“I’m pro the taxpayers of our country,” she answered. “She’s pro-BP. I’m pro protescting our jobs, the environment and the taxpayers. She has come out several times saying she’s worried about BP being fleeced or being chumps. I don’t want taxpayers to be fleeced or chumps. This is BP’s oil spill, they need to clean it up.”

It wasn’t Clark’s only media exposure in recent days. Like Bachmann, who pens national columns for outlets like Townhall, Clark wrote a piece for The Hill this morning in which she called Bachmann’s sentiments about BP “indefensible” and wrote that Bachmann’s mired “in an oily hole.” Yesterday, at Huffington Post, she called Bachmann’s characterization of the $20 billion victims’ fund as “extortion” “shocking — and offensive.”

Watch the video (via Dump Bachmann):

“They are great theater,” Rybak said of Bachmann and Palin, comparing them to other Minneapolis greats such as Prince and Bob Dylan. “I’m so glad Sarah Palin came here to bring Gov. Pawlenty back home” from his busy campaign travels.

Here’s the full exchange with Ed Schultz:

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Meanwhile, on Chris Matthews’ show, Pat Buchanan laughed off Bachmann’s suggestion that the United States should drop nuclear weapons in response to cyber-attacks.

Bachmann said on Wednesday:

“And then earlier this week, we found out that the president said that he was going to change the United States’ strategy on dealing with nuclear weaponry. Did this shock everyone? So, if in fact there is a nation who is compliant with all the rules ahead of time and then complied with the United Nations on nuclear proliferation, if they fire against the United States, a biological weapon, a chemical weapon, or maybe a cyber-attack — well, then we weren’t going to be firing back with nuclear weapons.”

Here’s Matthews’ and Buchanan’s exchange:

Matthews: How about the cyber-attack part of this?

Buchanan: Look, to have a cyber-attack you need a nuclear weapon on the other side because a cyber-attack…

I mean… the top… you mean the east…

Matthews: She was saying that if we get hit with a cyber-attack we should strike back with nuclear…

Buchanan: Well I see, you mean just computers. Do they mean computers?

Matthews: Yeah, that’s what she means.

Buchanan: or the attack in the atmosphere which?…

Matthews: No, no, no. She’s talking about cyber-attack.

Buchanan: If they hack into your computer?

Matthews: If something is happening to our computer system, we just strike with nuclear weapons.

Buchanan: I don’t think I’d strike with nuclear weapons if they hacked into my computer, no. (laughs)

Bachmann made similar comments on Chris Matthews’ Hardball in October 2008, but quickly distanced herself from her own statement.

“I did not say that Barack Obama was anti-American, nor do I believe Barack Obama is anti-American. He loves his country, just as everyone in this room does,” she told the Rotary Club in St. Cloud at the time. “Nor did I call for an investigation of members of Congress for their pro-American or anti-American views. That is not what I said.”

“This is a gross distortion of what I said,” she told the St. Cloud Times editorial board. “That is not what I believe and that isn’t what I said and that isn’t what I stand for.”

“My parents taught me when I was little, if you make a mistake, own up to it,” she said. “I wish I had not used that phrase. …I do not question his patriotism, what I do question are his ideas.”

But Bachmann brought that phrase back at the Susan B. Anthony List event on Wednesday evening, where she shared the stage with Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

Her 2008 comments generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to her opponent, El Tinklenberg. And Tinklenberg is hoping Bachmann latest comments will do the same for Tarryl Clark, a Democrat running for the DFL endorsement to take on Bachmann.

He sent out this fundraising pitch on Thursday afternoon:

I just received a call from my friend Tarryl Clark – the candidate who is going to beat Congresswoman Michele Bachmann in 2010 – with some disturbing news.

We all remember Michele Bachmann’s comments in 2008, when she said she was “very concerned” that President Obama “may have anti-American views” and called for an investigation into Members of Congress to find out whether they are “pro-America or anti-America.”

Well, speaking at a closed-press event last night, Michele Bachmann said, “I said I had very serious concerns that Barack Obama had anti-American views. And now I look like Nostradamus.”

HELP ME HELP TARRYL CLARK DEFEAT MICHELE BACHMANN TODAY

We need to put an end to this kind of fear-mongering from Michele Bachmann and her right-wing allies, which we’re already seeing incite hatred and violence across the country in recent days.

In 2008, you rallied to my side and flooded our campaign with the resources necessary to take Bachmann on. Today, I need you to do the same for Tarryl Clark so that she can beat Michele Bachmann and send a message that Minnesota’s 6th District is tired of her rhetoric and ready for real leadership in Congress.

DONATE TODAY AND LET’S RETIRE MICHELE BACHMANN

Thanks for everything you do.

“I think we’re pushing the extremes to the utter extreme and we keep lowering the bar,” said the Daily Beast’s Mark McKinnon in response to a video where Quist said the “battle” against liberals was bigger than that against terrorism. “I think a lot of this is about being as outrageous as you can to get attention from the media, and here we are providing it.”

Susan Page of USA Today: “‘Welcome to YouTube, Mr. Quist.’ He may not have thought this little affair he was talking to in Minnesota was going to get this kind of attention.”

Here’s the segment; the section on Quist starts at 3:26:

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Before his trip to Iowa, Pawlenty had taken heat for endorsing the Conservative Party candidate over the Republican in Tuesday’s U.S. House district in New York. He then called moderate Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine “more liberal than most Republicans would like.”

Pawlenty seemed to be addressing that controversy, saying debate over things like the party platform are good, but once that’s complete Republicans must unite to “start the American comeback.”

Pawlenty then struck a chord for party unity, saying that there should be vigorous primary campaigns, but then everyone should get back on the same team in order to elect Republicans.

“We’re going to have our debates about what the platform will look like,” he said. “We’re going to have our primaries and caucuses. We’re going to go through that process, and it should be hard fought. But when those decisions are made, as a team we have to come around and support each other.”

This marks the second major Republican Party of Iowa fundraiser where a potential 2012 presidential candidate has made it a point to discuss creating an inclusive party. In June, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour told a crowd of GOP activists and elected officials that the only way back into the majority was to resist demands for ideological purity.

For most of his speech, Pawlenty struck a populist tone attacking federal bailouts for Wall Street companies and Detroit automakers. And on the night that U.S. House lawmakers approved health care reform legislation, Pawlenty repeatedly hit the Democratic reform efforts, saying they are proof that Democrats no longer care about working families.

“They have a party now, our competitors, that have embraced big government, big unions and big bailouts,” he said. “And they want to have the people believe that they work for the common person. The working person.”

During his successful presidential campaign, Barack Obama regularly asked if the crowd was “fired up and ready to go,” Pawlenty said

“Are you fired up and ready to fight back?” Pawlenty said. “Are you willing to be involved?”

He said Obama broke his campaign promise to seek bipartisan health care reform, instead deciding to push for a liberal bill, ignore Republican voices and continue the “dangerous leftward tilt” the president has pursued for the country.

“In his victory speech in Iowa after the caucuses, President Obama promised — he used the word promise — he was going to bring Republicans and Democrats together to pass needed health care reform,” Pawlenty said. “Now I ask you, are you sick and tired of Democrats trying to ram down this liberal monstrosity down our throat which is their health care reform plan?”

But the Republican Party can’t simply be critics, Pawlenty said. Republicans must also offer solutions, and he pointed to his record as governor of Minnesota as proof that GOP ideas work. Minnesota is a very liberal state, Pawlenty said, and he was still able to cut spending and taxes.

“If we can do it there, we can do it anywhere,” he said.

The federal government could learn from his experience in Minnesota. Instead of allowing the national deficit to continue to grow, government should begin to live within its means, Pawlenty said.

“The only thing growing faster than the national debt is [MSNBC host] Chris Matthews’ man-crush on Barack Obama,” he said.

This marks Pawlenty’s first trip to Iowa since he campaigned for Arizona Sen. John McCain last year, and many are speculating that the trip is another indication of his interest in seeking the GOP presidential nomination in 2012. He has already said he will not seek a third term as governor and last month he formed a political action committee called Freedom First, a typical first move for presidential aspirants.

Cillizza is a fan and doesn’t break T-Paw’s chops for galavanting around the nation, the way we locals (who unlike Cillizza are the constituents he leaves behind) tend to do:

Give Tpaw credit — he recognized that he had to quickly get moving if he wanted to emerge as a national leader, and he has done just that. Pawlenty has been somewhere close to ever-present on cable chat shows and has generally weighed in on national issues with gravity and smarts. (His decision to suspend any expenditure of state dollars to ACORN backfired a bit when Minnesota’s ACORN representative said the organization didn’t get any state cash.) Pawlenty has a prime speaking spot at the Values Voters Summit tomorrow night; if he does well, expect the buzz factor on him to rise.

But Cillizza’s not the only one with Pawlenty in his sights as the Values Voter Summit gets underway. Minnesota’s governor is the first target of a new Democratic National Committee campaign called “Call ‘Em Out,” taking Pawlenty to task for his statement about health care reform.

The campaign’s name is inspired by the Obama line: “I will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that it’s better politics to kill this plan than improve it … If you misrepresent what’s in the plan, we will call you out.”

That’s the conclusion of Eric Ostermeier, who blogs at Smart Politics for the University of Minnesota’s Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.

Ostermeier counted Bachmann’s appearances on cable shows since she took office in 2007. That first year: zero appearances. Over the past year: 43 appearances.

So by Ostermeier’s reckoning, Bachmann is on national TV every nine days. At that rate, you can set your Tivo for next Thursday and have a good shot at catching the representative from Minnesota’s Sixth Congressional District.

And at that rate, isn’t Bachmann proving she could handle her own weekly show, a la Huckabee?

By the way, Ostermeier confirms what you may suspect: Bachmann is increasingly leaning toward right-leaning networks like Fox. She hasn’t, for example, shown her face on MSNBC since Oct. 17, 2008, the day she told Chris Matthews of her suspicions about colleagues in Congress harboring “anti-American” beliefs.

Her latest appearance, as of this writing, was Tuesday, when she told Fox News host Sean Hannity that reforming the nation’s health care system is unconstitutional.

All that airtime is not an accident; it’s by design. Bachmann has mobilized an exceptionally large squadron of public-relations staffers to pursue “an aggressive plan” for more media exposure. Among other benefits, Ostermeier figures that strategy is reaping Bachmann campaign-fundraising rewards.

Pawlenty described himself as “one voice from the heartland” as if he didn’t want to be a diva about it. He boasted that his hometown of South St. Paul had “the world’s largest stockyards,” but couldn’t help adding, “at least for a while.”

It’s not that he didn’t try to soar: “We are the freest people who have ever had the privilege to live in this great nation.” But don’t speakers usually say we’re the freest in the history of the world? (Sure, we’re freer than slaves, indentured servants, tenant farmers and Native Americans — at least after they got shunted onto reservations.)

He retold a story about a construction worker who falls from a great height, miraculously escaping serious injury, and finished with a flourish as the worker is carried off on a gurney mere feet from the ground, pleading, “Please don’t drop me, please don’t drop me.” Pawlenty voiced the worker’s words in a studied tremolo … to an elephant-sized silence in the room. The story, meant as an allegory for the GOP’s woes, fell flat.

His jokes didn’t get much more of a rise, with the possible exception of one that went like this: The only thing rising faster than the deficit is the “man crush” that Chris Matthews (of MSNBC) has for President Obama.

Pawlenty has been telling that subtle confection of media bias, homophobia and presidential belittlement at least since his speech to College Republicans last month (where the cultural references got bawdier), and he repeated it again yesterday for Fox News yesterday (video).

But Pawlenty has seemed to have missed his moment before and his star continues to rise — though perhaps not as fast as the man-crushes that are helping propel him.

Video and transcribed excerpts after the jump, including Pawlenty’s concern about perceived “fraud or mischief” in the Senate election, the resolution of which he said “could take well into summer or longer.” 

Mike Barnicle, substituting for “Hardball” host Chris Matthews, asked the governor to respond to people who say, “There’s Pawlenty: He was against the stimulus package but he’s going to take the money. He’s a hypocrite.” Pawlenty defended Minnesota as a net contributor to the federal budget, but first parried on hypocrisy:

Where was that double standard when Democratic governors or liberal governors in the past said, “I’m against military spending but I’m going to take National Guard money” or “I’m against No Child Left Behind but I’m going to take education money” or “I’m against tax cuts but I’m not going to voice objection to my citizens receiving the benefits of those cuts or credits.” So let’s make sure we’re looking at that argument in its full glory.

Barnicle, apparently unaware how long Pawlenty’s been flying on no-tax auto-pilot, tried flattery …

You’re a good guy, you’re a bipartisan guy. I mean you’ve got the automatons in the House of Representatives, they stand up en masse and vote, not one Republican votes for the stimulus package.

… before pressing hard on why — “for the first time in history, from the time people went to war by throwing rocks at on another”  — Republicans under President Bush cut taxes while fighting two wars, running up the national debt. Pawlenty shot back by citing “recent history” that somehow doesn’t include the Clinton era:

It doesn’t matter it seems in recent history for most of the years, whether a Republican’s in the White House or a Democrat, or Republicans are in charge in the Congress or the Democrats, they have forgotten or let go of the goal and the importance of balancing the budget.

The weary world traveler looked more haggard than usual, seen against a wall of books rather than the standard Third Avenue Bridge-by-night Minneapolis backdrop that he and Sen. Amy Klobuchar used in their MSNBC appearances early in the week. (When will the new, blue-lit I-35W bridge make its cable TV news backdrop debut?)

Barnicle asked: “How does affect, if it does, or impact, if it does, the people of Minnesota, having only one United States senator?” Pawlenty’s reply, in part:

Well, it impacts us significantly because right now some of the big issues of our time are being decided in Washington, and having only one senator is a big disadvantage. So it’s very unfortunate, and it puts us at a disadvantage.

And yet he prefaced that by telling the national TV audience that:

We don’t want an outcome where people say there was fraud or mischief or some legal flaw.

How long will it take to make sure “people” don’t “say” such awful things? (My question, not Barnicle’s.)

If one side or the other decides to appeal the outcome to federal court, this could take well into summer or longer. It may be that one side or the other decides not to do that.

The interview ended on the topic of the Republican Party’s future, which some say Pawlenty embodies. He gave a hard supply-and-demand analysis to the party’s standing with the American voters:

In politics, we’re going to be the marketplace party? The marketplace is telling us they prefer the products and services of our competitors. And if we’re going to be a winning, growing, governing party, we need to be about including more people in, not throwing people overboard.

Which could explain his two appearances in one week on reputedly liberal MSNBC.

Here’s the video (MSNBC’s sometimes buggy video embed willing):

When TIME’s Best of 2008 series came out, I was surprised that Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann didn’t make the cut. Her infamous October appearance on Hardball didn’t merit mention in the Top 10 Campaign Video Moments (which, rightfully, saw Sarah Palin’s Katie Couric interview at the top) or Top 10 Campaign Gaffes? Now, as 2008 winds down, we’ll start seeing more of Michele. The first two: Today, the New York Times’ Ginia Bellafante includes Bachmann’s “most embarrassing moment” on Hardball in her list of TV “Moments that Float and Sting.” Meanwhile, Comedy Central’s Indecision 2008 recognizes the 6th district U.S. representative for “channeling Joseph McCarthy” on the MSNBC show. She’s competing against the likes of Joe the Plumber, Rush Limbaugh, PUMAs and Barack Obama (“for being a Muslim, Arab, too-black, not-black-enough, Communist, socialist, Marxist, non-flag-pin-wearing, baby-killing, Hamas-endorsed, appeasement-practicing, elitist, community-organizing, eloquent, big-eared man who pals around with terrorists and can’t bowl”) for Best Campaign Villain of 2008. Readers can cast their vote on that one here. (She’s currently leading the pack, with 34 percent of the vote.)