Bachmann emerges as face of Tea Party, Palin’s star waning
By ANIThursday, January 27, 2011
NEW YORK - Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann, a Sarah Palin acolyte weighing a 2012 presidential bid, has emerged as the new star of the Tea Party, after providing the alternative Republican response to Barack Obama’s State of the Union address.
With former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s political star apparently on the wane after a much-criticized response to the Arizona shootings, Bachmann appears ready and willing to step into the breach, The Telegraph reports.
Although Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin made the official Republican response to Obama’s address to Congress, the Tea Party response by Bachmann was emotive and provocative, providing what one Republican strategist described as “red meat for the Tea party crowd”.
She described health care reform as “Obamacare” and demanded it be repealed.
The response from the traditional Republican base was more muted.
Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader, said: “Paul Ryan is giving the official Republican response and Michele Bachmann, just as the other 534 members of the House and Senate, are going to have opinions as to the State of the Union.”
Bachmann, 54, was only elected to Congress in 2006 but is already one of the highest-profile figures on Capitol Hill.
A mother of five who has also fostered 23 children, she founded the House of Representatives’ Tea Party caucus, has described the Obama presidency as a “gangster” administration, and disclosed that she fasted and prayed for three days before running for Congress.
Her aides have publicly floated the idea of a White House run and on Friday she was in Iowa, the first-voting state. (ANI)
