The Caucus went dark last summer, in part because Bachmann was preoccupied by her presidential run. After the election, there may have been meager enthusiasm for getting the group together because 10 of its original 60 members lost their seats. As recently as last month, the membership page of the Caucus website was defunct. The movement is also in bad odor with the public. A poll in January from Rasmussen, the GOP pollster, found that just 8 percent of those surveyed would cop to being tea baggers.
And yet the Caucus met this week for the first time since the 113th Congress was sworn in, and Chairwoman Bachmann — who had received the endorsement of just one member of the caucus, Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona, during the Republican primaries — was on hand:
Roughly 20 House Republicans attended a closed-door meeting Thursday evening in the Rayburn House Office Building, along with staffers from nearly 40 congressional offices, including those of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and fellow Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul. […]
Conservative mainstays such as Reps. Paul Broun (R-Ga.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Tom Price (R-Ga.), Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) and Steve King (R-Iowa) were among those at the meeting. A source said the entire GOP House delegation from South Carolina was there as well…
Interestingly enough, there were no senators in attendance, though Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) had agreed to attend, before being called away at the last minute.
Putting herself back in the spotlight now is certainly an act of what she once called “chootzpah” considering that she and her campaign have been accused of multiple improprieties including charges that:
– Bachmann improperly used campaign funds to pay staffers who worked on the publicity tour for her now somewhat ironically titled book, “Core of Conviction.”
– She paid a monthly salary of $7,500 to Iowa state Sen. Kent Sorenson who served as a state chairman by allegedly funneling PAC money to a third party — C&M Strategies, a fundraising consulting firm — while forcing lower level staffers to go without pay. Sorenson is being investigated by the state Senate Ethics Committee for violating Senate’s Rule Six which prohibits lawmakers from accepting “employment, either directly or indirectly, from a political action committee.”
– The campaign improperly used MichelePAC donations to pay fundraising consultant Guy Short of C&M Strategies.
– The campaign engaged in data theft by stealing a proprietary email list of homeschoolers from the computer of an outreach volunteer, which is a felony.
Bachmann has attempted to shift blame for her self-inflicted problems to the Left and the media. While that has generally worked for her in the past, it may be more difficult this time because all of the charges against her have been brought by former campaign staffers and volunteers whose right-wing bona fides are indisputable, including, for example, Peter Waldron, a former evangelical with ties to the Christian movement in Uganda, which is famous for its “kill the gays” laws.
Around the same time that Bachmann’s staff was organizing the Tea Party Caucus reunion for this week, she learned that Jim Graves, the wealthy Democrat who ran against her in her congressional race in 2012, announced that he will challenge her again in 2014. Graves came within a percentage point — 4,296 votes — of winning last time, despite the fact that Bachmann spent nearly $12 million on her campaign, compared with $150,000 spent by Graves on his.
