Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann said Thursday that her campaign is helped by the fact that she hasn't "had a gaffe," an interesting -- though perhaps not surprising -- claim considering her knack for making misstatements.
"As people are looking at the candidate that is the most conservative and the most consistent candidate, I've been that candidate. I haven't had a gaffe or something that I've done that has caused me to fall in the polls," Bachmann told Greta van Susteren in a Fox News interview. "People see in me someone who's genuinely a social conservative, a fiscal conservative, a national security conservative and a Tea Partier. I'm the whole package."
While Bachmann may be correct that she hasn't suffered from a substantive stumble on the main stage of late, like her rivals Texas Governor Rick Perry or former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain, her comments nonetheless appear to gloss over a past that is rife with controversial distortions and slip-ups.
Just this year on the campaign trail, Bachmann has confused a famous movie star with a serial killer, wished Elvis Presley a happy birthday on the anniversary of his death, mangled both Revolutionary War history and African geography, and drawn criticism for repeating a false claim that there is a link between the HPV vaccine and mental retardation.
Bachmann even addressed some of these mistakes over the summer, saying that "the media will report what the media will report, but that goes with the territory when you are running for president of the United States."
Video below via Fox News. Bachmann's comments begin at the 7:30 mark.
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