While the rise of such a dominionist figure would polarize America and reveal how zealous and ignorant many American voters are, it would also show most Americans are motivated by shame and fear strongly enough to reject Bachmann's level of dangerous ignorance in a general election.
We've had dangerously ignorant presidents before; Reagan also spent over 10 years biding his time and building an image, while Bush was never as deeply exposed as Bachmann has been. That was also much less of a digital age, even during the Bush years. (Back then, I was told to stay away from academic internet research because it was supposedly unreliable: not so today.) Bachmann's rise will be her fall. She has spent years making outrageous statements for attention. Now that it's worked, she will find that outside of her core demographics, she has no audience.
What's more, the Republican Party may well be buckling from a Tea Party insurgency, one which may ultimately fracture it for a generation, but until then, it's still the Money Party first and foremost. The Republican Party machine is not going to tolerate the rise of such bumbling fools as Bachmann and Perry. They're anti-tax enough, but it's not that simple to whom George Carlin referred to as the Real Owners of America. They want a Romney, a Hunstman, even a Mitch Daniels. Someone who's not going to be hot-headed, stubborn and fanatical as George W. Bush, or even worse, St. Sarah.
In the meantime, my certainty may seem dubious, given how unsatisfied and volatile the GOP is at the moment.
But Bachmann hasn't yet hauled in the kind of money that would allow her the uphill battle against the establishment. You can armchair quarterback all you want, but the facts don't allow for such fantasies:
The much awaited figures for Michele Bachmann’s fundraising in the second quarter of the fiscal year reported today did nothing to burnish her image as the up and coming Republican. Her total of $2 million raised in the last three months plus two million more shifted from her congressional campaign account illustrated that for all of the progress her candidacy has made in the last several weeks, she seems to lack the infrastructure and staff work that more established hopefuls have already put into place. The high expectations her poll figures have produced means pulling in only $2 million has to be considered something of a disappointment.
Mr. Obama, the figure whom she would face in a general election, was raising tens of millions of dollars at her point, and has a massive re-election warchest now that would devastate her political career with a few simple ads. In the first half of this year, the president raised $86 million. Remember, he's not on the campaign trail full time yet. Even with POTUS' suffering poll numbers, look elsewhere than to Bachmann and Perry until further notice.