Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann says she would be the best person to face President Barack Obama in the general election because she hasn't had a single gaffe.
"[A]s people are looking at the candidate that is the most conservative and the most consistent candidate, I've been that candidate," the Minnesota Republican told Fox News host Greta Van Susteren Thursday.
"I haven't had a gaffe or something that I've done that has caused me to fall in the polls. People see in me someone who's genuinely a social conservative, a fiscal conservative, a national security conservative and a tea partier. I'm the whole package. And when it comes to the best Republican who take on Barack Obama and not have any clunker in my record to be able to take him on, it's me."
"Well, you've had a few -- you've had a few little gaffes, maybe not recently," Susteren noted.
"Well, I got Elvis Presley's birthday wrong, but I don't think that's a disqualifying factor for being president of the United States," Bachmann replied.
As Talking Points Memo notes, Bachmann's list of gaffes is gaffes and misstatements is extensive.
The candidate has confused actor John Wayne with serial killer John Wayne Gacy; suggested that Hezbollah was creating missile sites in Cuba; said there was a "very real concern" that vaccines cause mental retardation; insisted that waterboarding was justified like nuking Japan; said she would end "Great Society" programs to make the U.S. more like China; accused GOP candidates of being "frugal socialists;" predicted that deceased Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi "may be" still in power if she were president; asserted that the best way to end teen bullying would be to abolish the Dept. of Education; refused to say fellow candidate Mitt Romney was a Christian; proposed eliminating all taxes; told a man with "no teeth" to rely on charity; advised that hurricanes were God's warning about government spending; mistakenly claimed the Battle of Lexington and Concord was fought in New Hampshire instead of Massachusetts; asserted that the founding fathers "worked tirelessly" to end slavery; and told a Christian radio host that Americans fear "the rise of the Soviet Union."
And those are just a sampling of the things she has said during the past year.
Prior to that, Bachmann has warned about government re-education camps; said that President Franklin D. Roosevelt caused a recession with the Hoot-Smalley Act; compared her supporters to the "charge of the Light Brigade" -- which actually sustained major losses and eventual defeat in the Crimean War -- insisted that President George Bush only added $400 billion to the national debt, explained that 100 percent of the U.S. economy was private before Obama took office; and called for an investigation into "anti-American" members of Congress.
But perhaps the candidate doesn't feel that any of those were gaffes.
