Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn. 

In a recent article (“Bold, conservative Bachmann hints at ‘Mrs. President’ Future,” Aug. 15, 2009) in WorldNetDaily, Drew Zahn quotes U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann as follows:

“I attended my caucus, not intending to run for office,” Bachmann told WND. “I had on jeans and a sweatshirt with a hole in it and tennis shoes. But the people said, ‘Michele, you need to run,’ and I did.” 

The WND report continues:

Bachmann went on to beat out Minnesota’s longest-sitting state senator in the 2000 Republican primary and then defeated her Democratic opponent in the general election. Six years later, she overcame millions of dollars in Democrat campaign spending to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and, in an exclusive interview with WND, Bachmann hinted her underdog campaigns may even lead to the White House.

Bill Prendergast, responding to the WorldNetDaily article in an Aug. 17 Daily Kos diary titled “Michele Bachmann, God and false witness,” exposes the prevarication in Bachmann’s account of her entry into politics:

[Bachmann] has stated publicly that throughout her life, God has come to visit and instruct her to take a particular course of action. Sometimes these visits come in the form of visions, other times they are messages, and on some occasions she claims to have had conversations with the Lord. (Yes, she has claimed this publicly, while running for office, and there is video.)

Here’s the video:

Prendergast continues:

The WND article is another example of Bachmann lying to people. But this is a special case, because her audience at WorldNetDaily is made up of evangelical conservative believers in Christ. And Bachmann has done that before. It was captured on video by an anti-Bachmann activist, and posted to YouTube. …

In 1999, Michele Bachmann, a resident of Stillwater, Minnesota, began to explore the possibility of winning political office. She met with a local Republican powerbroker named Bill Pulkrabek.

Bachmann told Pulkrabek that she wanted to challenge the incumbent GOP State Senator Gary Laidig for the Republican nomination, and run for State Senate herself. Bachmann had built up some credibility with local evangelical conservatives (protesting at a hospital that would provide abortions, etc.) and believed that she should be the Minnesota State Senator.

At the meeting, Pulkrabek told her not to challenge Senator Laidig. He advised instead to make her entry into politics as a candidate for the local school board. The Stillwater school board race was traditionally non-partisan, but Pulkrabek had come up with a plan to run a slate of five GOP-endorsed candidates that year. Bachmann took his advice and ran as a partisan GOP candidate that year.

During the campaign she appeared on local evangelical radio to promote her candidacy and that of her fellow Republicans. All of them lost and, to this day, that’s the single electoral defeat that Michele Bachmann has suffered.

But her campaign and her evangelical radio exposure raised her profile with local evangelical conservatives, and Michele came back and challenged Senator Laidig for the State Senator nomination. She appeared at the Republican nomination event with a number of fellow conservative evangelicals, outnumbering Laidig supporters and taking the nomination away from him.

If you read the WorldNetDaily account of how she got into politics, you will find that it tells a very different story from what actually happened. You will see Bachmann claiming (as she regularly claims) that her political career began with her challenge to Laidig. She does not mention her partisan campaign as a GOP candidate for a failed run at a school board seat.

Now that’s not necessarily a “lie”; you might call that deceptive “spin or omission” aimed at deceiving the evangelical Christian readers.

Here’s the lie:

Michele Bachmann, candidate for the United State Congress, testifying for Jesus Christ at a Minnesota church, October 14, 2006:

“And in the midst of all this, as if we didn’t have enough to do, He called me to run for the Minnesota State Senate. I had no idea, and no desire to be in politics. Absolutely none.”

Now that’s a lie, as [it omits] the established account of Bachmann’s partisan political activity and campaigning prior to her Senate run.

To many people that might not seem like a such a serious 0r important lie. But it is; it’s very important.  Throughout her career, Bachmann has claimed that she represents personal devotion to Jesus Christ,  Christian values, and to be acting on instructions from God. Yet here she is, lying in church, to fellow conservative Christians — in the name of Jesus Christ.

This lie — and where and how it was told — tells us that the devotion Bachmann claimed and still claims to have to the Christian faith and Jesus Christ is false. Evangelical Christians say they believe that the name of God is sacred, that it violates a core commandment to make wrongful use of that name — but Bachmann has no problem doing that: falsifying the circumstances surrounding the beginnings of her political career in church, before a congregation of believers, while testifying for Jesus Christ. …

She’s told many, many lies — before and since, and I’ve recorded them since at least 2003 — but I found this one particularly breathtaking, given the circumstances of the telling. And to this day, she’s telling Christian audiences a false account of how she got into politics. …

To recap: When Bachmann spoke at Pastor Mac Hammond’s Living Word Christian Center in Brooklyn Park, Minn., on Oct. 14, 2006, just three weeks before she was first elected to Congress, she bore false witness to Christians, in church.

To reiterate, Bachmann said: “And in the midst of all this, as if we didn’t have enough to do, He [God] called me to run for the Minnesota State Senate. I had no idea, and no desire to be in politics. Absolutely none.”

That statement is a patently false, because a year before running for State Senate, Bachmann had run as a partisan GOP-endorsed candidate for a seat on the Stillwater School Board upon the advice of a political operative to whom she had expressed her personal ambition to run for State Senate.

Watch the embedded video above to see Michele Bachmann use God’s name in vain and bear false witness before unsuspecting believers in a Christian church. 

FROM THE ARCHIVES: One Year Ago Today — August 31, 2008

On the Campaign Trail: Day 48

At the entrance to the Minnesota State Fairgrounds: Paddy (2), Matt (11), Pam, and Tim Immelman (13).

One year ago today, on the 48th day of my campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann for the Republican nomination as House of Representatives candidate in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, I visited the Minnesota State Fair with my family.