A liberal super PAC hoping to unseat some of the Tea Party's most beloved lawmakers added a new incumbent to its takedown list: Rep. Michele Bachmman (R-Minn.).
CREDO SuperPAC announced Thursday that Bachmann and two other darlings of the conservative movement -- Reps. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) and Jim Renacci (R-Ohio) -- are the latest targets in its Take Down the Tea Party Ten campaign.
The anti-Tea Party crusade opts for on-the-ground organization, such as recruiting volunteers in each legislator's district, instead of the attack ads that have become the hallmark of super PAC spending this election cycle.
"Rep. Michele Bachmann has said more hateful and downright crazy things than just about anyone else in Congress, Rep. Mike Coffman is a paranoid birther and Rep. Jim Renacci is the poster boy for Tea Party economics," CREDO SuperPAC president Becky Bond said in a news release.
CREDO SuperPAC spokeswoman Sarah Lane confirmed Thursday that the "Bachmann bonus" is indeed the 11th entry in a campaign that was initially aimed at 10 politicians.
Lane pointed to Bachmann's recent showing in her state's Republican nominating contest as evidence that the Tea Party favorite seems increasingly vulnerable. Although Bachmann captured more than 80 percent of the primary vote, it was the smallest vote percentage garnered by a Minnesota Republican running for Congress in half a decade, according to a political blog published by the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.
Bachmann is still reeling from her unsuccessful bid for the GOP's presidential nomination, which a June survey found had a "clear and negative impact on her standing among voters" in Minnesota's 6th congressional district.
She did little to win over her party's establishment earlier this summer, when she teamed up with several other conservatives to alert federal agencies that the Muslim Brotherhood may be infiltrating the government. House Speaker John Boehner criticized the accusations as "pretty dangerous."
Bachmann's shrinking star has not gone unrecognized by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which classified her November match-up with hotel tycoon Jim Graves as an "Emerging Race" in its latest group of fall contests it believes can tilt the House toward a Democratic majority.
Other Tea Party legislators that CREDO SuperPAC has it in its crosshairs include GOP Reps. Chip Cravaack (Minn.), Allen West (Fla.), Steve King (Iowa), Joe Walsh (Ill.), Dan Lungren (Calif.), Sean Duffy (Wis.), Mike Fitzpatrick (Pa.) and Frank Guinta (N.H.).
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