Washington Times ^ | March 23, 2011 | Seth McLaughlin
For a person prone to the occasional political gaffe, Rep. Michele Bachmann can also stay relentlessly on message — traits that have made the tea party favorite both the butt of late-night jokes and a force to be reckoned with on Capitol Hill.
[snip]
Her provocative approach has earned Mrs. Bachmann throngs of supporters in conservative circles, where she’s viewed as a staunch pro-life advocate who goes to bat for conservative tenets of less government and lower taxes.
“She is a natural full-spectrum conservative: pro-life, pro-marriage, pro-Constitution,” said Rep. Steve King, Iowa Republican and a frequent ally. “It’s in her head, her heart and DNA.”
Sensing the power of the tea party movement early on, Mrs. Bachmann last summer established the Tea Party Caucus in the House. The freshman class of Republicans has boosted the caucus’s numbers to 56 members, and suggests the third-term lawmaker is at the forefront of an ever-larger bloc on Capitol Hill.
[snip]
Ken Martin, Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor party chairman, said that Mrs. Bachmann has operated that way since she entered the Minnesota state Senate in 2000, after knocking off the 18-year GOP incumbent. While there, she led an unsuccesful effort to ban same-sex marriage.
“It has been the same M.O. for her, which has been get involved in controversial issues and snake a big headline,” Mr. Martin said.
But Mr. Martin also said that Mrs. Bachmann is cut from a different cloth than the some other GOP leaders in the state. She’s not someone who sticks her finger in the air to see which way the political winds are blowing before taking a stand on an issue.
“While I don’t agree with Michele Bachmann on anything, she is very much a true believer [in conservatism],” he said. “The scary thing from my point...
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