Benjy Sarlin July 28, 2011, 3:28 PM

Michele Bachmann isn’t happy with the attention her husband, Marcus Bachmann, has been getting in the press lately over allegations his clinic practices gay conversion therapy. In fact, she thinks he should be kept out of the campaign entirely.

“I am extremely proud of my husband, I have tremendous respect for for him,” Bachmann said at a luncheon in DC on Thursday. “I am running for the presidency of the United States. My husband is not running for the presidency. Neither are my children, neither is our business, neither are our foster children.”

But Bachmann has a very different take when it comes to other candidates’ spouses: She’s repeatedly attacked Michelle Obama in the harshest terms and specifically challenged the press to join in on her condemnations.

Bachmann prominently cited Obama in her diatribe against “anti-American” Democrats on MSNBC during the 2008 campaign.

“Remember it was Michelle Obama who said she is only recently proud of her country and so these are very anti-American views,” she said at the time. “That’s not the way that most Americans feel about our country. Most Americans are wild about America and they are very concerned to have a president who doesn’t share those values.”

More recently Bachmann took to Laura Ingraham’s radio show to condemn the First Lady’s initiative to promote breastfeeding as an effort to enact a “nanny state” and said Obama’s agenda was “very consistent with where the hard left is coming from.” Moreover, she mused that the media was failing to address the issue out of a bias towards the White House.

“Can you imagine if Laura Bush was doing that, out trying to pass her legislation?” she said. “I think the media would have been after her.”

2012, 2012 Presidential Primaries, 2012 elections, Barack Obama, Marcus Bachmann, Michele Bachmann, Michelle Obama