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Politico...
Michele
Bachmann: Natural disasters a
warning to D.C.
By Alexander Burns
8/29/11
Speaking
in Florida, Michele Bachmann
ventures into the risky territory of attributing political motive to
natural
disasters, calling the events of the last week a wake-up call from
above:
She
hailed the tea party as being
common-sense Americans who understand government shouldn’t spend more
than it
takes in, know they’re taxed enough already and want government to
abide by the
Constitution.
“I
don’t know how much God has to do
to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve
had a
hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?’
Listen to
the American people because the American people are roaring right now.
They
know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we’ve got to rein in
the
spending.”
Bachmann’s
not the first public figure
to call a hurricane a message from the Almighty: John Hagee suggested
that New
Orleans might have triggered Hurricane Katrina with a gay pride parade,
while
Pat Robertson postulated a connection between Katrina and the debate
over
abortion. But it’s not exactly a mainstream meteorological view.
Bachmann,
whose campaign offered scant
information about her Florida operation to the St. Petersburg Times,
also
struggled to draw a meaningful contrast between herself and Rick Perry:
“The
difference, I think, is that I’ve
been in Washington over four years actively fighting against all of the
measures that people want gone. If people are looking for someone with
a proven
track record to trust with the highest office of the land, someone who
means
what they say and says what they mean, I do that. People who see in me
someone
who’s genuine and authentic and also someone whose a champion, a
champion for
the principles,’’ she said. “We can’t just have a manager in that seat.”
“We
can’t just have a manager” is a
line Bachmann used against Mitt Romney, who’s running as a
private-sector
solutions man. But is that the best way Bachmann can distinguish
herself from
the strongly conservative governor of Texas?
Read
it at Politico
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