations, and given the partisan and ideological distance between them, his comments seemed to attract less attention.
But yesterday, Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican and former presidential nominee praised Abedin and denounced Bachmann (without mentioning her name) on the Senate floor. That raised the profile of the case. Earlier today, House Speaker John Boehner did the same to the media. Now Rollins.
I'm not really sure why this case is being treated so differently from Bachmann's other departures from caution and factuality, but something is going on.
On the lighter side, satirist Andy Borowitz got into the act.