State of the union: self-styled Tea Party leader in Congress breaks with convention and is ridiculed for gaffes

Michele Bachmann, the self-styled leader of the Tea Party faction in the US Congress, broke with convention to deliver her own alternative response to President Obama's state of the union speech, attracting ridicule from pundits.

Bachmann's comments, spoken to camera and broadcast only by CNN, appeared to be off the mark, literally. She spoke directly into a camera operated by a dedicated broadcaster, Tea Party HD, thinking it was on air when the live camera was to one side.

So when she came to praise American voters — "thanks to you, there's reason for all of us to have hope" — she appeared to be thanking an off-screen CNN cameraman.

Traditionally, the Republican riposte to the president's annual position statement is left to a designated individual member of Congress, in this case Paul Ryan who delivered a televised speech that was cautiously critical. To the surprise of many, including senior Republicans, Bachmann then gave her own assessment.

She claimed that she was giving a private response at the invitation of the Tea Party Express, one of the largest of the right-wing groups that have sprung up across America in the past two years. But it was widely interpreted as setting up a rival power base within the Republican party.

Bachmann, who represents a district in Minnesota and chairs the Tea Party caucus in the House of Representatives, recently let it be known that she was weighing up a presidential run in 2012.

Erin McPike of the conservative website RealClearPolitics said the big difference between Ryan's official Republican response and Bachmann's statement was one of tone: while Ryan said the Republicans would work with the White House in reducing the national deficit, Bachmann "offered a litany of criticisms of Obama's economic measures".

Bloggers swiftly pointed out exaggerations and half-truths in some of those criticisms. Bachmann, for instance, said the "bureaucracy now tells us which light bulbs to buy and may put 16,500 IRS [tax] agents in charge of policing President Obama's healthcare bill".

That is an old canard from last year's mid-term elections which politics website Factcheck debunked as "partisan analysis based on guesswork and false assumptions, and compounded by outright misrepresentation".

Even more ridicule was heaped on Bachmann for comments at the end of her statement, where she sought to conclude on a rousing patriotic note. As the backdrop changed to the famous photograph of the American flag being raised over the Pacific island of Iwo Jima she talked about the "miracle" of America's creation, referring to the battle of Iwo Jima at the close of the second world war as "a battle against all odds".

David Frum, a former speechwriter for George Bush, was one of many to highlight the historical inaccuracy of that statement. He tweeted: "Did Bachmann really say that Iwo Jima was a battle against the odds? For the Japanese I guess …"