Scarier than Palin

Bachmann grabs spotlight at GOP debate

NEW YORK – The congresswoman used her bluntness and charm to overshadow the men at the GOP debate—announcing her presidential bid and passionately defending the Tea Party. Howard Kurtz on why she shouldn’t be underestimated.Plus: More Daily Beast contributors on the GOP debate
Michele Bachmann all but stole the show at the Republican presidential debate.
The only woman on the New Hampshire stage deftly utilized the CNN spotlight Monday night to announce that she filed her papers to officially run for president, setting off a flood of breaking-news alerts in the event’s opening moments. But she accomplished far more than that.
The Minnesota congresswoman got the first audience roar of the night, promising that Barack Obama would be a one-term president.
She offered a passionate and inclusive defense of the Tea Party, saying that unlike the distorted picture painted by the media, the movement includes “disaffected Democrats,” “independents,” “libertarians” and “people who have never been political a day in their lives.” That, she declares, “is why the left fears it so much.”
She even positioned herself as a truth-teller, saying she “fought against my own party” behind closed doors by opposing the Bush administration’s much-reviled TARP bailout plan.
Not bad for a rookie who kept smiling as she reeled off her best lines.
In fact, Bachmann equivocated only once, when she couldn’t choose between Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash. Go figure.
Bachmann is relatively new to the national stage, but as anyone who has watched her in action understands, she knows how to play this game. end quote.

Though I consider her even scarier than Sarah Palin, I also think she will liven things up in this campaign. Though, like Palin, I don't think she is qualified or balanced enough to be President, I think she will raise issues from her Tea Party Base that will galvanize and polarize the country in hopefully a useful direction either for her ideas or against them (either one). So at least the debates will then be about something useful and meaningful instead of what we have been having so far which is a sort of mushy view of everything without any firm points of view being represented in any kind of practical way. So even though she is incredibly scary as a person, she will bring to the table issues that will polarize America in ways that we might just be able to figure a way out of this mess with. I don't think it is possible for her to be president any more than any other extremist candidate. However, she is just so critical and extreme in her point of view that she might accomplish some good for the country by focusing on what is actually important as opposed to what is theoretically important.