Forget Sarah Palin: Michele Bachmann is the new Tea Party queen

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) "is pushing Sarah Palin off her throne as queen of the Tea Party," says Jonathan Capehart at The Washington Post. Bachmann, who is in her third term in Congress, stays "relentlessly on message," hammering home her arguments about how the deficit is out of control, and how it's all Obama's fault. The Minnesota Republican doesn't "lard" her public statements with extra details to make her "sound smarter than you think she is," the way Palin does. She just makes concise points, buttressed by figures and, when necessary, charts. Bachmann eats, sleeps, and breathes the right's fight against what she calls Obama's "gangster government." Really, Tea Partiers couldn't ask for a better leader. Here, an excerpt:

Bachmann does something that Palin has never done. She doesn't hide behind or filter her views through Twitter, Facebook, and Fox News. She subjects herself to interviews with David Gregory, Chris Matthews, and others who are not reliably friendly to her worldview....

So, if you're nestled in the angry wing of the Republican Party, Bachmann is the kind of leader you need. Sure, the Tea Party isn't as angry today as it was last fall. But Bachmann is showing time and again that she does a far better job of lending an authoritative voice to her followers' frustrations than Palin ever could.

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Read the full article at The Washington Post.