海角大神

Michele Bachmann: Is she the Mike Huckabee of 2012?

Like the folksy and articulate Huckabee, Michele Bachmann could appeal to evangelical 海角大神 voters in Iowa. She has even hired his former campaign manager. But can she be more than a spoiler?

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R) of Minnesota got a lot of attention for her performance in Monday鈥檚 GOP presidential debate. She was polished, articulate, and adept at wedging into answers the fact that she has had lots of foster children. Is she on track to become the Mike Huckabee of the 2012 campaign?

Let鈥檚 back up and explain our thinking here. Rep. Bachmann is often compared to Sarah Palin, for obvious reasons. They鈥檙e both women. They鈥檙e both tea party favorites. They鈥檙e both used to the cold, and they鈥檝e both been involved in flaplets about their grasp of US colonial history. (Palin鈥檚 involved Paul Revere warning the British. Bachmann mistakenly placed the first shots of the revolution in New Hampshire.)

But Bachmann and Palin are not interchangeable, electorally-speaking. Bachmann is a tax attorney who is good at thinking on her feet and formulating quick responses 鈥� you could see that in her above-average debate performance. She knows a lot about policy and isn鈥檛 shy about playing up her role as an actual sitting politician.

Plus, she was born in Iowa, and lives in Minnesota, which is next to Iowa, and may be poised to play spoiler in next year鈥檚 Iowa caucuses. That鈥檚 where the Huckabee analogy comes in.

Mike Huckabee was a folksy, articulate ex-Arkansas governor who exploded into the political stratosphere by winning Iowa in 2008. His win damaged the chances of Mitt Romney, among others.

Bachmann has a good chance to connect with evangelical 海角大神s, a group that鈥檚 about 60 percent of Republican Iowa caucus-goers, write University of Virginia political scientists Larry Sabato and Kyle Kondik in their most recent . If she does well enough she might even knock fellow Minnesotan Tim Pawlenty out of the campaign, according to Messrs. Sabato and Kondik.

鈥淏achmann could be this cycle鈥檚 Iowa-winning Huckabee, and now she鈥檚 even hired Huckabee鈥檚 former campaign manager, experienced GOP hand Ed Rollins,鈥� write the pair.

Like Huckabee, Bachmann attracts committed followers. Among the current Republican candidates, she has the second highest , according to Gallup. (That鈥檚 the percentage of GOP voters who really like her, minus the percentage who really dislike her. Former Godfather鈥檚 Pizza chief Herman Cain has the highest PIS.)

But could Bachmann actually win the nomination? Huckabee, after all, quickly discovered that he had a ceiling beyond which he could not rise in many states. In 2008 he finished third in the New Hampshire and Michigan primaries, for example.

Right now, a Bachmann win still looks like a very long shot. She may be rising into the second tier of candidates, but her overall vote remains in the single digits. A Gallup survey completed June 11 found that only about 5 percent of Republican voters named her as their first choice for the nomination. That was behind Rick Santorum, and tied with Newt Gingrich 鈥� whose campaign virtually imploded last week.