'People don’t hold guilt for a woman,' Bachmann says. Bachmann: U.S. not ready for female president

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) thinks many Americans “aren’t ready” for a female president.

“I don’t think there is a pent-up desire,” she told syndicated columnist Cal Thomas in an interview last week.


If Hillary Clinton runs in 2016, two things need to be done, Bachmann said. “Remind people [Clinton] is seeking to become commander in chief [and] how she has operated in the past with these types of responsibilities.”

( PHOTOS: Michele Bachmann’s most controversial quotes)

She pointed to Clinton’s role in the Benghazi attack. “If a person reads the Senate Intelligence [Committee] report and the House Foreign Affairs [Committee] report released [last] week, it is damning for Hillary Clinton,” she said.

If Clinton were elected, “effectively she would be Obama’s third and fourth term in office,” Bachmann said, calling Clinton “the godmother of Obamacare.”

But while Obama was “new and different,” Clinton is an old-timer who is less likely to excite voters, she said. Plus, she’s a woman, and she isn’t black, which Bachmann hinted is one of the reasons why people voted for Obama. “I think there was a cachet about having an African-American president because of guilt,” she said. “People don’t hold guilt for a woman.”

Correct the Record, an effort by the Democratic super PAC American Bridge, countered — as Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee has asserted — that the bipartisan section of the Senate Intelligence Committee report does not assign culpability to Clinton, and claims of that are “patently false.”

The House Foreign Affairs Committee report and Bachmann “only seek to further politicize the tragedy that occurred in Benghazi in 2012,” said Adrienne Elrod, communications director of Correct the Record, in an email.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misidentified the House Foreign Affairs Committee report and the Senate Intelligence Committee report.

CORRECTION: Corrected by: Adam Sneed @ 02/20/2014 03:50 PM CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misidentified the House Intelligence Committee report.