Hardball

Rep. Michele Bachmann’s recent Hardball blow-up has undoubtedly endangered her re-election prospects. But what do constituents in the 6th Congressional District think of Bachmann’s latest episode of foot-in-mouth disease? On Tuesday afternoon Chris Steller and I ventured into the northern suburbs to speak with voters about the controversy and their feelings regarding Bachmann. The responses were diverse, from a man who calls Bachmann a “nutcase” to a woman who shares Bachmann’s concerns about Barack Obama to a man who no longer votes because he feels all politicians are crooks.

Here, presented for the first time, is a complete version of Michele Bachmann’s controversial 2006 speech from Living Word Christian Center. Captured by Ken Avidor of Dump Bachmann, it offers a remarkable portrait of the Minnesota congressional representative who has been thrust into the spotlight in the past week by her assertion that Barack Obama and numerous unnamed members of Congress were “anti-American.”

In a church setting, Bachmann is extremely candid about the right-religious basis of her politics and her political career, telling listeners God instructed her to get into politics and that it’s the job of Christians to “suit up… sign up [and] do what He is calling us to do” in the battle against radical Islam.

In full-on damage control mode, Michele Bachmann sat down with WCCO’s Esme Murphy Sunday for an interview about the media firestorm occasioned by her claim on Hardball Friday that Barack Obama and unspecified members of Congress harbor views that Bachmann called “anti-American.”
Bachmann hewed to her official line that her comments were “misread,” but the most [...]

Even before her Friday Hardball debacle, Michele Bachmann faced a challenge back home that’s been little-noted but may pose difficulties for the first-term incumbent: the impact of the mortgage crisis in her suburban and rural district.

Rep. Michele Bachmann now says her words were “misconstrued” when she said she wondered if Barack Obama has “anti-American views,” and she says MSNBC’s Chris Matthews used the A-word first. A look at the transcript shows she’s correct — but that just before Matthews did, she described Obama and other Democrats by using a Russian word that had its heyday in Stalin’s time.

Rep. Michele Bachmann’s comments that she believes Barack Obama “may have anti-American views” and that the media should investigate whether members of Congress are “pro-America or anti-America” has done more than fill the coffers of her Democratic challenger, El Tinklenberg: it’s prompted a challenge for her congressional seat from within the GOP. The St. Cloud Times reports that Aubrey Immelman, Ph.D., a professor of political psychology at St. John’s University and the College of St. Benedict, registered yesterday as a write-in candidate.

Following Rep. Michele Bachmann’s appearance with Chris Matthews yesterday, America is learning what many in Minnesota already knew, which is that putting Bachmann in front of a live microphone is like handing an excitable 15-year-old a bottle of gin and a loaded gun. The only question is when something unspeakable is going to happen.

Bachmann is no stranger to the hysterical off-the-cuff reaction.