Michele Bachmann’s late-career incar­na­tion as a far-Right super­star has always been a high-wire act.

Bachmann’s end-times rhetoric resonates with many of her constituents. When you listen to her pray, the ease and power of her delivery are a clue as to why she’s been re-elected twice, despite her record of incendiary and off-the-wall beliefs. But there is, in every high-wire act, the potential for failure.

Bachmann’s sig­na­ture stunt is her will­ing­ness to say — loud and proud — out­landish things that make her sound, to many peo­ple, delu­sion­al. She has said, for exam­ple, that America’s founders ​“worked tire­less­ly” to end slav­ery. In 2009, she swat­ted away the pesky sci­ence of cli­mate change by declar­ing that ​“there isn’t even one study that can be pro­duced that shows that car­bon diox­ide is a harm­ful gas.” And last sum­mer, she claimed that the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood might be infil­trat­ing the U.S. gov­ern­ment and shap­ing our for­eign pol­i­cy through Huma Abe­din, an aide to Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton. Abe­din, who is of Pak­istani descent, was born in the U.S. and is mar­ried to Antho­ny Wein­er, the for­mer Con­gress­man from New York.

The dan­ger of the act isn’t that Bach­mann, who has been the U.S. rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Minnesota’s 6th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict since 2007, will say some­thing so off-the-charts nut­ty that it dis­cred­its her with a major­i­ty of vot­ers in the dis­trict. At this point, that may not be possible.

The dan­ger is that she is so occu­pied with her cru­sades that she isn’t bring­ing home the bacon for the peo­ple of her dis­trict. Fight­ing threats from big gov­ern­ment and for­eign sub­ver­sives is an excel­lent way to build your nation­al right-wing rep­u­ta­tion. But vot­ers expect their rep­re­sen­ta­tive to deliv­er con­crete ben­e­fits as well.

Which is why a bridge span­ning the St. Croix Riv­er, and con­nect­ing Min­neso­ta to Wis­con­sin, was a major sub­ject of the first debate between Bach­man and her Demo­c­ra­t­ic-Farmer-Labor Par­ty oppo­nent, Jim Graves, this week. (The DFL is the Min­neso­ta affil­i­ate of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, and was formed in 1944 by the merg­er of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and the Farmer-Labor Party.)

To move for­ward, the bridge required a leg­isla­tive exemp­tion from the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. With the help of the Repub­li­can lead­er­ship, Bach­mann was able to obtain the waiv­er by fast-track­ing the leg­is­la­tion through the House ear­ly this year. At Tuesday’s debate, she claimed that suc­cess as one of the major accom­plish­ment of her three terms in Con­gress and cit­ed it as proof that she had ​“deliv­ered” for the peo­ple of the 6th CD.

Graves called the design of the bridge extrav­a­gant and waste­ful — a Rolls-Royce, he said, when a Chevro­let would have served the peo­ple just as well. He has also crit­i­cized it as a poor use of Minnesota’s mon­ey, since it will pri­mar­i­ly ben­e­fit the rur­al Wis­con­sin com­mu­ni­ty on the oth­er side.

Bachmann’s oth­er main con­tri­bu­tion to the eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment of the 6th CD, as she explained in the debate, is her fierce oppo­si­tion to the Afford­able Care Act, which she believes will kill jobs and stran­gle small businesses.

Help­ing get a bridge built and oppos­ing ​“Oba­macare” are not, by anyone’s stan­dard, an impres­sive record of deliv­er­ing for con­stituents. That like­ly accounts for the fact that Bach­mann is engaged in a sur­pris­ing­ly close re-elec­tion race. In 2010, she defeat­ed her DFL Par­ty oppo­nent by more than 12 points. A recent poll of the dis­trict shows her lead­ing six points. But that poll, Grave point­ed out, was con­duct­ed exclu­sive­ly among peo­ple who use land­line phones. Since his own base of sup­port skews toward young peo­ple, the race is actu­al­ly be much tighter, he believes.

Graves is an entre­pre­neur who made a for­tune in the hos­pi­tal­i­ty busi­ness — he built the AmericInn hotel chain — and decid­ed to get into pol­i­tics specif­i­cal­ly because of Bach­man. ​“I’m run­ning because she’s so bad — bad for the coun­try, bad for the future, bad for the peo­ple of the 6th Dis­trict,” he said. ​“She epit­o­mizes every­thing that’s wrong with this gov­ern­ment and this cul­ture. It’s not that she doesn’t have some skills. She’s pas­sion­ate. She believes what she believes. She’s a phe­nom­e­nal fundrais­er. And she cre­ates won­der­ful head­lines for her­self. So she should be doing some­thing else. She shouldn’t be in Con­gress, where you have to find a way to move the process for­ward and get things done.”

Graves is cast­ing him­self as a pro-labor fis­cal con­ser­v­a­tive who will make bud­get reform along the lines of the Simp­son-Bowles plan—that is, a com­bi­na­tion of bud­get cuts and tax increas­es — his high­est pri­or­i­ty. He has promised that he would serve no more than three terms. ​“I’m doing this to get the job done and serve the needs of the peo­ple and the coun­try,” he said, ​“and then get the hell out of there.”

His first expe­ri­ence run­ning for Con­gress has also led Graves to become a strong advo­cate of cam­paign-finance reform. ​“You read about it,” he said. ​“But the influ­ence of mon­ey is even worse than you think it is. It’s ter­ri­ble. It sucks. It’s a bad deal — real­ly bad. The influ­ence that’s bought and sold in pol­i­tics is just sick­en­ing. Every­one wants you to pledge this or pledge that, and then they’ll give you money.”

Bachmann’s sal­va­tion, if she wins, may be pre­cise­ly the fact that she’s so suc­cess­ful at the fundrais­ing aspect of the polit­i­cal game. Through Sep­tem­ber, Bach­mann had spent about $8 mil­lion on her cam­paign. Graves had spent about $1 million.

Bachmann’s oth­er key advan­tage is the make­up of the 6th Dis­trict, which leaned con­ser­v­a­tive even before recent redis­trict­ing turned it deep­er red. The sub­ur­ban Min­neapo­lis com­mu­ni­ties that make up the dis­trict are over-rep­re­sent­ed by polit­i­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians. For Bach­mann, the lan­guage and assump­tions of that sub­cul­ture are sec­ond nature in a way that they aren’t for Graves, a life­long Catholic.

In 2006, for exam­ple, Bach­mann deliv­ered a pub­lic prayer in which she said that ​“the day is at hand, Lord, when your return will come nigh. Noth­ing is more impor­tant than bring­ing sheep into the fold, than bring­ing new life into the kingdom….The har­vest is at hand.”

That kind of end-times rhetoric res­onates with many of Bachmann’s con­stituents. When you lis­ten to her pray, the ease and pow­er of her deliv­ery are a clue as to why she’s been re-elect­ed twice, despite her record of incen­di­ary and off-the-wall beliefs. But there is, in every high-wire act, the poten­tial for fail­ure. Bach­mann has behaved as if ​“bring­ing new life into the king­dom” — while root­ing out the nation’s ene­mies, for­eign and domes­tic — are her most impor­tant tasks as a politi­cian. She’s done so at the expense of build­ing bridges, lit­er­al and metaphor­i­cal, in her own district.

So what does it all add up to? Will build­ing just the one bridge, con­nect­ing Min­neso­ta to Wis­con­sin, be enough to save Bach­mann? Or are the end times indeed at hand for her polit­i­cal career?

We’ll know soon enough.

