Summary: In the race for the Republican presidential nomination, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann has surged into second place behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, with support from 16 percent of GOP primary voters, according to a new NBC / Wall Street Journal poll. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on July 21, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that the St. Cloud Times — the largest newspaper in Rep. Michele Bachmann’s congressional district — had a letter to the editor in which the letter writer offered a broad-ranging indictment of Bachmann, in which the congresswoman was characterized as self-centered, unresponsive to the needs of her district, meager in her legislative accomplishments, and shirking the hard work of effective governance. Immelman noted, however, that it was not until the end of the letter that the writer touched on the real problem with Bachmann: her delusion-like paranoia, her shameless conspiracy-peddling, and her incessant fear-mongering.
Summary: According to a new NBC/WSJ poll, 53 percent of respondents who said they expect to vote in the 2012 GOP presidential primary identified themselves as Tea Party supporters. Their favorite candidate right now: former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who shot to prominence after winning the Iowa primary in 2008. House Tea Party Caucus leader Michele Bachmann of Minnesota was not named in the poll. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on March 3, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that the number of extremist groups in the United States exploded in 2009 as militias and other groups steeped in wild, anti-government conspiracy theories exploited populist anger across the country and infiltrated the mainstream, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) 2010 annual Intelligence Report.