Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann is wrapping up a three-day campaign swing through Iowa on this Independence Day. Bachmann’s bus pulled up at the statehouse late Saturday afternoon, as Bachmann was the closer for the three-week-long “Tea Party Bus Tour” that had attracted a handful of the G-O-P presidential candidates. When Bachmann took the stage, nearly all of the folks in the Tea Party crowd got to their feet and never sat back down during her 25-minute speech.

“The Tea Party gets it. It’s not a political party. It’s an idea and it’s an idea that has captured the hearts and minds of the American people and it’s lit a flame all across the United States, so much so that I know without a shadow of a doubt that Barack Obama will be a one-term president,” Bachmann said, the crowd joining in to repeat that last phrase about Obama, which has become a signature line in Bachmann’s campaign speeches. Bachmann, in the midst of her third term in congress, told the crowd she had never voted to raise the debt ceiling and did not intend to do so even if Republican leaders in congress strike a deal with President Obama.

“We’ve got a message not only for Iowa, but for the United States of America. We’ve got a message for all the politicians in Washington, D.C. We’ve got a message for the president of the United States,” Bachmann said of herself and the Tea Party. “Enough is enough. Stop spending more than you take in.” Bachmann, who started the “Tea Party Caucus” on congress, told the Iowa crowd she has been the Tea Party “voice” in Washington, D.C. “And the politicians started waking up in the halls of congress. They know you’re here,” Bachmann said. “They’re listening to you. They’re paying attention to you.” Bachmann said it was time for the Tea Party to help “draw a line in the sand” on a variety of financial issues, from future federal bail-outs of failing industries to greater public scrutiny of the Federal Reserve.
Bachmann is one of two Republican presidential candidates who plan to walk in the Clear Lake 4th of July parade today. Newt Gingrich is the other. And third G-O-P candidate plans to be in three other parades. Rick Santorum will walk in parades in Urbandale, Pella and Iowa Falls today (Monday). During the last Iowa Caucus campaign, Hillary and Bill Clinton walked the 2007 Clear Lake 4th of July parade route together. Republican candidate Mitt Romney was in the same parade.

(O.Kay Henderson/Radio Iowa)