An unrepentant Michele Bachmann reiterated her divisive comments on a Sunday morning Minnesota TV news show and again called for a media expose on whether liberal leaning Barack Obama and liberal leaning congressmen and congresswomen had dangerous anti-American viewpoints.
On the same Sunday morning TV show Republican Norm Coleman, who had previously appeared with Michele Bachmann at campaign events in Blaine Minnesota, tried to quickly distance himself from Bachmann and her toxic comments made during her Chris Matthews interview on Friday. Coleman rejected Bachmann's view on Obama's anti-Americanism and said, "I would not label his views as anti-American."
Coleman's comments were in reference to Bachmann's Friday TV appearance on MSNBC with Chris Matthews. During that interview Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) called for an investigation of 'anti-American' Congress members and slammed Barack Obama as anti-American. Congresswoman Bachmann went on to say, "What I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think the American people would love to see an expose like that."
After endorsing Barack Obama on 'Meet the Press' this morning retired 4-star general Colin Powell was interviewed by reporters and condemned the divisive comments by Representative Michele Bachmann. Colin Powell said, "This business, for example, we've got a congresswoman from Minnesota whose going around saying, 'Let's examine all congressmen to see who is pro-America and whose not pro-America.' We've got to stop this kind of nonsense and pull ourselves together and remember that our great strength is in our unity and our diversity."
Republican Norm Coleman is rightly concerned that this national outrage and subsequent democratic support could spill over for his democratic challenger Al Franken. Coleman's support among Minnesotans has been falling for months both because he has not been able to articulate what he has done over the past 6 years for Minnesotans and because of the negative ads he has been running against Franken. In the most recent polling data the Republican incumbent Coleman was running a few points behind Al Franken.
With just over two weeks left in the campaign Norm Coleman has been desperately trying to separate himself from George Bush and the policies of George Bush that Norm supported. Al Franken on the other hand has been trying to remind Minnesotans that Norm Coleman, in his first five years in Senate, voted 86% of the time with Bush. It appears that Norm Coleman will now have to try and distance himself from another Republican, a fellow Minnesotan Republican and colleague by the name of Michele Bachmann.
