Forget political pedigree, executive experience or ties to deep-pocketed donors. No Republican presidential candidate is better positioned to capitalize on the recent tide of conservative anger toward President Barack Obama than Michele Bachmann. Her charisma and crossover appeal to both social and fiscal conservatives have the three-term Minnesota congresswoman rising in the polls and primed to make a serious impact on the GOP nomination fight. – Bachmann well-positioned for Iowa, and maybe beyond
So, the Hillary effect continues to pave the way for women, bringing forth the first serious right-wing conservative candidate with a worthy resume, Michele Bachmann, who has just announced her candidacy in Iowa.
photo via Jon Karl on Twitter
CNN’s Peter Hamby’s “charisma and crossover appeal to both social and fiscal conservatives” narrative gets it right.
Coming off her Fox News interview clash with Chris Wallace, today Michele Bachmann continues to gain traction with Republicans. But as Karl Rove said several weeks ago with Bill O’Reilly, the path to the presidency via the House is arduous, dismal and unsuccessful.
The National Journal has an interesting piece on Bachmann:
Bachmann goes out of her way to portray herself as a different kind of Republican. In an interview with National Journal last month, she talked about her teenage years as a Democrat (she worked on Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign), her post-doctorate degree in tax law, and the business she started with her husband, Marcus. As she has in other forums, Bachmann also spoke about the 23 foster kids the couple raised in addition to their own five biological children. “People don’t necessarily think of a Republican, especially a conservative Republican, as having a heart, much less compassion,” she said.
[...] All the while professing great admiration for Sarah Palin, Bachmann appears irked by the seemingly inevitable association between her and the 2008 vice presidential nominee. Both are polarizing figures who appeal to—and turn off—the same constituencies. But there is at least one striking difference between the two: While Palin remains at war with what she calls “the lame-stream media,” granting her only extended recent interviews to Fox News (where she’s employed as a commentator), Bachmann has opened her office and her life to the press. She’s also showing she has a lower gear: In an interview Sunday on CBS News’s Face the Nation, Bachmann more narrowly focused her criticism of Obama on his stewardship of the economy and suggested she regretted calling him “anti-American” in 2008.
Bachmann is understandably “irked” by the Palin association. While Sarah readies for her close-up in Iowa over a movie meant to reinvent her, Bachmann’s running for president with her stock going up on the Right every day, but not because of some publicity stunt. It’s because as she goes into the “lamestream” media’s sights she seems to have learned from her innumerable gaffes, with the pros on her team schooling her on being a disciplined candidate, with Bachmann humble and willing enough to listen, which is paying off.
Sarah Palin’s refusal to listen to Roger Ailes after the Loughner tragedy in Arizona is a prime example of why Sarah’s seen as frivolously silly in comparison.
Oh, how the flop sweat inside team Timmy Pawlenty’s campaign headquarters must by pungent about now.
There is no right-wing Republican candidate that can take it to Pres. Obama better than Bachmann. It’s early, but she’s making a case that she’d be a formidable vice presidential candidate on the GOP ticket, especially if Romney continues to soar with the establishment, if Republicans can get over their Sarah Palin veep disaster nighmares. Unlike Palin, in a debate with Joe Biden, Michele Bachmann wouldn’t be forced to ignore questions because she couldn’t answer them or rely on tricks to remember Biden’s name.
Bachmann won’t get the credit, but right-wing politics aside, she’s the first credible conservative female candidate in modern Republican Party history.
And though I don’t expect a nomination fight to rival 18 million cracks in the presidential glass ceiling, it’s always a good day when competent, serious females vie for the highest office in the land and in the modern world. It’s just alarming that women like Bachmann are doing it on a platform that includes taking freedoms away from women.
Excellent.
I appreciate it, Ramsgate.
“Bachmann won’t get the credit, but right-wing politics aside, she’s the first credible conservative female candidate in modern Republican Party history.” — TM
Yep. I guess the timing isn’t good for women as credible candidates from the Left, overtly making known WH aspirations. That would require a willingness to take on Obama, but unless some kind of titanic shift occurs very quickly, that isn’t going to happen. Maybe in 2016, but that’s a long time to wait for another crack at the ceiling.
Obama will lose to Bachmann in a general election. He cannot handle a woman who dislikes him. HRC refused to kick BHO in the political “nuts” during the ’08 primary. Bachmann will have no hesitation, rather, she will relish the notion.
I think you’re onto something there. I don’t know that she can beat Obama but she sure can make him limp to the finish line because he is very thin skinned and especially cannot take criticism it seems especially from women. I would dread her being on the ticket though because Obama will unleash all the misogyny he has in his pack of tricks and might actually make me feel sympathetic for her.
Disagree TPAZ – should Bachmann somehow manage to win the GOP primary, I have faith that she would be resoundingly rejected in a general election. Most general election voters are too smart to consider voting for someone as intellectually underwhelming as Bachmann. Whatever you think of the President, he is a smart, stable, eloquent person who has the intellectual curiosity to perform the job better than any of the GOP contenders, particularly Bachmann.
You mean like the smart voters that elected George Bush, twice. the left is giving voters way too much credit.
“Whatever you think of the President, he is a smart, stable, eloquent person who has the intellectual curiosity to perform the job better than any of the GOP contenders, particularly Bachmann.”
When was the last time an elected was won on merit?
It’s hard for me to imagine any of the Tea Partiers winning the White House. One could win the GOP nomination, and Bachmann is one of the better bets, but they are just so out there that I can’t imagine the bulk of independents voting for her.
Of course, Obama could so depress his base that anyone who can speak in complete sentences could give him a run for his money, but I still don’t see that progressives generally have reached that point. I’m there, mind you, but mine isn’t a popular mindset just yet.
Obama’s Achilles heel is going to the be the economy and with 80% of the country in a grumpy mood about it, at this point I wouldn’t say that any of the GOP contenders couldn’t beat him.
How in the h*ll is Bachmann any more polarizing than someone like Newt Gingrich? If this is the crap that the media is going to throw out, they are going to be Obama’s worst enemy because people like me are going to start feeling a little sympathy for her even though I agree with NONE of her issues.
I guess only women can be “polarizing” or “flakes”. It seems to me that George W. Bush was pretty flaky and polarizing but nobody sure made any statements about him. And what about DIck Cheney? The guy with a 20% approval rating? I don’t see him called “polarizing” either.
American hate weak Presidents. If Obama isn’t willing to cut Bachmann off at the ankles like he did with Trump, she will win on points.
s/b Americans