Bachmann: God Wants Me to Run

Who knew God kept tabs on GOP party politics? Apparently, he gives Michele Bachmann an inner "sense" about what office to seek when she consults him. "Did God tell you he wanted you to run for the Minnesota State Senate, or something like that?" Bob Schieffer asked yesterday on CBS News. "I prayed about that," Bachmann responded, explaining that she received a "sense of assurance about the direction I think that God is speaking into my heart that I should go." She often consults God about her political decisions, she said. " I pray believing that God will speak to me and give me an answer," she said. "If I pray, a calling means that I feel like I have a sense from God."

The presidential candidate did not discuss God's feelings about the reported federal subsidies her family has received—the same kind of subsidies she's opposed to. Her husband's psychological counseling clinic received some $30,000 in state and federal grants, and a Wisconsin farm in which Bachmann's a partner scooped up some $260,000 in fed subsidies, the Los Angeles Times revealed yesterday. The candidate insisted on Fox News yesterday that the clinic grant was "mental health training money" for employees and provided no benefit to her or her husband. She also said the farm in question belongs to her father-in-law, and "I have never gotten a penny from the farm," even though some of the funds were listed on her financial disclosure form. (More Michele Bachmann stories.)