Representative Michele Bachmann, the Minnesota Republican who made an ill-fated run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, announced Wednesday that she would not seek a fifth term in Congress next year.
Representative Michele Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, in Washington on May 16. Ms. Bachmann announced in a video early Wednesday that she would not seek a fifth term in Congress next year.
She made the announcement just six months after being re-elected in what was her most challenging Congressional campaign since she was first elected to the House in 2006. Her announcement also comes as her former presidential campaign faces inquiries into its fund-raising activities.
“I have decided next year I will not seek a fifth Congressional term,” she said in a video on her campaign Web site. “This decision was not impacted in any way by the recent inquiries into the activities of my former presidential campaign or my former presidential staff,” she added.
Mrs. Bachmann is known for her strong anti-abortion stance and adherence to Tea Party values but her presidential campaign was marked by frequent stumbles and her candidacy failed to catch fire in a crowded field of candidates that included Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and Herman Cain, who all eventually lost to Mitt Romney.
In her congressional race last year, Mrs. Bachmann won re-election by just 4,200 votes out of 356,000 votes cast, beating the hotelier Jim Graves, who was greatly outspent. Mr. Graves recently announced that he would seek the seat again.
“My decision was not in any way influenced by any concerns about my being re-elected to Congress,” she said. “If I ran I would again defeat the individual who I defeated last year.”
Her announcement comes as the Office of Congressional Ethics looks into claims by Ms. Bachmann’s former campaign aides that she may have improperly used money raised by one of her House-affiliated political action committees to help her presidential bid in the run-up to the Iowa presidential caucuses in January 2012. She came in sixth in that race, even though she campaigned heavily in the state. The defeat led her to pull out of the race the next day.
While her presidential bid initially excited Tea Party supporters, Mrs. Bachmann would later find herself upstaged by conservative opponents like Mr. Cain and Mr. Santorum, and she was prone to misstatements, including saying the vaccine against the human papillomavirus was linked to “mental retardation.”
But her campaign was not without impact. Her victory in the Ames, Iowa, straw poll in the summer of 2011 forced Tim Pawlenty, the former Republican governor of Minnesota, to drop out of the contest early, after he did poorly in his neighboring state.
In her video announcement, Mrs. Bachmann did not rule out returning to politics in the future.
“There is no future option or opportunity, be it directly in the political area or otherwise, that I won’t be giving serious consideration if it can help save and protect our great nation for future generations,” she said.
She also said she expected “the mainstream liberal media to put a detrimental spin” on her decision not to seek re-election, calling its attention to her political fortunes “a true compliment of my public service effectiveness.”
Ms. Bachmann had been a largely obscure member of Congress from Minnesota before the emergence of the Tea Party in 2010. She seized on the movement to brand herself a national voice of conservatives and become the leader of the “Tea Party Caucus” in the House.
In January of 2011, Ms. Bachmann delivered her own, unofficial “Tea Party” response to President Obama’s State of the Union address. She mocked the president’s fiscal policies and urged a repeal of the president’s health care plan known as Obamacare. But the brief, televised response prompted comedy sketches because of its low production values and because Ms. Bachmann appeared to be looking off to the side throughout her remarks.
See how good I'm being? I've just quoted the story, with no editorial comment...
"The great problem of any civilization is how to rejuvenate itself without rebarbarization." - Will Durant "We've kept more promises than we've even made" - Donald Trump "Of what meaning is the world without mind? The question cannot exist." - Edwin Land
This is harder than I thought....imagine Michelle and Marcus on Dancing with the Stars...No, dammit, no! Don't give in to temptation! Keep on the high road!
"The great problem of any civilization is how to rejuvenate itself without rebarbarization." - Will Durant "We've kept more promises than we've even made" - Donald Trump "Of what meaning is the world without mind? The question cannot exist." - Edwin Land
Obviously I'm sad to see her go. Wonderful woman, and a true patriot.
And when the confederates saw Jackson standing fearless as a stone wall the army of Northern Virginia took courage and drove the federal army off their land.
Right, I forgot, disparaging remarks about a woman's intellect is only misogyny if she's a liberal.
And when the confederates saw Jackson standing fearless as a stone wall the army of Northern Virginia took courage and drove the federal army off their land.
Thank Goodness! I used to like Michele Bachmann before this happened:
Bachmann attacked Rick Perry's record as governor of Texas in a televised debate, saying he trampled parental rights by vaccinating all teenage girls statewide with the human papillomavirus vaccine. She cited a friend, whose daughter suffered health problems after taking the vaccine, as saying the vaccine caused mental retardation. The American Academy of Pediatrics denied it by saying that there is "absolutely no scientific validity" to Bachmann's assertion. [29]
Michele Bachmann barely won her Congressional seat last election, despite her being in a very Conservative-leaning district. Now I can feel better that a more reasonable Conservative Republican will very likely be elected from that Congressional district.
"And I've said it before, you want to know what Joseph Smith looked like in Nauvoo, just look at Trump." - Fence Sitter
ajax18 wrote:Right, I forgot, disparaging remarks about a woman's intellect is only misogyny if she's a liberal.
No, it's only misogyny if you think women are generally of lower intellect, and that Bachmann is dumb because she is a woman, not because she is just another dimwit politician (who just happens to be female) saying idiotic thing, much like her House soulmate, Louis Gomert.
Surely you know this.
Last edited by Guest on Wed May 29, 2013 6:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"The DNA of fictional populations appears to be the most susceptible to extinction." - Simon Southerton