Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn. Steve Helber/AP File Photo
Woman Who Ran for President Says U.S. Not Ready for Female President
Michele Bachmann, in rebutting Hillary Clinton, forgets her own campaign past.
The irony seems lost on tea-party stalwart Michele Bachmann.
The former candidate for the 2012 Republican nomination for president said in an interview this week that Americans "aren't ready" for a female president.
"I think there was a cachet about having an African-American president because of guilt," said the winner of the 2011 Iowa Straw Poll and representative from Minnesota. "People don't hold guilt for women."
The comments came after she was asked about Hillary Clinton's chances to win the presidency in 2016. Clinton's gender, along with her ties to President Obama and the Benghazi attack, might be enough to lure voters to the Republican ticket, Bachmann claims.
But public polling seems to suggest the opposite of Bachmann's claim on American readiness for a female president. A poll from last May showed that 86 percent of Americans think the United States is ready to elect a female president.
For a woman, though, who was criticized on several occasions for the amount of makeup she wore to debates and events—the type of sexist criticism that is reserved mainly (remember John Edwards' hair?) for a female candidate—along with being introduced on a late-night TV show to the tune of Lyin' Ass Bitch, it's no surprise that the presidential run left a bad taste.