Republican candidate Michele Bachmann says the United States should be both respected and feared around the world and she would restore that status if elected president.
“That’s the problem today. In foreign policy, you want the other nations to fear us. They don’t fear us today. They laugh at us. This is serious,” Bachmann said in Iowa this morning. “The United States is being mocked at and laughed at. We’re the military super power of the world and we’re being mocked at and laughed at and disrespected?”
Bachmann campaigned in Storm Lake this morning and in Webster City early this afternoon. She’s cancelled her campaign events here on Friday so she can return to Washington, D.C. to vote on a balanced budget amendment to the constitution. Bachmann, who is a Minnesota congressman, told the crowd in Storm Lake the national debt has nearly doubled since she first went to congress in 2007.
“This country’s in steep decline and we’ve got to do something really radical,” Bachmann said. “We’ve got to stop being a welfare state.”
Bachmann’s Friday event in Independence, Iowa, will be rescheduled. Bachmann will be among the six candidates in Iowa this Saturday to participate in a Family Leader forum. The six also will appear Saturday evening at a fundraiser for Governor Terry Branstad.
(Additional reporting in Storm Lake by Ryan Thompson of KAYL Radio)