Politics

Did Michele Bachmann hit Boehner from both directions on spending deal?

Jonathan Strong Jonathan Strong, 27, is a reporter for the Daily Caller covering Congress. Previously, he was a reporter for Inside EPA where he wrote about environmental regulation in great detail, and before that a staffer for Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA). Strong graduated from Wheaton College (IL) with a degree in political science in 2006. He is a huge fan of and season ticket holder to the Washington Capitals hockey team. Strong and his wife reside in Arlington.
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Rep. Michele Bachmann is many things, but she’s not typically considered someone prone to cut and run.

So Republicans and conservative activists were shocked when she appeared to do just that Friday during the height of the negotiations over a spending deal to avert government shutdown.

On CNN, Bachmann pushed for a “clean” stopgap funding bill to provide funding for troops involved in wars overseas.

Then she pessimistically tweeted, “I am ready for a big fight that will change the arc of history. The current fight in Washington is not that fight.”

Thursday, she had also observed on Fox News there was a “very good chance” Republicans would strike an agreement with Democrats to avert government shutdown.

Many interpreted her remarks as urging House Speaker John Boehner to concede ground, make a deal, and move on to more significant issues.

The issue was enough to rile up Mark Meckler, a national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots, who said that while her stance “didn’t wipe her out with tea partiers…people were not happy.”

But Doug Sachtleben, Bachmann’s spokesman, said the media savvy congresswoman was shocked at how her words were being interpreted.

Indeed, as Sachtleben points out, a close look at her remarks shows that in each case, her underlying point was criticizing the entire process for not discussing large enough spending cuts or defunding the president’s health care law. In other words, she was sniping from the right, not the left.

That’s not how the remarks played in the media. And in the fast-moving environment of impending doom, er, government shutdown, it was only a few short hours before the deal between Republican and Democratic leaders was announced.

Then, around midnight on Fox News, Bachmann pounced on House Speaker John Boehner.

“We got a clear mandate from the American people to cut spending…it’s not enough…it doesn’t defund Obamacare…we’re gonna hear from a lot of people who are very upset,” she said.

With Bachmann’s earlier remarks, some Republicans were privately stunned, thinking Bachmann had hit Boehner on both sides: undermining him during the talks, then criticizing him for not getting enough.

A media mishap? That’s what Sachtleben maintains. And it was good enough for Meckler, who told Fox host Neil Cavuto on Saturday his criticism of Bachmann was mistaken.

Bachmann even voted against the stopgap bill funding the government through Friday, one of only 28 Republicans to do so.