Is Michele Bachmann dragging the tea party down with her?
| Washington
Is Michele Bachmann dragging down the tea party as a whole as she sinks in the polls?
Don鈥檛 look at us 鈥� we鈥檙e not the first to raise this question. We鈥檙e just repunditing an idea from Ned Ryun, head of the tea party group American Majority.
On Thursday, Mr. Ryun posted a piece on the American Majority blog entitled, 鈥淏achmann鈥檚 Floundering Can Damage Tea Party.鈥� In it, he argues that since Rep. Bachmann won the Ames, Iowa straw poll her campaign has been hampered by a loss of staff, poor fundraising, and an apparent lack of direction. He anticipates that she will shift even further right in coming weeks as she competes for votes in conservative Iowa, straying from the core tea party message of fiscal responsibility.
Election 101: Ten facts about Michele Bachmann and her presidential bid
Her campaign has become less about government reform and more about her personal effort to stay relevant and sell books, according to Ryun.
鈥淚t鈥檚 time for Michele Bachmann to go,鈥� .
First, props to Ryun for sampling the classic Dr. Seuss book, 鈥淢arvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!鈥� We read that to our kids to try to get them to go to bed. Interestingly, Dr. Seuss himself apparently meant the book as a political allegory about Richard Nixon and Watergate.
OK, maybe Ryun didn鈥檛 link Bachmann with Nixon on purpose. But he鈥檚 right that her polls are sinking.
She鈥檚 fallen to 3.8 percent in national polls of prospective GOP voters, according to the . That puts her dangerously close to the Santorum Line 鈥� the 2 percent threshold, from which a campaign teeters over the abyss.
She鈥檚 no longer doing well in Iowa, either, which for her might be even worse news than her national numbers. Her flavor-of-the-month period began after her win in the Ames straw poll. She was born in Iowa, comes from a nearby state, and has made Iowa the strategic focus of her campaign. But at the moment she鈥檚 in sixth place in Iowa, too, with only about 7 percent of the potential Iowa caucus vote.
But is she hurting the tea party as a whole? There鈥檚 no evidence of that at all. Yes, she鈥檚 head of the House Tea Party Caucus, but do voters really look to her as the embodiment of the movement? We doubt it 鈥� Rick Perry and Herman Cain have tea party links too. Cain鈥檚 doing great, to the point where he鈥檚 unofficially graduated from flavor-of-the-month to phenomenon-of-the-quarter. Would Ryun argue this boosts the tea party in total?
Let鈥檚 look at the polls. According to a from October 24, 32 percent of the US public supports the tea party at least somewhat, while 44 percent oppose it.
Those aren鈥檛 great numbers 鈥� Occupy Wall Street does a bit better in the same poll 鈥� but they don鈥檛 appear to be reflective of a sinking trend line. A Pew survey from August came in with about the same results. And that鈥檚 when Bachmann was doing much better.
Bachmann herself thinks the American Majority slam was a Rick Perry plot.
鈥淧eople have told us that these are Perry supporters and they went out with this and this was meant to be a stealth move and it was clumsy,鈥� said Bachmann on CNN鈥檚 鈥淭he Situation Room鈥�.
Bachmann campaign officials point out that the tea party movement is highly decentralized and no one person or one organization can claim to speak for it. They say she won鈥檛 be getting out of the race just because one individual tells her to.
No, but unless her polls get better, Iowa Republicans might send her the same message in January. Given the focus she鈥檚 put on the Hawkeye State, it seems unlikely her campaign could survive a single-digit showing in the caucuses.
Election 101: Ten facts about Michele Bachmann and her presidential bid
