Bachmann: A new and improved Sarah Palin?

Beltway pundits have written off Michele Bachmann’s 2012 presidential aspirations as a “publicity stunt,” said Michael Crowley in Time

.com. But don’t be so sure. Bachmann, a Minnesota Republican whose archconservative rhetoric “can strip paint,” announced last week that she is taking the first steps to forming a presidential exploratory committee, and she might just “upend the GOP primaries.” The Republican base loves Bachmann’s fiery condemnation of what she calls President Obama’s “anti-American views” and her dismissal of global warming as “a hoax.” When Republican hopefuls spoke last week at a conservative gathering in Iowa, said Jennifer Rubin in WashingtonPost.com, it was Bachmann who had people on their feet, cheering, with her pungent denunciations of Obama. The liberal media may dismiss her as “a bimbo,” but the same geniuses once laughed at the Tea Party movement, too.

With Sarah Palin’s star fading, Bachmann really does fill a void in the Republican field, said David Weigel in Slate.com. Like Palin, Bachmann has prom queen looks and the ability to generate tons of media attention every time she opens her mouth. In a sleepy field of boring Republican males, she’s the “first serious dark-horse candidate.” Surely you jest, said Eric Alterman in TheDailyBeast.com. Bachmann is a true wing nut who cannot utter a sentence without some appalling misstatement about U.S. history, such as her claims that the nation’s Founders eliminated slavery, and that the Revolutionary War began in New Hampshire, not Massachusetts. She has “as much chance of getting the nomination as Lindsay Lohan.”

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That’s not what Bachmann’s potential primary opponents think, said Ed Kilgore in The New Republic. They see her as an “improved version of Sarah Palin,” without most of Palin’s “fatal political flaws.” Like Palin, she’s a mom (five kids of her own, and 23 foster children) with strong backing in the anti-abortion movement and real bona fides as an evangelical. But Bachmann’s skin is much tougher than Palin’s, and she has absolutely no fear of the media. That’s why her candidacy is such “a headache” for the Republican Party, said Mike Murphy in Time.com. Obama can be beaten in 2012, but only if the GOP nominee can win over independents; when centrists see Bachmann’s wild eyes and hear her wilder rhetoric, they will “howl like villagers getting their first torch-lit glimpse of Frankenstein’s monster.” Bachmann is “a surefire loser,” and the sooner we Republicans tell her to go away, the better.