Michele Bachmann Speaks, but Can Anyone Hear Her?
The pro-Obama forces were chanting outside the Supreme Court today even louder than they were Monday, and Tea Party icon Michele Bachmann's presence only galvanized them.
The tea party's rally at the bottom of the court's steps seemed doomed from the start. "We love Obamacare," the nearby demonstrators chanted, drowning out the voice of Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin so that she had to stop a few times to see whether she was being heard.
"Is it on?" Martin asked herself, looking at the microphone as a couple dozen Tea Party supporters stood around her. "Is it loud enough?"
A handful of Tea Party figures paraded by the lectern, including a handful of representatives and a few prominent conservatives such as Ralph Reed. Few of them could be heard. "Give us a chance to talk," said Kathryn Serkes, the head of the Doctor Patient Medical Association.
Finally, Bachmann arrived but had trouble being heard as a pro-"Obamacare" demonstrator walked as close as she could to the scrum and screamed into a megaphone, "We love Obamacare" and other tired chants.
Bachmann didn't make news but said that while the Supreme Court justices heard arguments about the so-called individual mandate that "this is the day that we've been waiting for."
She warned that the government is on the verge of requiring Americans to buy vegetables. "What kind of country is this?" she asked.
The former presidential candidate spoke with only prescreened reporters after her speech and brushed aside others' questions about whether she would endorse another candidate in the GOP primary or whether she thinks Mitt Romney should apologize for his role in crafting the health care law in Massachusetts that is so similar to Obama's.
"No. I'm done. Thanks," Bachmann said as she walked toward the Capitol.