by CAROLINE GAVURA Staff Writer
Republican representative of Minnesota, Michele Bachmann, has announced she will be leaving Congress and not returning for re-election.
Bachmann, leading supporter of the Tea Party movement, released the statement in a video she sent out to her supporters on May 29, 2013.
“Thank God,” said sophomore Cori Haider.
In the video, she left the door open as to whether or not she would run for any other type of political office, but made no mention of specifics.
In honor of Bachmann’s four terms in the House of Representatives, I have comprised a list of the most outlandish things she has said over the past few years.
-“Well what I want them to know is just like, John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That’s the kind of spirit that I have, too.” It seems as though Bachmann has mixed up her John Wayne’s. The great actor John Wayne was from Winterset, Iowa, while the John Wayne that Waterloo was home to is John Wayne Gacy, a serial killer.
– “I will tell you that I had a mother last night come up to me here in Tampa, Florida, after the debate. She told me that her little daughter took that vaccine, that injection, and she suffered from mental retardation thereafter.” Bachmann said this of the HPV vaccine on a Fox News interview. It is utterly absurd, and even a little offensive, to think that a vaccine could instantly make someone mentally disabled.
– “Why should I go and do something like that? But the Lord says, ‘Be submissive wives; you are to be submissive to your husbands.'” Bachmann used this as an excuse as to why she pursued tax law, not because she wanted to, but because her husband urged her to. That’s enough for any feminist to have an aneurysm.
– “I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. I’m not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it’s an interesting coincidence.” It must have slipped Bachmann’s mind that the 1976 outbreak of swine flu happened while President Gerald Ford, a Republican, was in office.
– “Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.” This statement would even make a 10-year-old kid facepalm. I really hope Bachmann has a carbon MONOXIDE detector in her house, and not a carbon dioxide detector, as it would be going off quite a bit.
– “Before we get started, let’s all say ‘Happy Birthday’ to Elvis Presley today.” This one would have been fine, had Bachmann said it on Presley’s actual birthday, rather than the anniversary of his death.
– “But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States. … I think it is high time that we recognize the contribution of our forbearers who worked tirelessly — men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country.” The founding fathers did not touch the subject of slavery, not to mention the fact that John Quincy Adams was not one of the founding fathers.
“They should have never let this woman stay for four terms in the House, not to mention RUN FOR PRESIDENT!” said sophomore Michelle Barclay.