Bachmann barnstorms DC during tea party weekend

Rep. Michele Bachmann at her tea party town hall on Aug. 28. Photo: Patrick Caldwell

Glenn Beck may have been the star of Washington over the past few days, but he was not the only conservative figure to speak to adoring crowds in the nation’s capitol this past weekend. Minnesota’s Rep. Michele Bachmann (R) made the rounds addressing various gatherings of tea partiers, taking on the role of an anti-Obama Robin to Beck’s tea party Batman.

On Friday night, Bachmann spoke at two separate conservative conventions, the “Defending the American Dream” summit held by Americans for Prosperity (AFP) and one hosted by Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks. At the AFP conference, Bachmann was one of the keynote speakers during the Tribute to Ronald Reagan. Bachmann struck a very Reagan-esque pose while addressing the crowd of tea party activists from across the country: “I came here tonight to remind us of one thing, and it’s this: this is our country, and we own it,” she said. “It doesn’t belong to a cabal of a half dozen people, radicals who are determined to reshape this country into an image that none of us would even begin to recognize, much less the founders of this country would recognize. We’re a free people.”

The AFP crowd generally sided with conservative tea party views on issues, but as a whole, the conference focused primarily on economic topics — such as less government regulation and lower taxes — that concern the business community. Bachmann’s speech followed those cues, emphasizing the need for less governmental action in favor of a less-restricted capitalist society. “Americans for Prosperity, I love you all because you get it. You get the greatness of our country, you get free enterprise. And how wonderful, what a gift free enterprise is to our country,” Bachmann said near the beginning of her remarks.

Bachmann received some of her loudest applause when she criticized the Obama administration’s interventions in the private market to combat the recession, claiming that it went from no governmental control or ownership of the private market, to 70 percent of the market since Obama’s election. “The most under-reported story of the last 20 months is this: it’s the federal government takeover of one private industry after another. That’s the story,” Bachmann said to a roaring audience.

Her tea party tour continued on Saturday. Bachmann did not have any official role during Beck’s Restoring Honor rally, but she hosted a tea party town hall near the base of the Washington Monument right after the conclusion of Beck’s event. The town hall drew around 1,000 people from the Beck rally, and the crowd cheered heartily for one of the favorite elected officials of the conservative movement.

The Minnesota politician was main draw of the event, but it included a number of other speakers, ranging from tea party activists that Bachmann staffers recruited from the crowd to other congressional members, including Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) of terror babies fame. Bachmann was insistent throughout the event that it was not politicians who directed the tea party movement, but rather the grassroots base. “We are not interested in being the mouth piece of the tea party, we are the earpiece. Our whole purpose is to listen to you. Our goal is not to run the tea party out of Washington, D.C. We don’t want to co-opt you, we don’t want to run the agenda. You are the agenda, the American people are the agenda,” she said.

Though she discussed the tea party as a product solely of the grassroots, Bachmann created the House Tea Party Caucus, which critics have used to point to the tea party as only an arm of the Republican Party. “The reason we formed the Tea Party Caucus is because people have been saying to us, Congress isn’t listening to us,” Bachmann explained. “So what we decided to do is to form a caucus where our own purpose would be to listen to real Americans and what they have to say about what is happening in this country and what they want members of Congress to know.”

While Beck’s event that day was intended to remain fully nonpolitical, few speakers shied away from attacking Democrats during Bachmann’s tea party town hall. She repeatedly attacked President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and at one point listed candidates currently running for the U.S. Senate that she hopes win this fall. Her list of candidates included tea party-favorites from across the country, ranging from Marco Rubio in Florida to Rand Paul in Kentucky and Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania among others.

Interestingly, Bachmann included Alaskan Joe Miller on her list of candidates. “Up there, there’s a fella named Joe Miller who may be the next U.S. senator from the state of Alaska. And he’s got a whole different view of the Constitution, and one that I think that we hope can make it down here,” she said. It remains unclear whether or not Miller will be the Republican candidate for Alaska’s Senate seat. He ran a primary challenge against incumbent and fellow Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Miller currently holds a narrow lead after last Tuesday’s primary, though there are still a number of votes left to count before either candidate can be declare the winner.

The tea party has become notorious for running primary against incumbent Republicans who are viewed as too moderate. While it may be a point of pride among the party base, Bachmann took the rare step of expressing public satisfaction that a congressional colleague from the same caucus lost her election. “In Alaska we may be saying bye bye Lisa, and hello Joe Miler. A governor Sarah Palin pick, by the way,” Bachmann said at the town hall.

Like Beck’s rally, Bachmann played up the religious angle to the great delight of her crowd. At the end of the town hall, Bachmann pointed to the American motto “In God We Trust” with great pride, and turned the phrase into an attack against her political opponents. “If not God, then who? Nancy Pelosi? President Obama, with all due respect. Harry Reid? I don’t think so. In God we trust,” she said. “Political correctness wants to take us, we are one nation under God, they want to divide us. We are today about uniting. We are uniting about what is great about America.”

Patrick Caldwell is the American Independent’s Minnesota correspondent.