Republicans in Battle

Michele Bachmann won the Iowa straw poll. But she shouldn’t make the weight against Rick Perry and Mitt Romney

The August 15 issue of Newsweek with Michele Bachmann on the cover has created a controversy. Her picture is deliberately unflattering: motionless, the Republican from Minnesota stares at the objective with a quasi–demonic expression under the title: “‘The Queen of Rage,’ Michele Bachmann on God, the tea party and the evils of government.” Offended, Conservatives denounced an attack against the representative’s religious values. Some feminists have detected a whiff of sexism.

At 55 years old, the tea party muse is today the only female candidate for the 2012 American presidential election. This past weekend, she caused a surprise by winning the straw poll in one of the key states for the election; Iowa, where the first caucus, or vote of party members to officially decide on the candidate, will take place in February 2012. She is the first woman in American history to win this symbolic election.

Revealed by the rise of the ultraconservative tea party in Congress, Bachmann, who has been a representative in Washington since 2007, is currently experiencing her heyday. Mother of five children and a confirmed evangelist, she is often described as a more articulate Sarah Palin. She stood tall against her Republican opponents during the most recent televised debate, on subjects like the raising of the debt ceiling — which she voted against — or “Obamacare,” the extension of healthcare coverage signed by Barack Obama in 2010, that she has vowed to repeal. She is also opposed to same-sex marriage, abortion and tax increases.

Even if Bachmann got her game in Iowa, the stronghold of Christians conservatives, she has some worries from now to the beginning of the primary. Rick Perry, the governor of Texas announced his candidacy on August 13 and therefore didn’t appear in the straw poll that Bachmann won. However, the representative from Minnesota and the governor of Texas are fighting for the same conservative electorate. The “cowboy” from Texas, described by his pastor as a George W. Bush on steroids, has more than a gun on his belt. On August 6 his call to prayer for a nation in crisis gathered 30,000 in a Houston stadium. Elected governor three times, the Bush successor has an executive experience that Michele Bachmann doesn’t have and can emphasize his economic record.

More than a third of jobs created in the United States since the end of the recession in June 2009 have been located in Texas. The downside is that those positions are often underpaid and without health coverage. Nevertheless, Rick Perry is a credible alternative to the Mormon businessman and former Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney who does not appeal to the conservatives. “The Republican nominee and the next president of the United States is going to be Rick Perry or Mitt Romney,” said Fred Malek, one of the campaign organizers for George H. W. Bush in 1992. “Michele Bachmann has struck a real chord on the issues important to conservatives, but what we need is a governor with proven record of job creation, deficit reduction, and other accomplishments.”

Six months from the beginning of the primaries, Mitt Romney, unsuccessful candidate in 2008 against John McCain, dominates the national polls with 20 percent of the vote. The Republican electoral landscape is fragmented with seven candidates, after Tim Pawlenty’s withdrawal last weekend. Two Republican celebrities, Sarah Plain and Rudy Giuliani, have yet to announce their intentions. In 2008, while he was still an outsider, Barack Obama defeated the favorite Hillary Clinton in the Iowa Democratic caucus, marking the beginning of his victorious journey to the White House. On Monday, August 15, the president also returned to the campaign trail for a three day tour in Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois.