Addressing religious right, Bachmann accuses ‘elite’ Dems of imposing their moral values on Americans

Image has not been found. URL: http://images.americanindependent.com/2010/08/MahurinElephant_Thumb.jpgUpdated April 10, 12:11 p.m. EST with two excerpts of Rep. Michele Bachmann’s video address at Friday’s Awakening conference in Lynchburg, Va.

Stuck in Washington, D.C., on Friday night as lawmakers pounded out a tentative budget deal and averted a federal government shutdown, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) had to cancel her appearance at this weekend’s conservative Christian political convention the Awakening. Instead, Bachmann made a video addressing attendants of the conference held at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va.

Bachmann’s statement did not stray very far from her usual rhetoric — criticizing the president and all of his policies. Though this quarter-of-an-hour-long speech was filled with a bit more gesticulation and alliteration than usual. Additionally, Bachmann appeared to be more in her comfort zone, speaking to people who are, for the most part, on her side of things.

“The problem is that the truths that all of us are fighting for are no longer as valued in our society as they once were,” Bachmann said. “What an arrogant corrupt Washington elite right now is about to do is to substitute their own values for ours. They believe that social progress is generated here from the base of the Potomac River and that they somehow have the solutions to the problems that our country faces. … They have declared war on marriage, on families, on fertility, and on faith.”

Bachmann illustrated the evidence of this war using her favorite device: numbers.

• 62 percent: the amount that the national debt has increased in the last four years.

“It took us 231 years to accumulate $8 trillion in debt, and it took us another four years to accumulate another 6 trillion,” Bachmann said. “That mountain of debt is an immoral burden on future generations and it’s one that they never voted on and they never consented to.”

And this is where she started to get a little lyrical:

“It’s the ultimate, I think, in taxation without representation and it’s bred from an obligation without consideration. It’s no exaggeration to say that starting off the next generation of families buried under debt and financial bondage to federal bankers and foreign masters, I think, is fundamentally evil for government to do.”

More numbers:

• 13 percent: The one-year rise in co-habitated couples. According to Bachmann, fewer people are living together without getting married because they “are discouraged from marriage by an under-performing economy.”
• 41 percent: Percentage of births among single mothers today.
• 52,008,665: What Bachmann said is the “exact number” of babies aborted since Roe v. Wade.
• 6,000: The number of pages of new rules generated by “this monstrosity called Obamacare.”
• $105 billion: “The fiscal booby trap that was embedded into the Obamacare bill in stealth appropriations and fund transfers over the next nine years. It’s really like a series of postdated checks that President Obama can cash every year to implement the failed program known as Obamacare.”

This “booby trap” issue that Bachmann brought up last March has been disputed and dismissed. And the Guttmacher Institute puts the number of legal abortions since 1973 at around 45 million.

She addressed some of her critics, saying that she has been told that her rhetoric has stripped paint: “Well, those of you close to the walls, watch out for falling paint!”

Bachmann urged her listeners that Republicans have to take a majority in the Senate, but most of all, “We have to put in the White House a bold constitutional conservative who will not back down from the fight — someone who means what they say and says what they mean.”

Read The American Independent’s full coverage of The Awakening 2011 conference.