Bachmann Makes It Official, Says She Can Defeat Obama

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann made it official earlier today, formally announcing her candidacy for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination in her birthplace of Waterloo, Iowa.

Bachmann, a darling of the Tea Party movement, told a crowd of about 200 people gathered outside the historic Snowden House that she can defeat President Obama next year.

“Make no mistake about it: President Obama is a one-term president,” she declared. “Together we can rein in all the corruption and waste that has become Washington and instead leave a better America for future generations.”

“Unfortunately, President Obama’s prescription for job creation is an utter failure,” Bachmann told reporters shortly after making her announcement. “He said if we borrowed a trillion dollars from the Chinese and other nations and spent it on government projects, he’d create 4 million jobs. It didn’t happen. Now we’re a trillion dollars in debt and we don’t have jobs to show for it.”

Though regarded as a long-shot in the crowded Republican field, the three-term Minnesota congresswoman is expected to do well in Iowa, which will host the nation’s first caucuses next winter.

A Des Moines Register poll released Saturday evening showed Bachmann in a statistical tie with frontrunner Mitt Romney in the Hawkeye State, trailing the former Massachusetts governor by only a single point.

Bachmann’s presidential campaign is being managed by veteran strategist Ed Rollins, who managed Ronald Reagan’s landside re-election effort in 1984 and directed former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s campaign in 2008, propelling the then little-known governor to an upset victory in the widely-watched Iowa caucus.