But supporters of former governor Tim Pawlenty — Bachmann’s Minnesota rival whom she has suddenly eclipsed — welcome the scrutiny.
“If you are going to run, you have to expect that that’s going to happen,” said Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.). “I’m sure she and Marcus will have talked about that.”
On June 18, Michele Bachmann addressed the Right Online convention of conservative bloggers in a Minneapolis hotel ballroom to ecstatic applause. From a red, white and blue stage, the tea party favorite referred to Bachmann & Associates as a core economic qualification for the presidency.
“I’m a job creator,” she said. “My husband and I started a company from scratch and we — like — profit!”
As she descended from the stage, a gay protester threw a handful of glitter on her.
‘100 percent aligned’
Dr. Bachmann’s influence on his wife is an article of faith within the family.
“He is her godly husband,” said Peter Bachmann, Dr. Bachmann’s oldest brother, who lives on the family dairy farm across the eastern border in Wisconsin. “The husband is to be the head of the wife, according to God.” It is a philosophy that Michele Bachmann echoed to congregants of the the Living Word Christian Center in 2006, when she stated that she pursued her degree in tax law only because her husband had told her to. “The Lord says: Be submissive, wives. You are to be submissive to your husbands,” she said.
And it is clear that when it comes to their social conservatism, the Bachmanns are in full agreement.
“Philosophically, they are 100 percent aligned,” said Ron Carey, Bachmann’s former chief of staff, and now a Pawlenty supporter, who admired Dr. Bachmann as a “soft-mannered, gentle, great guy.”
Both Bachmanns have warned that a greater acceptance of homosexuality could have grave social consequences. In spearheading a proposed ban on gay marriage in 2004, Michele Bachmann remarked that “a member of our family” was gay and called it “a very sad life. It’s part of Satan.” (Michele Bachmann’s stepsister, Helen LaFave, is gay and in 2006 publicly opposed the ban.) Scott Dibble, a gay Democratic state senator in Minnesota and former adversary of Michele Bachmann, said that she once prayed over his empty desk — “Praying for me, I assume” — and that she made the argument to him that the furthering of gay rights could result in children being “lured into trying homosexuality out” and that “the reason for high divorce rates in Scandinavian countries was that they offered equality” to gays, he said in an interview.
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