During Monday’s Republican Presidential Debate, Representative Michelle Bachmann announced her candidacy for President and was quickly declared the night’s winner—and a frontrunner for the GOP nomination—by conservative pundits and conservative members of Congress. 

Yet The Nation‘s Katrina vanden Heuvel argued on The Ed Show last night that the media has focused too much on Bachmann’s self-styled image and not enough on the far-right policy positions and neo-McCarthy politics she has embraced as a member of Congress. Bachmann’s rise makes it increasingly likely that Republicans will continue to move to the right and pursue their pro-corporate, anti-middle class agenda into the 2012 election. 

—Kevin Donohoe