Presidential hopeful decries Obama Policies
Elvis Presley songs blaring in the background, Michele Bachmann rolled into Columbia on her larger-than-life blue bus and energized a passionate crowd at The Hall at Senate’s End.
“Together, we are going to make Barack Obama a one-term president,” she said, with her fans echoing her words.
Bachmann has picked up steam since her victory in the Ames Straw Poll Saturday, and she is now considered by some to share the “top tier” of the Republican presidential primary race with Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. Perry will speak at a GOP luncheon in Columbia today. Bachmann’s fellow Republican candidate and tea party favorite Herman Cain also spoke with students at a Lexington restaurant Thursday.
Republican candidates value South Carolina because it is the first primary in the South, and its voters have consistently chosen the candidate who would become the Republican nominee for president since 1980.
At her rally, Bachmann criticized Obama’s fiscal policy, saying that he spends too much.
“I think we’ve seen what he does with our money, haven’t we?” Bachmann said. “He doesn’t fritter it away; he makes things worse.”
She asked rhetorically if Obama ever has a plan, which was answered with a vehement “No!” from the audience and Bachmann herself.
Bachmann argued she had offered a plan of not defaulting on the nation’s debt, in reference to the debt ceiling debate that dragged on earlier this month.
“We don’t default on our debt,” she said. “We pay our men and women in the military because they earn it. I would say, in every circumstance, ‘You would be paid first,’ [to] our men and women of the military.”
Bachmann accused the president of using not only members of the military but also senior citizens for his own political purposes.
“He said to our senior citizens, ‘Well, I don’t know if you’re going to get your Social Security check in August,’” Bachmann said.
Bachmann recalled people telling her, while she was campaigning in Iowa, that they had canceled their Internet and satellite TV bills because they didn’t think their check was coming in the mail.
“When the president speaks, he makes a tremendous impact doesn’t he?” she said.
She lectured that the president, Congress and the Supreme Court should all act within the bounds of the Constitution.
“That’s why the left so fears the tea party movement, and they should. We are a movement, I’m just here to tell you,” she said.
She then slapped another insult to Obama, by “confessing” that she forgot to bring her teleprompter.
“I apologize; I forgot to bring my teleprompters with me today,” Bachmann said. “In the Bachmann house, there will be no teleprompters.”
On Obama’s health care plan, she labeled the money spent toward it as a “down payment for socialized health care.”
Bachmann pledged that as president, she wouldn’t rest until Obama’s health care plan is repealed.
Moving on to foreign affairs, she said she would stand up to a nuclear Iran.
“Iran has said that if they get a nuclear weapon, they will wipe Israel off the face of the earth, and they will use that weapon against the United States,” Bachmann said.
Lately, the United States has accused Iran of using its nuclear energy to create weapons. Iran denies the claim, saying that it is for peaceful purposes only.
“I believe that when a madman speaks, you should take them seriously and defeat them,” Bachmann said. “That’s what I intend to do.”
Her words kept the crowd cheering and clapping as they listened sincerely.
“I thought she got it right,” said Mike Gibson of Blythewood. “I agree with her.”
Robyn Gibson of Blythewood said that Obama is ruining the economy and that everything he’s done has failed.
“He knows nothing about business, and he’s just a community organizer,” she said.
However, not everyone approved of her visit to Columbia. After the event was over, anti-Bachmann fliers were found on windshields of nearby parked cars labeling Bachmann as a “Big Business Republican.”