Bachmann threatens Bachmann’s star turn

Rep. Michele Bachmann didn’t get the message from House Republican leaders last Monday after the $700 billion financial package went down in flames. While they blamed Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for giving an unnecessarily partisan speech before the vote, Bachmann had her own version of events.

“We are not babies who suck our thumbs. We have principled reasons for voting no,” she told reporters.

Bachmann, a 52-year-old Minnesota Republican, is a rising star among conservatives and a regular guest on the Fox News Channel. She delivered a prime time speech to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in September.

Earlier in the summer, Bachmann made a high-profile visit with other GOP lawmakers to Alaska where she met Gov. Sarah Palin and discovered that drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was the answer to the energy crisis. She became the public face of a group of conservative lawmakers who remained in the House chamber in August to protest the Democrats’ opposition to offshore drilling even though the House was not in session.

“You don’t have to wonder when she sits down what Michele Bachmann really thought,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the National Republican Congressional Committee chairman, said.

Her bluntly honest take on the vote is the latest public performance that has endeared her to the media. Even Keith Olbermann, the liberal host of MSNBC’s Countdown, forced himself to praise her remarks on why the bailout failed. (A surprise, since Olbermann has included Bachmann on his “Worst Person in the World” lists numerous times, including Oct. 2006, Jan. 2008, June 2008, Oct. 2008).

Like Palin, Bachmann is a pro-life mother of five children and an NRA member who has become a conservative darling. But rather than being plucked from obscurity like Palin, Bachmann has risen through a combination of a sunny personality and winning smile, an ability to passionately articulate conservative policies, and being at the right place at the right time — she’s a former tax attorney who serves on the House Financial Services Committee at the height of the greatest financial crisis in two generations.

Bachmann isn’t afraid to mix it up with her opponents and throw rabble-rousing red meat to the GOP base. Until six weeks ago, she was best known for displays of curious behavior and odd comments. While her ascent in Minnesota politics mirrored the rise of other like-minded George W. Bush Republicans, what’s surprising is that she is prospering while so many of her fellow travelers have lost credibility and popularity.

Facing a potentially tough reelection, letting Bachmann be Bachmann is politically risky. She could end up as a punch line for late night comedians because of her penchant for cloaking half-truths in language that inflames her opponents.

“I’m not embarrassed by anything I’ve said,” Bachmann said in a phone interview on Thursday shortly after she returned to Washington from Minnesota to vote one more time on the financial package.

“The attitude is she is definitely learning the ropes around Congress,” Rep. Mary Fallin (R-Okla.), a close friend of Bachmann’s, said.

When the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing on Secretary Henry Paulson’s original three-page plan to rescue the credit markets, Bachmann read from a portion of an Investor’s Business Daily op-ed alleging that home loans to minorities caused the housing meltdown.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) sent Bachmann a letter criticizing her view and when he confronted her on the House floor, she took offense to Ellison’s charge.

When Ellison and Bachmann, the state’s first Republican woman to win a seat in Congress, left Washington to fly to Minnesota earlier this week, they sat next to each other on the airplane. They did not discuss the letter, she said.

Earlier this summer Bachmann invoked Jesus when she criticized Pelosi’s reluctance to allow a vote on offshore oil drilling.

“[Pelosi] is committed to her global warming fanaticism to the point where she has said she has even said she is trying to save the planet. We all know that someone did that 2,000 years ago.”

She once told the St. Cloud Times that Iran had a plan to partition Iraq into a terrorist state. But the plan was secret. Only she knew about it and she would not divulge her source.

Bachmann first captured national attention when she grabbed President Bush’s shoulder for an uncomfortable 30 seconds as Bush departed the House chamber after delivering his State of the Union in 2007. He signed an autograph, posed for a photograph and Bachmann planted a kiss a bit too close to his lips. The video clip made the rounds on YouTube and national cable news shows.

But none of this concerns her. Asked whether she wishes she had said things differently, Bachmann said, “I’m not sure where this interview is going.”

As for the tension with Ellison, Bachmann said, “Comments are frequently taken out of context. That was a shock and not what I intended [to say].”

Her advisors also argued that Democrats and the media had distorted her comments.

“Rather than stand up and say what Michele Bachmann does believe, they’re trying to take it too far,” Ed Brookover, Bachmann’s political strategist, said. “They usually end up not getting very far,” he added, referring to Bachmann’s opponents. “If she’s sent back to Congress, people know who they’re going to get.”

Despite the financial meltdown in the housing, lending and stock markets, Bachmann has held fast to a conservative worldview. Even as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the leader of the Republican Party, has called for more regulation, Bachmann has argued that too much regulation and excessive capital gains and corporate taxes caused the crisis. She cheered on the House floor when lawmakers killed the $700 billion stimulus package.

Congressional leaders should “eviscerate what they have on the table,” and start over, Bachmann said. “I am mystified that the Federal Reserve chairman would embrace this option.”

She then launched into a technical discussion about allowing the SEC chairman to change mark-to-market accounting rules, erase short-selling rules, and give the FDIC the power to insure deposits of its member banks no matter how large the deposits are.

“Giving the Treasury Secretary $700 billion in walk around money to purchase bad debt,” she said, is like “paper toweling” the mess. It is “highly unlikely” that she will vote for the revised plan, she said a day before she opposed the second version of the bailout plan.

While Democrats and liberal bloggers have pounced on Bachmann’s missteps, her opponent, Elwyn Tinklenberg, a Methodist minister turned mayor and state transportation commissioner, has focused on issues and criticized her opposition to a new GI Bill of Rights and universal children’s health care.
Tinklenberg’s internal polling in August showed he had a lot of ground to make up given that Republicans hold a natural five-point advantage in the district. The DCCC has not yet spent any money there, said campaign manager Anna Richie.

Bachmann won by eight points against a tough opponent in 2006. Winning a second term could be difficult, but she has raised more than $2 million and she has put together a well-oiled campaign organization.

Lawmakers with national profiles on Capitol Hill are often criticized for neglecting their districts, but it is unclear if Bachmann has fallen into that trap. Republican and Democratic sources said she had the usual difficulties of higher than normal staff turnover in the first few months of her tenure.

Democrats outnumber Republicans in the delegation, five to three. Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.), the delegation’s dean, convened its members at the beginning of the 110th Congress. While the Democrats meet every six weeks, the full delegation has not met since 2007. But aides said that Bachmann’s conservative politics have isolated her from the rest of the delegation.

Rep. Jim Ramstad, a centrist Republican who is retiring at year’s end, declined several requests for comment. Rep. John Kline, a Republican, said he helped get Bachmann find her “sea legs” on Capitol Hill. But when asked about Bachmann’s comments and whether she’s learned anything from them, he quickly steered questions to her female Republican colleagues.

“When I first met Michele, she seemed liked the type of person who would jump in with both feet and get involved and become an active player,” Fallin said. “And that’s what we are seeing of her now. She has picked out certain areas to be an expert in, such as tax policy and energy.”

Beyond being misquoted or misunderstood, Bachmann’s lessons from her first term in Congress are ideological and practical.

She said having made three trips to the Middle East that she makes a point to thank soldiers she sees in airports. She also believes that all members of Congress should have to start and run a business for three years before coming to Washington to teach them how hard it is to make money. Asked several times whether law firms are included, since so many members of Congress are lawyers, she said they could be as well as real estate agencies and farms. And the Capitol’s marble floors have taught her a lesson in fashion.

“On a personal level,” she said, “I’ve learned to give up high heels as much as possible and wear comfortable shoes.”

Jonathan E. Kaplan is the Center for Independent Media’s Washington correspondent.