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<DIV class=timestamp>September 15, 2011</DIV>
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<H1><NYT_HEADLINE version="1.0" type=" ">With Stakes for Bachmann Higher Now,
Her Words Get in the Way</NYT_HEADLINE></H1><NYT_BYLINE>
<H6 class=byline>By <A class=meta-per title="More Articles by Trip Gabriel"
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/trip_gabriel/index.html?inline=nyt-per"
rel=author>TRIP GABRIEL</A></H6></NYT_BYLINE><NYT_TEXT>
<DIV id=articleBody><NYT_CORRECTION_TOP></NYT_CORRECTION_TOP>
<P>In the pugilism of this week’s Republican <A class=meta-classifier
title="More articles about presidential debates."
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/p/presidential_debates/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">presidential
debate</A>, Representative <A class=meta-per
title="More articles about Michele M. Bachmann."
href="http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/primaries/candidates/michele-bachmann?inline=nyt-per">Michele
Bachmann</A> seemed to have landed a clean blow against Gov. Rick Perry over an
order he issued requiring Texas schoolgirls to be vaccinated against a sexually
transmitted virus. </P>
<P>But then in follow-up interviews, Mrs. Bachmann suggested the vaccine was
linked to “mental retardation.” </P>
<P>As experts quickly pointed out, there is no evidence whatsoever linking the
vaccine to mental retardation — and Mrs. Bachmann ended up shifting the focus
off Mr. Perry and on to her long-running penchant for exaggeration. </P>
<P>It is a pattern her current and former aides know well — her tendency to let
her passion for an issue overwhelm a sober look at the facts, resulting in
indefensible remarks that, in a presidential primary race, are raising questions
about her judgment and maturity. </P>
<P>“She made a mistake,” said Ed Rollins, Mrs. Bachmann’s former campaign
manager and still a senior adviser, on Wednesday in an interview with MSNBC.
</P>
<P>“Mrs. Bachmann’s an emotional person who basically has great feeling for
people,” he added. “Obviously she’d have been better if she had stayed on the
issue.” </P>
<P>People close to the campaign echoed Mr. Rollins. They spoke of their
frustration that Mrs. Bachmann, who entered the race with a reputation for
making unsupportable statements on cable television, has not found the
discipline to win credibility with major Republican donors and influential
referees in the conservative news media. </P>
<P>The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, for one, accused her of “vaccine
demagoguery.” </P>
<P>Jim Dyke, a former communications director for the Republican National
Committee unaffiliated with any candidate, said: “This is the nail in the coffin
in her campaign. Because you can be a cable television darling by saying
provocative things, but you can’t be president of the United States.” </P>
<P>Supporters pushed back, arguing that Mrs. Bachmann’s appeal has never been to
the party establishment. </P>
<P>“Maybe she’s a little passionate, but she’s not scripted,” said Kent
Sorenson, an Iowa state senator who is chairman of her campaign there. “She’s
real. I think people are fed up with these politicians who are so scripted that
you don’t know who they are.” </P>
<P>People close to the campaign, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Mrs.
Bachmann is often influenced by the last person she speaks with on an issue
rather than maintaining discipline in communicating a message. </P>
<P>She made the link between the vaccine and mental illness after meeting a
tearful woman following Monday night’s debate, she said. The woman said her
daughter had developed mental retardation after being vaccinated against human
papillomavirus, which can cause cervical cancer. </P>
<P>Mrs. Bachmann repeated the account Monday night on Fox News and the next
morning on NBC’s “Today,” warning that Mr. Perry’s executive order in Texas
would have forced young girls to receive “an injection of what could potentially
be a very dangerous drug.” </P>
<P>Mr. Perry’s edict, in February 2007, was never enforced because the Texas
Legislature blocked it. He said during the debate that he had made the wrong
decision. It may haunt him with conservative voters who resent government’s role
in personal health decisions. </P>
<P>But the issue is also likely to shadow Mrs. Bachmann, reminding voters of a
string of questionable utterances before and since she announced her
presidential candidacy. </P>
<P>Some are simple flubs, such as confusing the anniversary of Elvis Presley’s
birth with his death, and the Soviet Union with Russia, as she did on the
campaign trail last month in South Carolina. </P>
<P>“When you speak six times a day, slip-ups can occur,” Mrs. Bachmann said
then, in response to a reporter’s question about the gaffes. And referring to
voters, her spokeswoman, Alice Stewart, noted that “there has been one contest
to date in this race — the Iowa straw poll — and Michele won that.” </P>
<P>In some cases, campaign insiders said, Mrs. Bachmann’s staff was to blame for
feeding her misinformation — such as that New Hampshire, rather than
Massachusetts, was the site of “the shot heard round the world” that began the
American Revolution, which she told a crowd in Manchester, N.H., in March. </P>
<P>The flubs echo around the blogosphere and water coolers for a day. But they
are different from more serious political assertions that she is prone to utter
with conviction, only to have them turn out to be baseless. </P>
<P>Last year on national television she accused President Obama of planning a
trip to India that would cost taxpayers “$200 million a day” and include more
than 870 “five-star hotel rooms.” Her source was apparently an unconfirmed
report in an Indian newspaper citing an anonymous official, which the White
House said had “no basis in reality.” </P>
<P>“She’s a very impulsive, driven person,” said Ron Carey, a former chairman of
the <A class=meta-org title="More articles about Republican Party"
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/republican_party/index.html?inline=nyt-org">Republican
Party</A> of Minnesota who served as Mrs. Bachmann’s chief of staff in the House
before leaving last year. He went on to endorse her rival Minnesotan for the
presidential nomination, Tim Pawlenty, who dropped out last month. </P>
<P>Before this week’s debate, determined to slow the momentum of Mr. Perry, Mrs.
Bachmann’s advisers prepared a line of attack against his executive order to
require vaccinations against HPV for sixth-grade girls. </P>
<P>Her aides suggested she echo and respond to former Gov. Mitt Romney’s line
from a previous debate, at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in
California, that Mr. Perry deserved a “mulligan” on the order, a do-over. </P>
<P>Mrs. Bachmann executed perfectly. “Little girls who have a negative reaction
to this potentially dangerous drug don’t get a mulligan,” Mrs. Bachmann said on
Monday night. “They don’t get a do-over.” </P>
<P>It is unclear whether she will get one now. </P><NYT_CORRECTION_BOTTOM>
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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Verdana>___________________________________</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Verdana>Wayne A. Fox<BR><A
href="mailto:wayne.a.fox@gmail.com">wayne.a.fox@gmail.com</A><BR></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>