Iowa’s radical religious right group “The Family Leader” is now backing away from their crazed slavery language, in the pledge signed by Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum.

They apparently have a dim realization that they might have crossed a line that shouldn’t be crossed. But this is a political calculation, not a genuine retraction, and there is still a lot of insanity in their pledge. They’re only backing away from the slavery claims because the ugliness of this line of attack was obvious (even to Fox News), and they realized that it might hurt Michele Bachmann’s campaign.

When you’ve lost Fox News, you’d better start issuing retractions. They don’t have to be genuine; they just have to sound good.

A social conservative Iowa group has retracted language regarding slavery from the opening of a presidential candidates’ pledge, amid a growing controversy over the document that Michele Bachmann had signed and Rick Santorum committed to.

The original “marriage vow” from the Family Leader, unveiled last week, included a line at the opening of its preamble, which suggested that black children born into slavery were better off in terms of family life than African-American kids born today.

“Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President,” read the preamble.

But this evening, amid growing questions aimed at Bachmann, Family Leader officials said they’d removed the slavery language from the preamble.

“After careful deliberation and wise insight and input from valued colleagues we deeply respect, we agree that the statement referencing children born into slavery can be misconstrued, and such misconstruction can detract from the core message of the Marriage Vow: that ALL of us must work to strengthen and support families and marriages between one woman and one man,” the group’s officials said in a statement. “We sincerely apologize for any negative feelings this has caused, and have removed the language from the vow.”

Oh, to be a fly on the wall and observe the communications between Bachmann’s campaign and these fanatics that led to this phony retraction.