Washington (CNN)-- The thousands of restive conservative protesters milling outside the west front of the Capitol last week definitely didn't seem in the mood to listen -- but there was at least one voice they wanted to hear.
Michele Bachmann doesn't say she finds GOP leadership irrelevant. But with health care reform gathering momentum as the Democratic bill entered final debate in the House, she took her typical route around, not through them.
"When we came down to this final hour, as the clock is ticking 11:59 on this health care reform, Speaker Pelosi is posed with her health care bill to take over 18 percent of the American economy," the Minnesota congresswoman said Thursday, drawing an angry roar from the audience set to swarm Democratic congressional offices on her instructions. Bachmann grinned. "Oh come on, don't hold back," she said. "Tell them how you really feel!"
Michele Bachmann is the ideal political creature of the Tea Party era. Her path to power doesn't lie in moving up the GOP leadership ladder, but in ignoring it entirely, drawing her power more from cable TV hits than committee assignments.
Nearly all of those appearances made news, featuring a supremely confident and combative Bachmann.
One summer pledge to battle health care reform generated even more media heat and liberal outrage. "What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing," she told Colorado conservatives in August. "This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn't pass."
Her target audience, and core constituency, is the outraged conservative voter who feels powerless in the Obama era. And they're listening.
Her polarizing voice sounds like money -- to members of both political parties.
Even Republicans concede Bachmann, 53, is playing a high-stakes game.
"But on the other hand," he adds, "nobody follows somebody who's just muttering."
It wasn't the first time in Bachmann's life that her fortunes had shifted radically. When her parents divorced when she was in her teens, Bachmann suddenly found herself living with a single mother earning less than $5,000 a year. The emotional impact of that experience still shapes her fiercely independent approach.
If her mother and women like her could make do with less and spend within their means, Bachmann said, the U.S. government should be able to do the same.
"He was kind of mocking the Founding Fathers and I just thought, 'What a snot,' " she told the paper. "I just remember reading the book, putting it in my lap, looking out the window and thinking, 'You know what? I don't think I am a Democrat. I must be a Republican.' "
Her entrance into politics came relatively suddenly -- she jumped into a state Senate race a decade ago over dissatisfaction with school regulations, and quickly became one of the most high-profile culture warriors in the Minnesota legislature, a leader in the fight against same-sex marriage.
While other Republican lawmakers have publicly struggled with the role of conservative voices like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck -- offering mild criticism and backing away from their comments, serving up vague praise with conditional disclaimers -- Bachmann has embraced them wholeheartedly.
"And thank God for Joe Wilson. Thank God for Joe Wilson," Bachmann, praising the South Carolina congressman's "huge heart," told a Tea Party gathering in her home state shortly after his "You lie!" outburst to Obama on the House floor.
Blankley, who attended a conservative conference with Bachmann earlier this year, says her star power is undeniable: "You could feel the energy rising when she came into the room." Bachmann's "lack of equivocation" on moral issues is bracing, says Blankley. "She brings some energy and cares what she's talking about. She's not going through the motions."
Source: CNN (Rebecca Sinderbrand)
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