Rising star of the right follows in Palin's steps

Thousands turned out to support Republican Michele Bachmann's (centre) call to stop healthcare reform. Photo / AP

She is a striking brunette with a decidedly outspoken attitude.

She lambasts United States President Barack Obama as a socialist and has become the darling of America's right-wing activists. She is hated by liberals and loved by conservatives.

Sarah Palin? Not quite. Michele Bachmann, a Republican congresswoman from Minnesota, is being hailed as an increasingly powerful voice in US politics.

Bachmann, at 53, is a darling of the so-called Tea Party movement, which has campaigned vociferously against healthcare reform, the economic stimulus package and legislation to combat climate change. Her followers have been behind mass rallies in Washington and smaller ones all over the country.

She is part of an increasingly visible "female brand" of conservatism along with Palin and notable syndicated commentators such as Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter.

Palin is still a giant of the political and media landscape and this week embarks on a book tour to sell her autobiography. It has become a bestseller on advance orders alone.

"They are tapping into grassroots frustration ... they are charging up an already highly charged group of people," said Shaun Bowler, a political scientist at the University of California at Riverside.

The crowd gathered in Washington DC on November 5 had answered Bachmann's call to descend on the nation's capital to invade the corridors of Congress and demand politicians stop healthcare reform.

The move catapulted her to the front of the Republican Party. In a couple of years Bachmann had gone from obscure congresswoman to national media figure.

A cursory glance at her career reveals this rising star has long trafficked in extreme positions. In October last year Bachmann called some fellow congressmen anti-American. She has said Obama holds socialist views. She has attacked global warming by saying that carbon dioxide emissions are a natural part of the atmosphere. "Carbon dioxide is not a harmful gas, it is a harmless gas," she said.

She has fed into fears of a violent backlash against Obama by saying that "having a revolution every now and then is a good thing". She has spoken of "gangster government" in a speech viewed more than two million times on the internet.

She has dubbed Obama's plans to increase AmeriCorps - a government volunteer service group - a plan to forcibly indoctrinate young people.

"I believe there is a very strong chance that we will see young people put into mandatory service ... there are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people," she said. Her language in opposing healthcare reform has been bloodcurdling. She told one audience: "What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn't pass."

She is also extremely socially conservative, strongly opposing abortion and gay marriage, and deeply religious. She has described herself as a "fool for Christ".

In an article that sent shockwaves through America's political classes, top conservative newspaper columnist George Will recently wrote a piece anointing Bachmann as a new star of the movement: "Some of her supposed excesses are ... not merely defensible, they are admirable."

The high profile of Palin showed the impact a charismatic, young, conservative woman could have on the right wing of the Republican Party.

Palin and Bachmann have replaced the dulcet tones of grey-haired, male Washington senators with Midwestern vowels and Alaskan twangs. They have risen swiftly through careers forged a long way from Washington, wearing their outsider label as a badge of pride. They have given conservatism the look of a middle-American suburban soccer mom with first-hand experience of raising a family in tough times.

Bachmann was born in Iowa and then moved to Minnesota. When her parents divorced, her mother was left to fend for herself. Bachmann has known what it means to scrimp and save to get by.

She and her husband run a small business in mental health and she is the mother of five children. She has also fostered 23 children.To examine the impact of both Palin and Bachmann is to see an America split firmly into two different worlds. The first is a liberal one where such politicians make outlandish comments that become the butt of jokes on the Daily Show or Saturday Night Live. The other is one where Palin and Bachmann are the victims of a liberal media that hates its own country.

"For their supporters, attacking Palin and Bachmann actually gives them the proof that they are the victims that they already believe themselves to be," said Bowler. To the conservative mind-set, these women are truth-tellers who are viciously attacked precisely because of the validity of the message that they are carrying.

But the political future is not likely to belong to Palin. The trouncing that she received in the media during the presidential election campaign and the fact she currently holds no office have rendered her political power symbolic. Though it is not impossible, it is hard to imagine Palin launching a credible run in 2012.

Her legacy could be to place the 2012 nomination in the hands of the people who supported her. Could that recipient be Bachmann? It is an outside bet. Bachmann has spoken of it, couching the question in religious terms: "If I felt that's what the Lord was calling me to do, I would do it."

Such comments have filled liberals with scorn and fear.

"Most people don't think she can have presidential ambitions. She's too crazy," said Aaron Landry, a correspondent at MNpublius.com, a Minnesota-based politics blog. "But a lot of people in Alaska thought that about Sarah Palin."

- OBSERVER, AP