Bachmann Has 'Incapacitating Migraines' or Attacks of Conscience?

COMMENTARY | Trying to get out ahead of reports of incapacitating migraine headaches that sometimes require hospitalization and heavy preventive and controlling medication, GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann's camp has said that the migraines were not "debilitating" as had been reported. But how bad are they? And what causes them? And are they actually migraines or are they, given Bachmann's extraordinary talent for disseminating falsehoods, just occasional attacks of conscience?

According to the Daily Caller, advisers in the Bachmann presidential camp (who remained anonymous) revealed that the Minnesota Congresswoman suffers from migraines so intense that she has had to be hospitalized at least three times in the past. They added that she has to take medication to control the headaches -- and more medication to try to prevent them.

Staffers say that Bachmann has "inexplicably" blamed the headaches on high-heeled shoes, but they believe it is her heavy workload, the stress, and, at times, the pressure of things not going her way.

But could they be generated by something else, like an attack of conscience? And could a self-directed attack of guilt and self-reproach cause headaches, even migraines? According to a list of migraine triggers posted on the UC-Berkeley website, repressed emotions can generate migraines. Being a politician, constantly in need of projecting a controlled image, Bachmann is most likely a walking bundle of repressed emotions.

What would Michele Bachmann feel the need to repress or have to feel guilty about? Seemingly foremost of any and all potential reasons would have to be all the various falsehoods that she disseminates with abandon, falsehoods that she has to defend nearly on a daily basis. The sheer number alone, which has been exposed only partially by the fact-checking agency Politifact, has got to exact a toll on her thought processes.

For example, Bachmann is such a proponent of off-shore oil drilling that she outright lied to sway opinion, like the time she went public with the comment that the Obama administration had issued only one drilling permit, when in fact the administration, when she made the comment, had issued nearly 300. She then tried to cover that lie with another falsehood when she appeared on CBS' "Face The Nation," telling Bob Schieffer that President Obama had release all the oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (he released only a small percentage).

Unless Rep. Bachmann is at least partially delusional and is capable of an exclusively selective willful blindness, she cannot escape the constant media attention that focuses on her rather large library of publicly espoused falsehoods, disingenuous comments, and fabricated statements. And in the monitoring, the self-reflection, the questioning, and the pressure of facts that far outweigh her unsubstantiated offerings and outright lies, the guilt of repetitive fabricating and attempts to mislead has got to be a tremendous emotional burden. Assuming that Rep. Bachmann meets the legal definition of mental responsibility, that she knows the difference between right and wrong, it would appear that at times the overwhelming guilt of denying truths and facts causes an emotional and/or psychological surge that literally attacks the Congresswoman via a migraine headache.

Because sometimes the truth really does hurt...

Or it could be far worse. The migraines may not be attacks of conscience at all but could be brought on by hormonal imbalance, stress, and several other factors triggered by work overload -- signaling that Rep. Michele Bachmann says whatever she wants in order to promote her agenda and get elected.