Psycho Talk: The 32 Craziest Things GOP Presidential Contender Michele Bachmann Has Said

Over the weekend, Fox News' Chris Wallace asked Michele Bachmann if she was a flake. Below is a compendium of some of her more outlandish remarks. Judge for yourself.

June 27, 2011 |

The following article first appeared in Mother Jones. For more great content from Mother Jones, sign up for their free email updates here.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Over the weekend, Fox News ' Chris Wallace asked Michele Bachmann if she was a flake. Below is a compendium of some of her more outlandish remarks. Judge for yourself. Bachmann has officially announced her candidacy for President.

Now in just her third term in Congress, Michele Bachmann, the leader of the House tea party caucus, has earned a reputation as one of the lower chamber's leading bomb-throwers, lobbing overheated rhetoric at Democrats and needling establishment Republicans. Her Minnesota colleague, Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison once accused her of " psycho talk"; in an interview with Politico, a Pawlenty aide was just as blunt: " She's a real pain in the ass." Former state senator Dean Johnson, who was the Republican minority leader during Bachmann's stint in St. Paul, has said, "I don't think I ever served with anybody who I mistrusted more, from either side of the aisle."

Ouch. Bachmann also has a tendency to stretch the truth, or simply sidestep it altogether. Bill Adair, editor of PolitiFact, recently told Minnesota Public Radio that he has never researched a Bachmann quote and found it to be true (the only major politician for which that's the case).

Here's an incomplete guide to Bachmann's greatest hits:

2001: In a letter she co-wrote for the Minnesota-based Maple River Education Coalition, Bachmann warns that President Bush's education policies are leading the nation down the path to communism: "Government is implementing policies that will lead to poverty, not prosperity, by adopting the failed ideas of a state-planned and managed economy similar to that of the former Soviet Union."

2003: Bachmann, then a state senator, explains why she doesn't agree with the theory of evolution: "Where do we say that a cell became a blade of grass, which became a starfish, which became a cat, which became a donkey, which became a human being? There’s a real lack of evidence from change from actual species to a different type of species. That's where it's difficult to prove." Don't even get her started on how a bill becomes a law.

2003: Bachmann sends out a Christmas Card advertising the availability of her youngest son, Lucas: "Chick magnate [sic] needs wife to put him through med school, clean house, pay bills and run his life. Must be willing to gamble against onslaught of socialized medicine diminishing return on investment."

2004: With the country locked in a heated debate over gay marriage, Bachmann finds parallels in the Old Testament: "We're in a state of crisis where our nation is literally ripping apart at the seams right now, and lawlessness is occurring from one ocean to the other. And we're seeing the fulfillment of the Book of Judges here in our own time, where every man doing that which is right in his own eyes—in other words, anarchy."

2004: Songwriter Melissa Etheridge has breast cancer. That's bad news. But there's good news too, Bachmann tells the conservative education group EdWatch: maybe the cancer will give her time to reflect on her sinful lifestyle: "Unfortunately she is now suffering from breast cancer, so keep her in your prayers. This may be an opportunity for her now to be open to some spiritual things, now that she is suffering with that physical disease. She is a lesbian." In the same speech, she alleges that "almost all, if not all, individuals who have gone into the lifestyle have been abused at one time in their life, either by a male or by a female."