Bachmann in overdrive

This ought to be fun: Michele Bachmann, the ever-so-uninhibited congresswoman from Minnesota who recently opined that President Barack Obama is turning America into "a nation of slaves," has won approval from House leaders to create a Tea Party Caucus.

Democrats, for obvious reasons, seem eager to go to battle with this rambling sideshow, so diverse in its views that it includes a tea-party group in Iowa that thought it would be illuminating to us all to put up a billboard featuring Obama, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin.

But the reaction from Bachmann's GOP colleagues appears decidedly mixed. Indiana's Mike Pence, chairman of the House Republican Conference, joined the caucus with an enthusiastic "You betcha!" Others announced on Twitter that they're in.

But some folks are offering up the political equivalent of the "I'd love to, but I'm too busy sorting my sock drawer" excuse. ("Oh, and filibustering! Lots of filibustering!")

Richmond's Eric Cantor, who serves as House minority whip, praised Bachmann's initiative but told Politico that he thinks the tea party movement is an "organic" grassroots movement that's "better left to the people."(He condemned that billboard, by the way.)

Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah offered up a similar take on Twitter. "If any one person(s) tries to co-opt it, the Tea Party will lose its identity and effectiveness. Go Tea Party! But not with D.C. 'leadership,' " he wrote.

The fear of being co-opted isn't out of place, it appears.

Trent Lott, a former Republican leader who fell from grace after he sang the praises of Strom Thurmond's long-ago segregationist bid for the White House, is now a lobbyist on Capitol Hill.

He has plans for any tea partiers who win in this fall's elections. "As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them," he told The Washington Post.

But Lott doesn't think it'll come to that. "I still have faith in the visceral judgment of the American people," he said.

Ah, faith in the visceral.

Bachmann is a greatest-hits collection of visceral. Emote first, think later - if there's time. Among other things, she has assigned sinister motives to the U.S. Census and suggested that AmeriCorps is part of a nefarious plot to set up "re-education camps for young people." (Undeterred, her son later joined Teach for America.)

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Bachmann infamously fretted in a TV interview that Obama may not be one of us. "I'm very concerned that he may have anti-American views," she said.

And she didn't stop there: "I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out - are they pro-America or anti-America? I would love to see an exposé like that."

Because, you know, it's a self-evident truth that people who hold views at variance with your own are anti-America.

Her comments immediately boosted the prospects of her opponent in her '08 re-election campaign, a long-shot with the delightfully Dickensian name Elwyn Tinklenberg. He nearly won.

Since then, Bachmann - who earned a degree in tax law from the College of William and Mary - has continued to divide and sorta conquer. In the same speech in which she raised the image of Obama enslaving us all, she lamented "the tyranny" of the Democrats in Washington.

Because, you know, when voters elect a majority from one party, it's tyranny. Well, if the majority is the Democratic Party. If they're Republicans, they're obviously pro-America.

Recently, Bachmann has distinguished herself as a defender of the downtrodden folks at BP.

Congress, she said, needed to lift the liability cap on damages from oil spills. "But if I was the head of BP," she said, "I would let the signal get out there - 'We're not going to be chumps, and we're not going to be fleeced.' And they shouldn't be. They shouldn't have to be fleeced and made chumps to have to pay for perpetual unemployment and all the rest - they've got to be legitimate claims."

What a caucus.

Elwyn Tinklenberg, wherever you are, your nation needs you.

Daryl Lease is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot. E-mail:daryl.lease@pilotonline.com.