Last Call

With all the attention on Rick Santorum's announcement today that he's running for Guy Who Loses To Obama By 25 Points, Tim Murphy at Mother Jones reminds us that Michele Bachmann is expected to throw her hat into the ring later this month as well, and I don't see that hat flying very far with baggage like this attached to it.

Sometime this month, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is expected to travel to Waterloo, Iowa to officially announce her presidential candidacy. Her odds, while firmly in Hail Mary territory, are still better than you might think: With Republicans less than thrilled with the primary field, Bachmann stands at least a fighter's chance in socially conservative states like Iowa and South Carolina.

Now in just her third term in Congress, Bachmann, the leader of the House tea party caucus, has earned a reputation as one of the lower chamber's leading bomb-throwers, lobbing overheated rhetoric at Democrats and needling establishment Republicans. Her Minnesota colleague, Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison once accused her of "psycho talk"; in an interview with Politico, a Pawlenty aide was just as blunt: "She's a real pain in the ass." Former state senator Dean Johnson, who was the Republican minority leader during Bachmann's stint in St. Paul, has said, "I don't think I ever served with anybody who I mistrusted more, from either side of the aisle."

Ouch. Bachmann also has a tendency to stretch the truth, or simply sidestep it altogether. Bill Adair, editor of PolitiFact, recently told Minnesota Public Radio that he has never researched a Bachmann quote and found it to be true (the only major politician for which that's the case).

Murphy goes on to cite three pages of Bachmann's most Bachmanniac statements, all of them loads of horsecrap.  And keep in mind there are plenty of folks in the GOP who see Bachmann as the "serious" version of Sarah Palin, and that she has a real shot in 2012.

Time to get the news out there that Bachmann isn't exactly truthful.