By Lindsey Boerma // June 27, 2011 | 10:52 a.m.
Updated: June 28, 2011 | 6:35 p.m.
Updated at 11:15 am
Slipped into a presidential kickoff address almost exclusively devoted to her Iowa roots, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., made clear that though she will run as the all-in-one conservative, her tea party affiliation could be her ticket to stand out in the field.
Reiterating remarks she made last weekend at the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans, Bachmann said to an overfilled lawn in Waterloo, Iowa - her birthplace and the heart of the caucus state where she is expected to play most of her campaign chips - that "we can win in 2012 and we will."
The "we," she noted, "is made up of Americans from all walks of life like a three-legged stool. It's the peace through strength Republicans, and I'm one of them, it's fiscal conservatives, and I'm one of them, and it's social conservatives, and I'm one of them. It's the tea party movement, and I'm one of them."
"The liberals, and to be clear I'm not one of them, want you to think the tea party is the right wing fringe of the Republican Party," she continued. "But it's not. It's made up of disaffected Democrats, independents, people who've never been political a day in their life, libertarians, Republicans. We're people who simply want America back on the right track again."
Bachmann's priority, though, was driving deeper into the ground her stake in being a native Iowan - a fact she hopes will land her a victory in the coveted early caucus state.
Naming the schools she attended in Waterloo growing up and her childhood house - "both a short distance from where we stand today, where those Iowan roots were firmly planted," she said - Bachmann argued that she can relate to the state's voters because "I know what it means to be from Iowa; what we value and what's important."
"Those are the values that helped make Iowa the breadbasket of the world and those are the values, the best of all of us, that we must recapture to secure the promise of the future," she continued. "I often say that everything I needed to know I learned in Iowa."
Though Bachmann announced her presidential intentions last week at a debate in New Hampshire, her kickoff event in Iowa was a long time coming: For months, she had said that she would make a decision in June in order to be part of the Ames Straw Poll in August.
She delivered her speech Monday in front of the Snowden House, which, though she usually insists that she not be known as a "woman candidate," she called "fitting" since it once served as home to the Waterloo Women's Club.
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