Posted on 02/08/2013 7:35:31 AM PST by SueRae
Politically, 2012 was not exactly a banner year for Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann.
In January, the Tea Party-backed Republican finished a distant sixth in the Iowa presidential caucuses, garnering just 1,223 more votes than she did in winning the Ames Straw Poll less than five months earlier.
Bachmann ended her White House bid the next day and set to work on winning a fourth term in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District. For that effort, she netted a massive, small-donor-fueled $14.4 million, breaking the House race fundraising record that she had previously set in 2010.
Though widely expected to win comfortably in her state’s most conservative district, Bachmann instead eked out a less-than-5,000-vote victory over Democratic businessman Jim Graves, who had made it close in part by raising doubts about his opponent’s commitment to her district.
But despite that presidential fade-out and close call back home, Bachmann is again being mentioned as a candidate for higher office -- this time as a potential challenger to first-term Democratic Sen. Al Franken in 2014.
Bachmann has not signaled publicly her interest in such a race, but her advisers do not deny that she might consider it down the road.
"Congresswoman Bachmann is focusing her time and energy on serving her constituents and holding listening sessions across Minnesota's Sixth District, not on 2014,” Bachmann Communications Director Dan Kotman said in a statement to RCP.
Franken won his Senate seat in 2008 after prevailing in a recount, besting GOP incumbent Norm Coleman by 312 votes. The Democrat has spent the last four years seeking to shed his image as a “Saturday Night Live” jokester and liberal provocateur by keeping a relatively low profile on the national stage.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
She would have handled the democrats quite well in her presidential bid.
it was the conservative-hating republicans who did her in.
I’d love to see MB, or Jason Lewis run aginst the radical
socialist Franken. The debates would be laughable!
Folks, even though Franken is a buffoon and a clod, remember this — this is Minnesota, a state that voted for Jesse “The Body” Ventura to be governor.
Bachmann, who easily won her seat many times in the past, barely won by the skin of her teeth this time ( and she had HUGE name recognition having ran for President ).
If Karl Rove has his way, she won’t be getting a penny from the Republican Party if she were to go against Franken.
She is the underdog on this potential fight.
After the shenanigans in the Franken-Coleman election, the first order of business for the Congresswoman is a FEROCIOUS effort to eliminate vote fraud!
Nothing else matters — not fundraising, speechifying or endorsements. If the vote is crooked, the game is over before its begun.
I’d recommend clearing the voter rolls, now. Make EVERYBODY register again. (I’d recommend that nationally, by the way.)
Voter ID, poll watchers and tight control of ballot boxes are other suggestions.
against!
If nothing else, Michelle’s meager 5k vote margin win in a conservative district proves how rampant and pervasive election fraud was in this election.
Totally agree. Bachmann is in the 6th congressional district in Minnesota, a tiny patch of red in a sea of blue. She would never win a senate run against a fraudster like Al Franken, even honestly. The Democrats get all the farmers out, and of course, their sizable population of Somali immigrants and college zombies in Minneapolis. Unless something big happens, Minnesota is not a viable option for Republican senate runs.
2012 wasn’t just a tough year for Bachmann. We lost Chip Cravaack in Minnesota as well. Bad state. Also rife with corruption and fraud.
Bachman and Newt, in the primary, impressed viewers and deciders with their superior command (imho) of the facts, and of their political process experience. They told it exactly as I remembered it to be and told it with certainty. Facts were on their side.
The others inflated their own worth, their actual political usefulness and were forced to latch on to themes they may have remarked on during their body of work, but was their only conservative departure from the Establishment group think.
I actually miss Bachmann on the larger scene now, but I admit to irritation with her harpy manner in one of the debates, where to the exclusion of other broad issues, she obsessed on taking another candidate down and left her own accomplishments drift in doing so.
Michelle has the grasp, and political intellect to triumph over media pundits. She is very smart.
She is D.O.A. after becoming a citizen of another country. If she think Europe is better than the U.S., why should she want to represent it? She should move to Europe ASAP.
And they both beat Norm Coleman.....I think that's a signal that when you lose to these two guys that you are in the wrong line of work.
As they have with every effective conservative in America, the left and their media minions have successfully marginalized Bachmann.
She barely hung on to her 6th District seat; she’d never win statewide in MN.
Biden: Al Franken is a ‘leading legal scholar’
Poor Jason would be decimated by the Constitutional expert.
/sarc
Yep. I am a big advocate of Bachmann as a congressperson. I did not support her run for the presidency, but I think she is a huge asset to our House caucus. She had some really nice moments during the primaries up until Perry entered and took the lead from her. Then she got off track completely. I do support her strongly for House leadership positions. She would be a great Senator although I wonder how she would do statewide in one of our most left leaning states. My gut tells me she should stay where she is, and help push the House to the right.
She was my first choice with Cain as my second and Santorum as my 3rd.
Funny thing is I settled into thinking Santorum was best all along and Gingrich would have been the ideal VP for him.
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