John Wayne, the Mother of 28 and the Republicans

Michelle Bachmann must first prove that her appeal extends beyond the tea party movement.

Tim Pawlenty tried it on Tuesday with foreign policy. The ex-governor of Minnesota announced that President Obama has no “effective strategy” for the Arab Spring. “He’s been timid, slow and too often without a clear understanding of our interests,” Pawlenty said.

Strong words that sounded like a call for help. A Des Moines Register survey showed that among Iowa Republicans, Pawlenty came in third among possible presidential candidates with 6 percent approval — far behind businessman Mitt Romney and Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann (23 and 22 percent respectively). With numbers like those, Pawlenty might just as well leave the race right now, before it has even really begun.

The immensely wealthy investment banker Romney is currently the favorite among national pundits to win the Republican nomination. He has led in every opinion poll during the past week. Bachmann, on the other hand, is the rising star of the arch-conservative tea party movement. Her progress will determine just how much influence zealots have in Republican Party politics.

For Bachmann, it’s a case of make or break. If she is victorious among the socially conservative Republicans in her home state of Iowa (ironically, her hometown is Waterloo), she might be able to carry that momentum forward into the coming primaries, as Barack Obama did in 2008.

Republican primary season opens Feb. 6, 2012 in Iowa, followed by elections in New Hampshire, Nevada and tea party-friendly South Carolina. If the mother of five and foster mother of 23 can maintain her position that far, it could get dangerous for Romney.

The 55-year-old isn’t lacking in self-confidence. “He fears me,” Bachmann said of President Obama; she repeated her prediction that Obama would be a one-term president. Whether that’s enough to unite hard-core social conservatives with fiscal conservatives and the security hawks in the Republican party — the last candidate to pull that off was Ronald Reagan — is questionable.

And Sarah Palin? The ex-vice presidential candidate is losing ground among Republicans. Bachmann even took the lead in the verbal gaffes department when she announced that John Wayne’s spirit lived inside her. John Wayne, she said, was also born in Waterloo. Not exactly correct: The John Wayne born in Waterloo was John Wayne Gacy, a serial killer who murdered 30 men in the 1970s.