A follow-up on the candidacy of Michele Bachmann.

Earlier this year, I wrote a piece regarding the potential 2012 Presidential run of Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN). At the time, the run was merely rumored but considered likely. As I write now, however, Bachmann is officially competing for the Republican nomination. In my previous piece I said that Bachmann "is not someone that should be elected to the highest office in the United States" and that her "use [of] violent rhetoric will prevent her from getting anywhere near the levers of power". While I absolutely stand behind the former, it appears as though the momentum of her campaign, not to mention the increasingly precarious economic environment, have thrown the latter assertion into some element of doubt.

Since officially declaring her candidacy in the town of her birth - Waterloo, IA - Bachmann has been polling well in the primary field. While a lot of the American political pundits assumed Mitt Romney, as frontrunner, would take the nomination it appears as though the Minnesota congresswoman will be mounting quite a formidable challenge.

This is utterly baffling to me, as I do not understand her appeal whatsoever. I have recently read two excellent pieces on her, one in Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi and the other in Slate by the peerless Christopher Hitchens. Both pieces were, to put it mildly, very critical of Bachmann.

Taibbi's piece called her "a religious zealot whose brain is a raging electrical storm of divine visions and paranoid delusions", and "late-stage Kim Jong-Il crazy". Hitchens said that for her "to choose this moment to say that the loony of Libya poses no threat is to disqualify herself from any consideration for high office", that she "evidently knows nothing" about Libya before concluding by remarking that "she doesn't seem to know her Iowan derrière from an artesian well, either".

I urge you to read both in full as they are both eloquently written and devastating in their criticism.

Criticism from 'elitists' like Hitchens and Taibbi is one thing, but Bachmann is running into another - very different - problem. Having used the classic rock song "American Girl" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers at her campaign launch, the band has subsequently sent her campaign a cease-and-desist letter asking her to no longer feature their music. What makes things slightly more interesting (and by interesting, I mean amusing) is that the song she chose the following day was "Walking on Sunshine" by Katrina and the Waves - who have also objected to her use of their music. It appears that while she is becoming the darling of the GOP, the musicians she wishes to be the soundtrack of her campaign do not share her vision.

Recently, she once again proved that she has no knowledge of American history when she claimed in an interview with ABC News that John Quincy Adams, the sixth US president, was one of America's Founding Fathers. When corrected, she stuck to her version of history despite the fact that he was all of 8 years old on the day the United States declared its independence. Her supporters, in a very Palinesque move, attempted to amend Adams' entry on Wikipedia so that it presented this obvious error as fact. As someone who claims to value the Constitution and what its authors stood for, she demonstrates a vast ignorance about early American history. This will give pause to anyone with a true appreciation for the founding of the United States.

Say what you like about Michele Bachmann as a candidate, but you cannot accuse her of being boring. The fact that she is doing so well with the Republican base should not be a surprise to anyone considering she is a religious fanatic and Obama conspiracy nut. It remains to be seen if she will upset Romney (who has been pretty much absent from most American news coverage over the last few days) for the nomination, but if she does it will be very interesting to see how she sells herself to the general electorate. Her rhetoric about the Tea Party including Republicans, Independents and Democrats sounds nice in a speech but will it hold true? Will the rest of the American voting public be as forgiving as the GOP base when it comes to demonstrably false assertions that she has a reputation for?

Time, as the cliche goes, will tell.