Bachmann to drop out of presidential race: 'No regrets’

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is ending her White House bid, she announced in a press conference Wednesday.

“Last night, the people of Iowa spoke with a very clear voice, and so, I have decided to stand aside,” Bachmann told a crowd of supporters in Des Moines, the morning after her dismal sixth-place showing in the state's primary caucuses. “I have no regrets.”

Bachmann pledged to “continue to fight to defeat the president’s agenda of socialism,” saying she ran because this is the “last election to turn this country around before we go down the road to socialism.”

She spoke for about fifteen minutes, devoting much of her time to her opposition to “Obamacare.”

Bachmann did not endorse another candidate, though she did encourage her backers to rally around the Republican nominee. Nor did she reveal whether she would run again for her Minnesota House seat. There’s a chance that redistricting will pit her against Rep. Betty McCollum (D).

The Iowa-born candidate was defiant Tuesday after the Iowa results came in, telling her supporters, “There are many more chapters to be written in our party’s path to the nomination.”

But her last-place finish gave Bachmann few options going forward.

The conservative lawmaker had planned to largely skip next Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary to focus on South Carolina’s contest 12 days later, and she had three stops planned in the southern state over the next two days.

But that plan had already been scaled back before the Iowa finish in a sign of potential campaign trouble.