'You said enough is enough and sent them packing, and I’m very proud,' Bachmann said. Bachmann rips 'robed masters'

DES MOINES – Ripping judges as “black-robed masters,” Michele Bachmann praised conservative Iowans on Wednesday for sacking three members of the state Supreme Court after they legalized gay marriage.

Bachmann, speaking to a group of home school advocates, credited conservatives with sending a “shot across the bow” to judges throughout the country.


“You said enough is enough and sent them packing, and I’m very proud of what you’ve done,” she said, repeatedly calling judges “black-robed masters.” “It’s very rare that a judge does not go back to office.”

Iowans ousted the judges last fall – in what in other years would have been a routine retention election – after the April 2009 Iowa Supreme Court ruling that made Iowa the first state in the Midwest to sanction same-sex marriage. About 54 percent voted "No," booting Chief Justice Marsha Ternus and Justices David Baker and Michael Streit after a massive campaign against them led by Bob Vander Plaats and the Iowa For Freedom group.

Meanwhile, Bachman had the gathering of a few hundred in a ballroom near the state capital amused with her personal anecdotes as a mother of 28 and only daughter in a family of four children.

“You’re looking at the old woman in the shoe here in raising 28 kids,” she said after highlighting her own history of helping home school some of her adopted children.

The Minnesota lawmaker argued that her personal experience had made her “tough,” a phrase she frequently attached to both her political career and the spirit of Iowa conservatives.

“Iowans are fighters. I love that about Iowa,” she said. “I understand what it is to fight as an Iowan by birth.”

Bachmann likes to point out during trips to Iowa that she was born in the state and spent her first few years in Iowa before her father got another job in Minnesota.

“I’m an Iowan, for those who don’t know it,” she said. “These are my roots. I’m not just an Iowan, I’m an Iowegian. For those of you who don’t know it, that means I’m an Iowan and 100% Norwegian.”

Just in case anybody in the crowd might not get the hint that she’s thinking about running for president, Bachmann ended her remarks by telling those in the crowd that she hopes to see them all “again” during her upcoming trips.

Preceding Bachmann, Herman Cain tried to appeal to the crowd with his biography, telling the story of his father working three jobs to save up for a bigger house.

"Dad had more common sense than a lot of people learned in a life time," Cain said of his father, who the former head of Godfather's Pizza said was educated in a one-room school house.

Relying how his fathered had surpassed his own expectations for his life, Cain said that he too had higher aims.

"In the greatest country in the world, I can honestly say I've exceeded my American dreams," he said. "And they ain't done yet."