At this weekend’s Faith & Freedom Conference in Washington, D.C., Rep. Michele Bachmann told attendees she was pleased that a constitutional amendment that would bar same-sex couples from marrying in Minnesota would be on the ballot in 2012.

Bachmann gained political notoriety in 2004 and 2005 when she aggressively pushed to have the amendment on the ballot even as Republicans were in the minority in the state Senate at the time. In her speech, Bachmann called for similar amendments in every state that does not yet have one. Bachmann said she was “at the tip of the spear” on the issue.

The Faith & Freedom Conference was put together by one-time associate of Jack Abramoff and former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed. The conference drew leaders from anti–gay rights and anti–abortion rights activists as well as a number of potential presidential candidates.

Bachmann spoke about her role in pushing the amendment in 2004.

“Others took that torch and they carried on and just a week ago last Saturday evening Minnesota finally passed the constitutional amendment defining marriage as one man, one woman,” she said. “And so Minnesota is the first state that has decided this issue will be on the ballot in 2012. The state of New Hampshire, I understand, will be taking this issue up as well and other states.”

She added, “This is the time.”

In addition to speaking on gay marriage bans, Bachmann took a swipe at Planned Parenthood. “We’re giving money to corrupt organizations like Planned Parenthood that is committing crimes and enabling young, minor girls. I don’t even want to talk about it because it is so disgusting. This organization has by their own records performed 324,008 abortions in 2008 and 2009, and that’s in addition to the trafficking of underage girls that has gone on under Planned Parenthood’s nose.”

Despite Bachmann’s claims, no evidence has surfaced that Planned Parenthood is involved in child trafficking. One employee was fired last year when undercover video by an anti–Planned Parenthood group showed an employee appearing to give advice to a fake pimp who said he was in control of minor girls.

Here’s a transcript of Bachmann remarks on the anti-gay marriage amendment:

There’s a lot of bad news that’s going on around the world but there’s a lot of good news that is going on in the world too and I want to talk to you about a few of those things.

When I was at the Minnesota State Senate, we had started a project not because we wanted to but because we were acting in response to an action by the Massachusetts judicial Supreme Court.

Does anyone remember the decision in 2003 that the court issued? They issued a decision that told the state legislature that the legislature had to pass a law in conformity with the will of the justices. Does anyone remember what that decision was about? Do you remember? It was about marriage. It had something to do with redefining marriage.

I had heard that in Minnesota and new it would come our way as well, and so i announced that I was going to introduce a constitutional amendment that would allow the people of Minnesota to vote on the laws that they live under, particularly the definition of marriage, whether marriage would be between one man and one women. And that’s a good concept.

People were, as you can imagine, this was the height of the controversy and I was at the tip of the spear on that effort and the reason I bring that up is because I say to you persevere, persevere, and never despise small beginnings because we were just a few people that had gotten together and tried to make this happen.
And this bill that I introduced, we began with, we were not able to get it out of the liberal dominated Senate that I was in. We tried, we tried again, we weren’t able to succeed.

But we didn’t give up because we knew the people of Minnesota ultimately wanted to be able to vote on this bill.

30 different states have put this bill up. Every time states have put this bill before the American people they have voted in their states to retain the traditional definition of marriage as between one man and one women. And though I am no longer in the Minnesota State Senate, I am privileged to be able to serve the people of the 6th district in the House of Representatives.

Others took that torch and they carried on and just a week ago last Saturday evening, Minnesota finally passed the constitutional amendment defining marriage as one man, one woman. And so Minnesota is the first state that has decided this issue will be on the ballot in 2012. The state of New Hampshire, I understand, will be taking this issue up as well and other states.

This is the time, and so I want to encourage all of you at home; if you don’t have a similar amendment, consider this in your home states. I believe this is the time to do it so I just want to say thank you to those who have continued to carry the torch.

Rep. Michelle Bachmann has won reelection in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, the Associated Press reports, defeating Democratic candidate state Sen. Tarryl Clark. Votes are still being counted, but Bachmann leads Clark by a 51-40 percent margin with 40 percent of precincts reporting.

The House race between Bachmann and Clark was the most expensive in the country, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Clark’s $4.2 million raised throughout the election was more than twice the amount of any other Minnesota DFL congressional candidate this year. But her haul paled in comparison to Bachmann’s monstrous $11.1 million raised for this cycle. The combined $15 million raised between the two candidates was over $6 million more than the second most expensive campaign, in Florida’s 22nd Congressional District.

In an election year where campaigns were dwarfed by spending from independent organizations, only $49,000 from such groups was spent in the 6th district, with most of that sum devoted to support for Bachmann.

Bachmann will likely enter a new political world when she is sworn in for her third term in the House. Results from the rest of the country are still rolling in, but it appears likely that the Republican Party has retaken the House of Representatives. Bachmann was first elected in 2006, replacing former Rep. Mark Kennedy, who ran an unsuccessful Senate campaign that year. Entering the House at the same time as the 2006 wave election that favored Democrats, Bachmann has only been a member of the minority party to date. She has offered minimal amounts of legislation during her two terms, with much of it symbolic gestures rather than actual legislation which could have passed given the chamber’s party split.

As Republicans regain control of the House, Bachmann may rise to a prominent place in the party caucus. She is one of the stars of the tea party movement, and many GOP candidates ran campaigns this year seeking those voters. She leads the Tea Party Caucus in the House, which had 52 members when it was formed in July. Bachmann appears to be already testing the waters of her clout among newly-elected representatives, as she was unwilling to commit her support to Rep. John Boehner for House Speaker during her debate against Clark last week.

Earlier in the season, Democrats had eyed the 6th district as a potential seat ripe for a switch. Though the district skews Republican — John McCain defeated Barack Obama by a 53-45 percent margin in 2008 — many thought that Bachmann’s far-right views made her susceptible to a centrist challenge. Clark secured the DFL nomination and financial backing of national Democrats over the summer when Dr. Maureen Reed dropped out of the DFL primary. But as election prospects for Democrats turned grim with the shift from summer to fall, the 6th district largely faded into the background for the party as they focused on supporting incumbents.

Patrick Caldwell is the American Independent’s Minnesota correspondent.

“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.