Poll surge boosts Bachmann White House bid

Michele Bachmann received a boost Sunday in her bid for the Republican presidential nomination with a poll showing her virtually neck-and-neck with frontrunner Mitt Romney in Iowa.

The Iowa caucuses in early February are the first electoral event in the US presidential nomination process. They can, as in 2008 for Democratic White House incumbent Barack Obama, prove a springboard for success if followed up by good showings in votes in other states, known as primaries.

Bachmann, a congresswoman for Minnesota, garnered 22 percent of votes compared to Romney's 23 percent, according to the poll organized by the Des Moines Register newspaper. Radio talkshow host Herman

Cain, who once ran the Godfather's Pizza chain, finished a creditable third on 10 percent.

Before her dramatic Iowa opinion poll results, Bachmann had averaged just seven percent of the vote in June surveys, far behind former Massachusetts governor Romney (26 percent), according to analyst Nate Silver.

Bachmann, a right-wing darling who founded the conservative Tea Party caucus in Congress, received the poll news as she prepared to formally launch her campaign and embark on a swing through key primary states.

Regardless of the fact that Bachmann was born in Iowa, the result marked her out as a serious contender for the nomination, especially after she emerged as a clear victor in the first Republican primary debate.

Touching down Sunday in this midwestern state in her native city of Waterloo, she was greeted with the Des Moines Register front page headline: "Romney, Bachmann lead Republican pack."

After her formal campaign launch in Waterloo on Monday, Bachmann will kick off a tour that will also take her to New Hampshire and North Carolina.

Bachmann stepped boldly into the 2012 White House race to challenge Obama by stealing the show at the first major Republican debate on June 13.

"Since the debate, people have paid attention and they've recognized that I am very serious about what I want to do, because the country is on the wrong track," Bachmann told Fox News Sunday.

"My goal is to turn the economy around and have jobs created," she told Fox, describing her intention to "fully repeal" the health care reforms that are the cornerstone achievement of Obama's presidency.

Her rival Sarah Palin, a Tea Party superstar who was the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, has kept people guessing on a possible presidential run. In her absence, Bachmann hopes to sew up the sizeable support of the party's conservative wing.

But like Palin, the 55-year-old Bachmann is capable of blunders, including a claim that the first shots of the American Revolutionary War took place in New Hampshire, not Massachusetts.

She is the only woman so far to have declared a Republican bid, and despite remaining relatively unknown to the broader US public, her telegenic image could generate greater appeal.

An example of the added scrutiny she now faces as a serious contender for the Republican crown, the Los Angeles Times reported that the acclaimed fiscal conservative had benefited from government funds and federal farm subsidies.

Bachmann deflected the allegations, telling Fox News Sunday that none of the ê30,000 a conselling clinic run by her husband received in the last five years went to them.

"The money that went to the clinic was actually training money for employees. The clinic did not get the money. And my husband and I did not get the money either," she said.

Bachmann also denied that she or her husband had received "a penny of money" from her father-in-law's farm, where she is listed as a partner, and which received some $260,000 (Dh955,003) in subsidies,  according to the LA Times.
 

 

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