Rep. Michele Bachmann (left): Since Hardball, her campaign has been paralyzed.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (left): Since Hardball, her campaign has been paralyzed.

If God is in the habit of personally steering Michele Bachmann’s  political career, as she has been known to claim, then you have to wonder if His heart is really in it anymore. It’s been almost two weeks since Bachmann dropped the “anti-American” bomb on Hardball that has become the most widely aired gaffe in any US congressional campaign this year, and her campaign’s handling of the matter looks a lot like one protracted act of political malpractice.

First, consider Bachmann’s efforts at damage control. She waited four days to address the matter in national media, thereby effectively ceding the most critical part of the incident’s aftermath to the repeated re-broadcast of her comments and to news of the fundraising groundswell they had created for her opponent, El Tinklenberg, who raised nearly $1.5 million in that time.

And when Bachmann did respond, it was neither to apologize nor to dig in her heels. Instead, she complained that Chris Matthews had put words in her mouth — an appeal that was seriously undercut by the zeal with which Bachmann took up the Hardball host’s suggestion that Obama and other unnamed Democrats were anti-American. She followed this with a 30-second TV spot so soft and so swaddled in euphemism that it sounded like an ad for a mortuary. And again, no apology.

Then again, it’s not entirely clear that Bachmann needed to apologize in order to stem the damage. But she needed to do something to take back control of the conversation. The Campaigns 101 play — and it seemed so not only to me, but to a number of political pros I’ve talked to privately in the past week — appeared to be trying to turn El Tinklenberg’s newfound strength (a national, 11th-hour fundraising base) into a weakness.

The 6th congressional district, after all, is the most conservative in the state, generously stocked with evangelicals and other nativist conservative elements of the sort that might be heartened by sentiments like Bachmann’s, or at least not terribly offended. The situation seemed ripe for a response along pretty obvious tactical lines: Are voters in the 6th going to let national liberal elites tell them what to do?

It never happened. In fact, nothing has really happened in the Bachmann campaign since Hardball. You can excuse Bachmann herself for feeling pole-axed; Michele had never had the chance to be Michele on such a large stage before, and the public reaction seems to have thrown her into an almost clinical state of shock. But what about the so-called political professionals behind her? Has God advised them to sit on their hands, or has Bachmann’s gift for running a chaotically staffed congressional office bled over into her campaign operation as well?