At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C., on Friday, Rep. Michele Bachmann talked about the founding fathers, the President Bush “Miss me yet?” billboard spotted in her district, and what she calls President Obama’s “thought police.”
Minnesota blogger Ed Morrissey introduced Bachmann with a swipe at Sen. Al Franken. “The state bird is the loon, which explains why the the state question is: Al Franken? Really?! ACORN. Yeah… We have things to apologize for, Al Franken being chief among them.”
“Michele Bachmann was a tea party activist before the tea arrived,” he said, praising the Sixth Congressional District Republican.
Bachmann approached the podium to the strains of Tom Jones’ “She’s a Lady,” to which Bachmann quipped, “Thank you, Senator Specter,” a reference to Sen. Arlen Specter who recently asked Bachmann to” act like a lady” when she kept interrupting him.
“We really have a great sense of humor in Minnesota,” she said. “We are very good humored people.”
At one point, Bachmann showed a slide of a billboard recently spotted near Wyoming, Minn., – which she proudly noted is in her district – showing President George W. Bush and the words “Miss me yet?”
She slammed Obama’s policies. “This is intending to fail,” she said. “In a matter of months, we have watched as the Obama administration has accumulated more debt than in all previous 233 years of American history, taking us from $10 trillion to $14 trillion.”
After Bachmann made the same claim in North Dakota last week, Talking Points Memo interviewed Concord Coalition policy director Joshua Gordon, who said Bachmann’s number don’t stand up to scrutiny.
Then on President Franklin D. Roosevelt, she said, “He turned what was a manageable recession and turned it into a 10-year depression.”
She spoke about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
“These are rights that government can never take away from us,” she said. “What does that say about Obama’s thought police and Obama’s speech police. That is not what the founders meant.”
And, as she did at a speech in North Dakota last week, Bachmann wept, this time telling the story of the “Four Chaplains,” chaplains on the World War II troop ship the USAT Dorchester gave up their life jackets – and perished – so others could escape the torpedo-damaged vessel.
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