Michele Bachmann Won’t Seek Re-election Next Year, page 1

Representative Michele Bachmann, the Minnesota Republican who made an ill-fated run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, announced Wednesday that she would not seek a fifth term in Congress next year.

She made the announcement just six months after being re-elected in what was her most challenging Congressional campaign since she was first elected to the House in 2006. Her announcement also comes as her former presidential campaign faces inquiries into its fund-raising activities.

“I have decided next year I will not seek a fifth Congressional term,” she said in a video on her campaign Web site. “This decision was not impacted in any way by the recent inquiries into the activities of my former presidential campaign or my former presidential staff,” she added. (New York Times)

Well, it appears that my representative here in Minnesota's Sixth District is off to greener, or at least other, pastures. Her claims to the contrary notwithstanding, she darn near lost the election last November, and the guy she almost lost to just announced he'd give it another go in 2014. Combined with various legal and ethical reviews that her 2012 Presidential campaign are under, along with the radical shift that the state of Minnesota took to the left in the past six months, I'd guess she saw the writing on the wall.

Weird thing is that, for the past week or so, she's been running campaign ads, crowing about the fact that she got a bill passed in the House to "repeal Obamacare". When I saw the first one, I rolled my eyes and wondered if this would turn into an 18 month campaign -- hopefully that's no longer the case, but we'll have to wait and see if the ads continue. It does seem to be a strange way to be spending campaign funds, though.

From her high of winning the Iowa straw poll in 2011 to this, kind of a rocky road for the Tea Party favourite. Any thoughts on where she'll end up?