The Minnesota Republican is fiercely courting media and speaking opportunities. Bachmann strives to be 'anti-Hillary'

Michele Bachmann will not go gently into the night.

The divisive four-term congresswoman is leaving Capitol Hill in January, but she has no intention of fading into post-congressional irrelevance.


Instead, the Minnesota Republican is fiercely courting media and speaking opportunities, likely in Washington, New York or Los Angeles, and looking to burnish her credentials as a foreign policy expert ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Her hope is to emerge as the “anti-Hillary,” a female conservative foil to likely Democratic presidential contender and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“I don’t know how you’ll see me, but I would like to be in a situation where I can offer an opposing viewpoint to Hillary Clinton,” Bachmann said during a recent interview in her Capitol Hill office.

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“There isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. She will continue foursquare … and put forward Barack Obama’s policy in a third and fourth term,” Bachmann added. “If there is anything that will keep Secretary Clinton from becoming commander in chief, which I don’t think she should be, … it would be [the] deplorable action on Benghazi.”

Foreign policy expertise, however, is not a calling card that many associate with Bachmann, despite her seat on the House Intelligence Committee and penchant for trips to Iraq, Pakistan and Kuwait. And some fellow Republicans privately acknowledge that they would just as soon see Bachmann and her controversial views fade from the scene.

And Democrats, predictably, aren’t exactly quaking in their boots at the notion of Bachmann being one of the GOP’s key foreign policy voices in 2016.

“Michele Bachmann lecturing on foreign policy makes Sarah Palin sound like Dean Acheson,” said Adrienne Elrod, a spokeswoman for the pro-Clinton group, Correct the Record. “Hillary Clinton is one of the most admired and respected public figures throughout the world, who continues to prove her knowledge and intellect on foreign policy matters. There is simply no comparison.”

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But even critics have learned to underestimate Bachmann at their peril. To prepare for the post-congressional transition, Bachmann is working with conservative heavyweights like former GOP presidential contender Rick Santorum and Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. She’s also working on softening her public persona by repeatedly hitting up television shows with younger audiences that focus on families.

She’s also staying active on the speaking circuit, with plans to speak at an event in Cambridge in 2015 and give a major policy address, likely one of her last as a member of Congress, at The Heritage Foundation in October. She was a headliner at the Values Voters Summit in D.C. on Sept. 26 and will speak at a women’s summit at the Reagan Ranch Center in October.

Bachmann’s persona, as she prepares to leave Congress, is as one of her party’s best-known bomb throwers, famed for wielding the tea party banner in Congress, as well as making a seemingly never-ending stream of statements designed to infuriate progressives and rile up conservatives. She once accused President Barack Obama of holding “anti-American views” — a statement she later walked backed — and has been one of the leading opponents of immigration reform in 2014.

Bachmann claimed that health care reform would lead to “gangster government,” endorsed “intelligent design” as worthy of the same consideration in schools as evolution, and suggested Obama and the Democrats secretly wanted to create “re-education camps for young people.”

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She has also come under intense scrutiny for alleged ethics violations connected to her short-lived 2012 presidential campaign. The House Ethics Committee is conducting a review of allegations that funds from her leadership PAC were improperly earmarked for the campaign. Bachmann has denied any wrongdoing.

But for all her critics — and they are legion among establishment Republicans as well as Democrats — Bachmann has crafted a persona as one of the most visible and sought-after conservative women in Congress.

Her broad appeal to hard-core GOP voters allows her to be a very successful fundraiser. Her 2012 congressional race was the third-priciest in the nation. Bachmann raked in nearly $15 million that cycle — with the bulk of her big-ticket donations coming from outside Minnesota. Bachmann’s leadership PAC also raised $1.2 million during 2011-12 but has mostly gone dormant since she announced her retirement early last year.

“What we know about Michele is that she is attractive, she is very smart, she’s a very good debater, she’s a very effective public speaker and she feels passionately about a range of issues,” said Newt Gingrich, a onetime rival for the GOP presidential nomination.

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“If she picks three or four key areas, and she works on them, I think she will emerge in the media … making a significant impact,” he said.

Gingrich, who served as speaker of the House from 1995 to 1999, is an informal adviser to Bachmann, doling out advice on how to maximize her profile after leaving office. In an interview with POLITICO, Gingrich suggested Bachmann would be best served by writing a book or finding a job at a Washington think tank.

Most of all, Gingrich cautioned that Bachmann shouldn’t tone down her personality just to make a mass appeal for a larger base outside the Republican Party.

“The more bland you are, the more likely you are to disappear,” Gingrich said.

Born in Waterloo, Iowa, Bachmann, 58, moved to Minnesota as a teenager. Bachmann said her parents’ divorce left her family very poor, and she took up babysitting in order to buy dresses and glasses for school.

“I don’t say that as a hard-luck story,” Bachmann said. “I say it because it was one of the greatest life lessons I could have had.”

Bachmann was first elected to the House in 2006, a brutal year for congressional Republicans as the Iraq War and former President George W. Bush’s sinking poll ratings led to the loss of the House and the Senate.

But it was the 2010 passage of Obamacare that made Bachmann a national figure. On the day the legislation was printed, Bachmann flew to Minnesota to appear on Sean Hannity’s show to rail against Obama’s signature health care law. The appearance helped ignite a massive anti-Obamacare protest that brought thousands of people to Capitol Hill.

Bachmann also helped launch the term “death panels” into the national health care debate. While Sarah Palin coined the phrase in referring to the Independent Payment Advisory Board, an Obamacare provision meant to reduce Medicare costs, it was Bachmann who used it on the House floor and made it part of the fight over the Affordable Care Act.

Bachmann’s effort didn’t derail ACA’s passage, but it did ensure her status as a national anti-Obamacare figure.

“And even though the vote that came after that meant … that Obamcare passed, it was an earthquake here in D.C.,” Bachmann said. “It let people know there was a different voice. It was the tea party voice.”

Trying to ride her high profile into the House GOP hierarchy in 2011, Bachmann unsuccessfully sought a leadership post. She picked some fights with Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), helped start the Congressional Tea Party Caucus and held her own response to Obama’s State of the Union address.

Then came her run for the presidency. Her victory in the Ames Straw poll in August 2011 momentarily vaulted her to the top of the Republican presidential heap, but she ended up a disappointing sixth in the January 2012 Iowa caucuses. Bachmann then suspended her campaign, bringing her White House dream to an end.

Still, Bachmann said her biggest congressional victories were more local issues — getting daily nonstop flights from St. Cloud to Chicago, expanding Interstate 94 and building the Stillwater Bridge.

“Transportation issues were a big issue for me,” Bachmann said. “It’s parochial to us, [but] those are very important.”

She’s also been a staunch advocate for adoption issues — an area that has helped her develop relationships with Democrats like Rep. Karen Bass of California. Before running for Congress, Bachmann helped raise 23 foster children and treated teenage girls with eating disorders in her home.

Bachmann is best known, though, for her unofficial title as “queen of the tea party” and the national attention that bought her.

“I poured it out for eight years. I gave it absolutely everything. I redeemed the time. I used the time to its advantage,” Bachmann said.

Former Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.) said Bachmann has the potential to emerge as a national figure but needs to focus on a single issue to make her voice break through the crowd of conservative pundits.

It helps, Reynolds said, that Bachmann has amassed a substantial mailing list after her presidential run.

“She’s a younger woman that has options before her. She’s smart, she has the skill set of understanding the government and she has a certain following,” he said. “Now it becomes what do you want the venue to be?”

Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert said Bachmann is personable enough to have a range of options but added that she will very likely need to broaden her appeal to be a viable messenger for Republicans in 2016.

“I think she needs to develop a broader appeal for moderates and independents,” Hastert said. “She needs to find a niche … and then, quite frankly, people will come to her.”

But there are also many within the Republican Party who view Bachmann as a distraction, someone who spouts off rhetoric that keeps the GOP from appealing to a wider base of younger and minority voters. A Republican strategist, who asked to speak anonymously, said Bachmann will be successful in creating a post-congressional career because Democrats and much of the media will look to her as a caricature of a Republican.

“Roger Ailes will not give her a job,” the strategist said. “I would not be very surprised at all if she was very prominently displayed on mainstream television networks to prove the point that Republicans are out of touch or closed-minded. “

The strategist dismissed the “cult of personality” that Bachmann has built as “irrelevant.”

It’s a reputation, Bachmann said, she is trying to disprove. Despite what he called “unfair” criticism from the media during her presidential campaign, Bachmann said she has been reaching out to a broader audience by appearing on less traditional television shows and outlets.

In recent months, she’s discussed adoption and cooked muffins on Hallmark Channel’s “Home & Family.”

“My preference actually, as fond of I am of Fox [News], is to go on mediums where I can get to audiences that perhaps have a character view of me,” she said. “I absolutely love the 18-to-35 set. Absolutely love them, and that’s a crowd I would like to talk to.”