Quote of the Day: Michele Bachmann

"I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence."

That's Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, a Republican serving Minnesota's Sixth District (Anoka, Benton, Sherburne, Stearns, Washington, and Wright Counties -- the Northern Metro exurban Twin Cities area stretching west through St. Cloud). She's wrong, of course; as liberals gleefully point out, that last outbreak started under Republican President Gerald Ford. She was talking to the conservative blog coalition Pajamas TV -- see below:



Bachmann, a very conservative Christian who got her law degree from Oral Roberts University, almost lost re-election last November. Her challenger, the unfortunately named Democrat Elwyn Tinklenberg, got a serious boost after Bachmann appeared on MSNBC's Hardball (see the transcript here) accusing Obama of being anti-American. In an exchange that host Chris Matthews seemed to bait Bachmann into, a McCarthy-esque scene, Matthews asks her:

"How many Congress people, members of Congress, do you think are in that anti-American crowd you described? How many Congress people do you serve with? I mean, it's 435 members of Congress."

To which she replies after some hedging:

"What I would say -- what I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think people would love to see an expose like that."

That nearly cost her the election. Watch it below.