Photo: Paul Demko, MnIndy

MnIndy file photo

The congresswoman who once called herself a “foreign correspondent on enemy lines” in Washington, tells Mpls.St.Paul Magazine’s Steve Marsh that the AR-15 semiautomatic assault rifle is her favorite firearm. But when Rep. Michele Bachmann — who last year called on Minnesotans to be “armed and dangerous” against the Obama administration’s energy policies — was asked about the violent imagery in recent quotes about slitting wrists to be “blood brothers” against health care reform, she says, “It’s not me!”

The wide-ranging interview covers Bachmann’s childhood in Anoka and her concerns about “politically correct indoctrination” in public schools. But Bachmann’s response to Marsh’s blood-and-guts question is the most surprising.

You often refer to blood sacrifice, whether it’s Tennyson or Jefferson. My favorite was, “We have to slit our wrists and become blood brothers for freedom!”
That’s from the cowboy and Indian movies from the 1950s. That’s all my brothers and I watched: John Wayne and cowboys and Indians.

Where do you find this bloody, violent language?
I don’t know where you’re going with this blood and sacrifice stuff, but it’s not me!

As our sister site in Colorado first reported, Bachmann told audiences at a Denver “legislative briefing” in September that health care reform foes have to make a blood “covenant” in opposition to health care reform efforts. She also said, “Right now, we are looking at reaching down the throat and ripping the guts out of freedom.” But Marsh’s Tennyson reference was about another speech, where she offered attendees of a rally against healthcare reform a poorly chosen allusion — to poet Alfred Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade,” about one of military history’s most grisly defeats.