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During the CNN Tea Party Express debate Monday, Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann went after fellow candidate Rick Perry for taking campaign contributions from Merck, a company that sells the HPV vaccines that he had, as the governor of Texas, tried to mandate for all young girls in the state.

"In the midst of this executive order, there was a big drug company that made millions of dollars because of this mandate," Bachmann charged. "What I'm saying is that it's wrong for a drug company, because the governor's former chief of staff was the chief lobbyist for this drug company, the drug company gave thousands of dollars in political donations to the governor, and this is just flat-out wrong. The question is is it about life or was it about millions of dollars and potentially billions for a drug company?"

"The company was Merck, and it was a $5,000 contribution that I had received from them," Perry countered. "If you're saying that I can be bought for $5,000, I'm offended."

"Well, I'm offended for all the little girls and the parents that didn't have a choice. That's what I'm offended for," Bachmann shot back.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Wait, so is Bachmann is also anti-vaccine? Is there any half-baked conspiracy theory she doesn't tout? Also in this clip, this is the least amount of children Bachmann has ever claimed to have: three. Usually it's in the 20s.

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Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann went on the offense against President Barack Obama during a primary debate in Florida Monday.

The congresswoman suggested that the president "stole" money to enact his Affordable Care Act.

"We also need to know that for those who are not yet on the system, the system simply has to be reformed in order for it to work," Bachmann said, referring to Social Security.

"The same goes with medicare. We know that President Obama stole over $500 billion out of Medicare to switch it over to Obamacare."

The Huffington Post's Sam Stein noted that the word "stole" was not the standard Republican attack on Obama, "which holds that Obama simply cut Medicare by $500 billion over the course of 10 years."

Political satirist Lizz Winstead took away a different message.

"SHORTER BACHMANN President Obama is a black man who broke into your house and stole your money," she tweeted.

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Speaking to reporters at a sparsely attended press conference Thursday, Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann delivered a response to President Barack Obama's jobs speech.

"Even if the President's plan passes, we already know it will fail," she said, offering her own nine-point plan.

During questions, Bachmann told reporters that her response to the president was not "campaign related."

"This is the president who called 535 members of Congress to hear what I believe was nothing more than political speech," she remarked. "It's an unfortunate plan the president has put forward because it is a plan in all likelihood, that will fail."

"It is so misguided of the President to just put forward a retread of everything he has put forward before that has failed," Bachmann asserted. "This is clearly the President not listening to the American people."

"You don't create jobs until you grow the economy. That's how it works in the real world. I've been a part of the real world for all throughout my life."

The Congresswoman explained that she had not been able to attend the President's speech in person because of bad road conditions.

"I listened to it on the radio coming in and then I caught the tail end of it in my office."

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Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann said Sunday that she was "open" to implementing Sarah Palin's suggestion that all corporate income taxes be abolished.

"I propose to eliminate all federal corporate income tax," Palin had said in a speech to the tea party in Iowa Saturday. "This is how we create millions of high-paying jobs... To eliminate any loss of federal revenues from this tax cut, we eliminate corporate welfare and all the loopholes, and we eliminate all the bailouts."

"We could go that route," Bachmann told CBS' Bob Schieffer Sunday. "If we went that route then we'd have to have a fundamental restructuring of the tax code. I'm open to having that debate... What we do know is that the current corporate tax rate is killing job creation."

"So you could see a way to do that?" Schieffer pressed.

"It would be possible if we have a fundamental restructuring of the tax code," Bachmann insisted. "But immediately what we could do is repatriation of bringing this money in from American companies that are earning the money overseas. But second, I do believe that the president at minimum should lower the corporate tax rate to 20 percent so that businesses can see that they will have a more competitive rate. We certainly could get down to a 0 percent corporate tax rate but it would mean a fundamental restructuring of the tax code."

Later on CBS, Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman suggested that Palin's idea just wasn't realistic.

"That's a great political bromide," he said.

"How do you do it? How do you make the numbers work? All I'm telling you is I have been there and I have done that... I know how difficult it is to make the numbers work. You have got to find the revenue somewhere that you can reinvest back in the tax code to bring down the rate for everybody."

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Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann told The Associated Press Sunday that as president, she would approve drilling for oil and natural gas in the Everglades.

"The United States needs to be less dependent on foreign sources of energy and more dependent upon American resourcefulness," the candidate said. "Whether that is in the Everglades, or whether that is in the eastern Gulf region, or whether that's in North Dakota, we need to go where the energy is."

"Of course it needs to be done responsibly. If we can't responsibly access energy in the Everglades then we shouldn't do it."

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Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann told voters in Florida Sunday that Hurricane Irene and the recent East Coast earthquake were just God's way of telling politicians to reign in government spending.

"I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians," Bachmann said during the speech in Sarasota.

"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."

At least 21 people died over the weekend due to the storm.

UPDATE: Bachmann made a similar claim at another event (via Scarce).

Continue reading »

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I've got a lot of issues with America's foreign policy and our military interventions and was extremely wary about the U.S. getting involved in Libya. That said, I agree with Ed Schultz here and calling out Republicans for their double-speak after the fall of Tripoli. As Ed noted at the end of the segment, the Republicans only want to wrap themselves in a flag on foreign policy matters when we have a Republican in the White House.

Here's more on some of the recent reaction from Republicans now that we've got a Democrat in the White House instead. From TPM -- Barack Who? GOP 2012 Candidates Respond To Qaddafi’s Fall By Writing Obama Out Of History:

The main GOP presidential candidates' responses to events in Libya were strikingly diverse. However, one factor they had in common was the lack of any mention of one person: the President who actually committed US forces to the conflict.

The exception to this was former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. "Ridding the world of the likes of Gadhafi is a good thing," he wrote. "But this indecisive President had little to do with this triumph."

That was in line with a rather churlish press release put out Sunday night by Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), which bemoaned that Qaddafi's fall took "so long" because a certain someone wouldn't "employ the full weight of our airpower."

Still, at least this line of approach gave Obama a look-in. For the other candidates (repeating their tactics after the death of bin Laden) the President may as well have not existed.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who condemned the Libya action from the start, issued a statement acknowledging this disagreement: Read on...

And as Schultz pointed out as well, can you imagine the rhetoric we'd have been hearing from the GOP had this been George W. Bush who'd possibly brought down Gadhafi instead? As he noted, all we have to do is go back and see how they acted when the United States invaded Iraq for a few clues.

And for more on McCain and Graham, here's D-Day's take -- Neocon Twins McCain and Graham Sad About Troubling Lack of Airstrikes In Libya In February and March.

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And the hits just keep on coming from Michele Bachmann. From Greg Sargent at The Plum Line -- Bachmann on why she worked for IRS: “First rule of war is `know your enemy’”:

This is fun. Michele Bachmann, on the campaign trail today, offered what seems to be a new explanation for her previous work as a lawyer for the Internal Revenue Service, something that has drawn some ire from the right.

Her explanation: She worked for the IRS as a kind of secret anti-tax mole whose mission was to get to know the place in order to better undermine it later. As she put it: “The first rule of war is `know your enemy.’”

This explanation seems a bit at odds with descriptions of the episode she’s given on previous occasions, when she’s said her anti-tax fervor was the result of her work for the IRS. This version on the trail explains her work for the IRS — which spanned four years, from 1988-1992 — in a way that will be more acceptable to hard-core anti-tax conservatives. [...]

Bachmann, speaking at a rally today in South Carolina, said:

“We change the economy by changing the tax code. How many of you love the IRS? No! It’s time to change it. I went to work in that system because the first rule of war is ‘know your enemy.’ So I went to the inside to learn how they work because I wanted to beat them.”

Read on...

Chris Matthews made this part of his Sideshow segment this Thursday and asked if she was "running for president now to infiltrate the enemy, yet again?"

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Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann said Thursday that Americans are alarmed that President Barack Obama may cut defense spending at a time when the Soviet Union is becoming a power in the world.

"When you are traveling -- I know you are in South Carolina now, you're obviously in Iowa, you're up in New Hampshire -- are you hearing different things in these states?" Christian radio host Jay Sekulow asked the candidate.

"I would say it's a unified message," Bachmann explained. "It really is about jobs and the economy. That doesn't mean people haven't [sic] forgotten about protecting life and marriage and the sanctity of the family. People are very concerned about that as well."

"But what people recognize is that there's a fear that the United States is in an unstoppable decline. They see the rise of China, the rise of India, the rise of the Soviet Union and our loss militarily going forward. And especially with this very bad debt ceiling bill, what we have done is given a favor to President Obama and the first thing he'll whack is five hundred billion out of the military defense at a time when we're fighting three wars. People recognize that."

The Soviet Union collapsed and was formally dissolved on December 26, 1991 after Gorbachev resigned as President and the Supreme Soviet ended.

(H/T: Right Wing Watch)

From Democracy Now -- Ex-Evangelical Denounces Michele Bachmann & Calls Christian Reconstructionist Politics "Anti-American":

We speak with a former evangelical Christian, Frank Schaeffer, whose father’s writings and work played a key role in the religious development of Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann. Frank Schaeffer recently wrote an article titled "Michele Bachmann Was Inspired by My Dad and His Christian Reconstructionist Friends — Here’s Why That’s Terrifying." Schaeffer’s father was Francis Schaeffer, one of the nation’s most influential evangelical Christian theologians and philosophers in the 1970s and 1980s. In a recent profile in The New Yorker magazine, Bachmann reveals she entered politics after watching Francis Schaeffer’s film, "How Should We Then Live?" The film was directed by his son, Frank, our guest today. "[Bachmann] doesn’t just come from the far right of evangelical politics. She comes from a fringe even of the fringe, which is the Reconstructionist, Dominionist movement," Schaeffer says. “The religious right that I was part of is fundamentally anti-American. They hate this country. They wrap themselves in the flag, but they hate America as it is."

You can read the entire transcript of Schaeffer's interview at the link above.