Michele Bachmann : ‘I’m in for 2012,’ sorta - Update : CNN reports she will file in June, maybe earlier
Just over ten months before next February’s Iowa caucuses Sarah Palin is returning from a recent trip to Israel. But Tea Party darling Rep. Michele Bachmann is already hitting the Hawkeye state capital.
Unlike Palin, all signs point to Bachmann running for the Republican presidential nomination later this year. In an Iowa version of ABC News’ “Subway Series” shot on the Des Moines city trolley, the Minnesota Republican told ABC’s Jonathan Karl, “I’m in.”
Well, sort of.
“I’m in for 2012 in that I want to be a part of the conversation in making sure that President Obama only serves one term, not two, because I want to make sure that we get someone who’s going to be making the country work again. That’s what I’m in for,” Bachmann said.
“But I haven’t made a decision yet to announce, obviously, if I’m a candidate or not, but I’m in for the conversation.”
She said the feedback she has gotten thus far about a possible White House run has been “encouraging.” And she thinks the president is beatable.
“I think that right now if the election were today I don’t think that the president would be re-elected,” she said.
Huh? What polls does she read? I haven’t seen a single one showing a Republican beating Obama.
And what feedback is she talking about? The feedback from Jeebus about running in 2012?
From foreign policy to the health care reform, watching Bachmann on a whirlwind day in Iowa’s capital, it sure sounds like she’s gearing up for a run for the White House — and echoes of Palin can be heard at every turn.
In a speech earlier in the day to a crowd of a few hundred people at a home-schooling convention in Des Moines, Bachmann, the biological mother of five children and the foster mother of another 23, sounded positively Palin-esque on the stump.
“I am one tough cookie,” she said. “I am a very strong tough individual.”
“I may be 5-foot-2 and wearing a yellow suit, but I am one tough lady when it comes to defending our freedoms and our nation,” she quipped a few minutes later.
Notihng says far right like the homeschooling crowd.
“My decision will be based on whether or not I think I need to run,” Bachmann said. “I wouldn’t see myself as running against a Republican competitor.”
But as she has waded into presidential waters in recent weeks, Bachmann has already hit some rough seas. In New Hampshire earlier this month she misplaced one of the seminal moments in American history: the battle of Lexington and Concord and the “shot heard round the world” that began the Revolutionary War. She told a group of school children that the 1775 battles took place in New Hampshire, when in fact they happened in Massachusetts.
In addition, earlier this year Bachmann — whose reverence for the nation’s founding fathers and love of the Constitution define her politics — told an Iowa crowd that the founders had “worked tirelessly until slavery was no more.”
But this week she shrugged off those gaffes as no big deal.
“People make mistakes,” she sighed.
Hey it looks like Michele is maturing. She is no longer blaming Obama, his socialist teleprompter, or the media for her stupidity.
Update -
CNN has exclusively learned that Rep. Michele Bachmann will form a presidential exploratory committee. The Minnesota Republican plans to file papers for the committee in early June, with an announcement likely around that same time.
But a source close to the congresswoman said that Bachmann could form the exploratory committee even earlier than June so that she could participate in early Republican presidential debates.
“She’s been telling everyone early summer,” the source told CNN regarding Bachmann’s planned June filing and announcement. But the source said that nothing is static.
“If you [debate sponsors] come to us and say, ‘To be in our debates, you have to have an exploratory committee,’ then we’ll say, ‘Okay, fine…I’ll go file the forms.’”
Meanwhile, CNN has also learned that Iowa Republican state Sen. Kent Sorenson will likely be hired to be Bachmann’s political director for the state - and that Bachmann aides hope to have a complete team together for Iowa by this weekend.
Sorenson is a prominent Tea Party figure in Iowa and holds sway with evangelicals in the state. He has publicly said he will support Bachmann if she mounts a presidential bid.
