Rep. Michele Bachmann got her Revolutionary War history a bit screwed up at an event in New Hampshire today, telling the crowd: "What I love about New Hampshire and what we have in common is our extreme love for liberty. You're the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord."
In fact, the 1775 Battles of Lexington and Concord, the “shot heard round the world” that marked the first military engagements of the American Revolution took place in Massachusetts. But Bachmann did not correct her error when she referenced the battles again later in her speech.
At an event hosted by the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire, Bachmann (R-MN) said: "You put a marker in the ground and paid with the blood of your ancestors the very first price that had to be paid to make this the most magnificent nation that has ever arisen in the annals of man in 5,000 years of recorded history."
Somewhat ironically, Scott Conroy ofRealClearPolitics reports that Bachmann also talked a bit about the importance of teaching children the facts and letting them draw their own conclusions. "I don't think that our public schools are necessarily the place where one fixed set of political beliefs should be imposed on students," she said. "I think that knowledge, facts, and information should be on the table, and let students decide what their beliefs should be."
Bachmann's gotten her American history wrong before. Back in January, she lauded the United States for its early commitment to diversity. "It didn't matter the color of their skin, it didn't matter their language, it didn't matter their economic status," Bachmann said of the first settlers. She also praised the founders who she said "worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States."
For Bachmann, who leads the House Tea Party caucus and champions a return to the Constitution, to get such basic facts wrong about the country’s birth is revealing.
Her comment wasn’t just an off-hand reference that she inserted in her remarks. At a fundraiser Friday night on the New Hampshire Seacoast, Bachmann said almost the exact same thing, according to the Minnesota Post.
“It’s your state that fired the shot that was heard around the world, you are the state of Lexington and Concord, you started the battle for liberty right here in your backyard,” Bachmann said.
Bachmann’s geographic mix-up prompted derision among some New Hampshire Republicans.
“Is she on her way to Lexington, N.H., now?” cracked Matt Suermann, who blogs for RedHampshire, in response to somebody who posted on Twitter that Bachmann had left the building.
Told of the congresswoman’s line, another prominent New Hampshire Republican asked: “Seriously, the real question is whether she knows she (got it wrong), I suspect not.”
The latest gaffe may not hurt her with those grass-roots activists who are attracted to her for her attacks against the Obama administration, but it could hamper her efforts to be taken seriously among the broader swath of Republicans she’d need to win the nomination.
“She makes Sarah Palin look like Count Metternich,” groaned longtime GOP consultant Mike Murphy on Twitter after reading about the Concord confusion.
And the Lexington and Concord error followed two other instances where Bachmann got important facts wrong.
Speaking in January to an Iowa anti-tax group, Bachmann claimed that the authors of the country’s founding documents sought to end slavery.
“The very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States,” she said.
While some of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were in favor of abolishing slavery, they were, of course, dead when the institution was ended following the Civil War.
Bachmann singled out John Quincy Adams as someone who “would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country.”
But John Quincy Adams, the sixth president who went on to campaign vigorously against slavery while serving in the U.S. House, was not yet 9 years old when the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776; he died in 1848 — nearly two decades before the 13th Amendment was ratified abolishing slavery.
Then, in an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” last Sunday, Bachmann seemed to rely on outdated talking points in suggesting that President Barack Obama should defer to Gen. David Petraeus on how to approach the crisis in Libya.
Asked whether it’s in America’s vital interest to remove Muammar Qadhafi from power, the Minnesotan cited Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s recent admonition about avoiding future land wars in Asia. Then she added: “We are extended now in Afghanistan and Iraq, and I think for us to consider further penetration at this time, we need to listen to Gen. Petraeus and what he has to say.”
Bachmann, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, should know that Petraeus is the commander of American forces in Afghanistan and is not in the chain of command when it comes to military decisions about Libya.
On Saturday morning, she may have served up her most damaging gaffe yet, though.
E. Nicholl Marshall of Manchester, who was at the Manchester event, credited Bachmann with delivering “a great speech,” but he added:” My only criticism is there is no Lexington in New Hampshire. And back then Concord was a backwater town, not even a city.”
Later in the day, after Bachmann made a stop in Barrington, Mike Castaldo of Dover, a transplant to the Granite State, called the “shot heard ‘round the world” line “a big mistake. They take their heritage very seriously.”
Getting Massachusetts confused with New Hampshire while speaking to a group of Granite State Republicans is something most GOP hopefuls avoid. New Hampshire conservatives are fiercely proud of their income-tax-free state’s libertarian traditions — see “Live Free or Die” — and consider their neighbor to the south a haven of left wingers.
By late Saturday, Bachmann had taken to Facebook in an attempt to swiftly address her Concord mix-up. “So I misplaced the battles Concord and Lexington by saying they were in New Hampshire,” she wrote. “It was my mistake, Massachusetts is where they happened. New Hampshire is where they are still proud of it!”
Posted By: Richard Kigel
Sunday, March 13th 2011 at 12:57PM
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