More to the point, that media legend hasn’t exactly developed as a portrait of professional competence and restraint. Her exaggerated rhetoric earned her CNN honors as the “wingnut of the year” with her most widely reported remarks seeming to run toward the sarcastic more than the scholarly. Whether she is referring to the president as a socialist or a tyrant or invoking visions of McCarthyism in calling for the investigation of her colleagues who might not be “American” enough, Bachmann has engineered a legacy which doesn’t seem to lend itself to the serious business of governance.

In short, Michele Bachmann is part of a new breed of politicians, but it’s a pedigree that runs well outside the mainstream. She has perfected the art of speaking in blog headlines — the juicier the better. While most politicians at the national level seek to provide a balanced meal to a diverse group of prospective diners, Bachmann is 100% red meat all of the time.

She is, for lack of a better term, a bomb thrower, and one who seems to revel in the role. And that’s a very effective tactic for raising large sums of cash from a base which is spoiling for a Pattonesque, blood and guts battle to the death in the halls of Congress. It is not, however, a proven tactic for winning national elections where one needs to bring along the middle as well as the extreme fringe.