Bachmann said Wednesday morning that she would not continue her campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. “Last night, the people of Iowa spoke with a very clear voice, and so I have decided to stand aside,” Bachmann said at a news conference in West Des Moines.
In her comments, she continued her criticism of President Obama and his policies, particularly his health care program and the Dodd-Frank bill that provided more oversight of the financial industry. “I will continue to fight to defeat the president’s agenda of socialism,” she said. She made no endorsement of another candidate.
Of the six candidates who seriously competed in the Iowa caucus, Bachmann came in last, winning only five percent of the vote. She had signaled that she would stay in the race during a speech to supporters on Tuesday night, saying: “There are many more chapters to be written on our path to the nomination.”
That path, Bachmann said, was through South Carolina, where she planned to go directly after the Iowa caucuses, in the hopes that her message of social conservatism and Tea Party-infused populism would resonate. But before her news conference, The Associated Press reported that she was canceling the trip, citing her campaign manager, Keith Nahigian.
The rise and fall of Bachmann’s campaign foretold similar narratives for the other Republicans who sought to run as alternatives to Mitt Romney. Her passion and forceful debate performances helped her win the Iowa straw poll in late summer, only to have it foreshadowed by Governor Rick Perry’s entry into the race. (Perry’s own campaign later faltered: he also canceled plans to head straight to South Carolina, announcing that he would return to Texas to reassess his campaign after a fifth-place finish in Iowa.)
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