General

The next Sarah Palin?

The radical right has found a new darling in Michele Bachmann

Right-wing radicals in the U.S. are lining up behind an outspoken, striking brunette as their 2010 female presidential hopeful but it isn’t former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, the Guardian reports. The far right’s new darling is 53-year-old Michele Bachmann, a mother of five from Minnesota who calls herself a “fool for Christ” and lambastes Obama as a socialist at the head of a “gangster regime.” Bachmann has emerged as one of the most strident voices in American politics as a leader of the so-called Tea Party movement, which has campaigned vociferously against health-care reform, the economic stimulus package and legislation to combat climate change. She’s viewed as part of an increasingly visible “female brand” of conservatism rising in America fuelled by syndicated commentators Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter and of course Palin herself. “All these women express a mood of conservative discontent that is becoming increasingly vocal and, some experts warn, extreme,” the paper notes, quoting Shaun Bowler, a political scientist at the University of California: “They are tapping into grassroots frustration… they are charging up an already highly charged group of people.” Among liberals Americans, Bachmann has emerged a figure of both fun and fear: “It is hard to think that people take her seriously. But on a national level it is happening. It scares me,” said Aaron Landry, a senior correspondent at MNpublius.com, a Minnesota-based politics blog.

The Guardian

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