Bachmann Continues Midlands Blitz

A day after availing herself of a brief media opportunity in which she showcased her fiscally conservative bonafides, bedrock Christian conservative and Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann began her last day of a two-day Midlands campaign and fundraising swing Tuesday amid friendly and like-minded faces.

Fresh from an overnight stay at the governor's mansion with fellow Tea Party darling, Republican S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley, the Minnesota congresswoman addressed nearly 100 citizens in a Columbia campaign event sponsored by the S.C. Christian Chamber of Commerce. 

While the cross-denominational organization, led by Lexington resident and Executive Director Robin Bowers, has invited all 12 of the party's field of candidates to speak, Bachmann is the first candidate to appear before the group so far this campaign season.

The group and other members of the public welcomed Bachmann with open arms and a standing ovation, both before and after she spoke. 

"We invite everybody, we don't support any one candidate," Bowers said of her organization, but added, "she had a great showing a couple weeks ago when she was [in Lexington]. She has the same values. It's a community of family and values."

On a hot and humid Carolina morning, under a red-and white-striped circus tent at the corner of Calhoun and Sumter streets in downtown Columbia, Bachmann appeared to say what many in the crowd wanted to hear. 

While testifying to her already well-documented faith in Jesus and her conservative Christian values, Bachmann also took the opportunity to highlight her stances on the economy, taxes, education, and a general  social malaise she said dates back as least as far as President Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society."

"The programs that were instituted in the early 60's were meant to be very positive and lift people out of poverty," she told the crowd, noting that she grew up with Democratic parents. "To that end, we poured trillions of dollars into programs to lift people up, because that is what we wanted, to lift up our fellow man." 

Instead, she said, today "we have greater levels of poverty, greater levels of children born out of wedlock." And, she added, "on everyone of those metrics, our programs aren't doing so well.

"What I'm hearing here in South Carolina is that there continues to be, more than ever, such a manifest love for the downtrodden, such a manifest love for people who don't have education, who are on drugs, who aren't succeeding right now, you aren't content to say let's do more of the same and let's just tax people more, and spend money more, because apparently spending more money isn't lifting our fellow man out of misery," she said. 

Government could help matters if it simply got out of the way, she said. To that end, the former tax attorney reiterated her calls for abolishment of a complicated federal tax code for one that is "simple, flat, and fair," which she said would benefit individuals and businesses, and help spur job creation. On education, Bachmann called for the federal government to cede control to states and localities in order to empower parents and teachers and schools. 

More esoterically, love and Christian charity is another clear path to fixing the nation's ills, but so is an emphasis on personal education, hard work and perseverance, which is how Bachmann said she and her family members overcame the financial calamity of her parents' divorce in her early teens. The divorce, she said without irony, "was actually a blessing in disguise."

"One thing I've learned is that sometimes suffering can be the greatest friend that you have," she said.

Her mother remained stoic but optimistic of the future, young Michele and her siblings focused on studies and took on jobs such as babysitting and newspaper delivery, and friends and family lent their helping hands whenever necessary, she said.

Despite the suffering after their middle-class life crumbled, "we did not go to public programs to bail us out," Bachmann said. "That's not condemning anyone who does, but my mother didn't, because that's just the way our family was. She wasn't going to do that. She said it's not always going to be like this; it's going to get better. That's just one thing that believers in Jesus Christ do."