Scarier than Palin

Ryan Lizza's New Yorker profile casts Michele Bachmann as a total creature of a marginal strand of religious conservatism, a full product of the fringe:

Bachmann belongs to a generation of Christian conservatives whose views have been shaped by institutions, tracts, and leaders not commonly known to secular Americans, or even to most Christians. Her campaign is going to be a conversation about a set of beliefs more extreme than those of any American politician of her stature, including Sarah Palin, to whom she is inevitably compared. Bachmann said in 2004 that being gay is “personal enslavement,” and that, if same-sex marriage were legalized, “little children will be forced to learn that homosexuality is normal and natural and that perhaps they should try it.” Speaking about gay-rights activists, that same year, she said, “It is our children that is the prize for this community.” She believes that evolution is a theory that has “never been proven,” and that intelligent design should be taught in schools.

Bachmann's running away, at the moment, with the race to star in Democratic fundraising mail. But with political figures whose ideological roots are deep — Obama, you may have heard, came out of an Alinskyite tradition in Chicago — there's always a question of where the ideology ends and opportunism begins. That remains, to me, a very open question with Bachmann, but she doesn't seem to be willing to sacrifice her ambition to outspoken social conservatism.

Relatedly, perhaps the most curious thing about the story is that the Bachmann campaign let the New Yorker, not a key GOP primary source, on the plane. The explanation, I suspect, is that the Bachmanns themselves have relatively highbrow literary taste. After all, the candidate has talked of being turned off of liberalism by Gore Vidal.

UPDATE: I'm wrong: Bachmann spokeswoman Alice Stewart shoots down my theory that her boss and husband are longtime readers.