Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), the star of the Tea Party right who recently waged a short-lived and unsuccessful bid for House Republican Conference Chair, says that the House GOP leadership will hold a vote on the full repeal of health care reform — but if they don’t, she says, they should face an “insurrection” within the caucus.
Bachmann made the remarks in an interview with Terence Jeffrey of CNSnews.com, when she was asked whether the leadership would hold the vote.
“If they don’t, I think there needs to be an insurrection here in Washington, D.C, against our own leadership—because that is the message that’s come loud and clear out of this election: a full scale repudiation and rejection of the federal government takeover of private industry.”
Jeffrey asked again whether the vote would happen, thinking that Bachmann didn’t sound very confident.
“Well, I take them at their word,” said Bachmann. “I believe the best in them, and I take them at their word when they say this is what they’re going to do,” she said. “But if they decide they’re going to cave, or go weak in the knees, you will see members of Congress that will stand up against our leadership because we’re going to stand with the people on this issue.”
In addition, Bachmann took issue with the Republican Party’s official line that they will “repeal and replace” health care reform, arguing that this would still take the country in the wrong direction by having the government regulate insurance companies.
“That’s where the problem will be,” she said. “Because if we want to replace it with Obamacare-lite, where the federal government comes in and tries to have interventionist policies, we are going to continue to see failure. We need to return free markets to health care.”
You might recall that Bachmann has previously called for “revolution” against the Obama administration, back in March 2009. “At this point the American people — it’s like Thomas Jefferson said, a revolution every now and then is a good thing,” Bachmann told Sean Hannity. “We are at the point, Sean, of revolution. And by that, what I mean, an orderly revolution — where the people of this country wake up get up and make a decision that this is not going to happen on their watch.”
In this case, at least, we can be pretty sure she means an internal caucus vote against the GOP leadership.
Eric Kleefeld
Eric Kleefeld joined TPM as an intern for the final months of the 2006 midterm elections, and then kept showing up for work. His other interests include guitars, old comic books and the politics of various English-speaking countries.
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