Move over, Sarah Palin. There may be a new Tea Party star with eyes on the White House. Rep. Michele Bachmann, a Minnesota Republican who once said God told her to run for Congress, is planning a speech in her native Iowa later this month, fueling speculation she will run in 2012.
On Wednesday, Bachmann spokesman Sergio Gor confirmed an ABC News report of the congresswoman's potential White House aspirations.
"Nothing is off the table," Gor told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
Bachmann's chief of staff, Andy Parrish, added that his boss is "looking forward over the next year to traveling and sharing the story of why we can't reelect Barack Obama as President."
Bachmann, who was born in Iowa and moved to Minnesota as a child, ducked questions about a presidential run on Thursday, saying there was nothing more to her keynote speech at a Des Moines fund-raiser supporting Iowans for Tax Relief.
"If you speak in Iowa today, most people think that you're running for President," Bachmann told the "Today" show.
"What I'm serious about is focusing on the issues," Bachmann said.
The 2012 presidential race's first big contest is the Iowa Caucuses two years from now in January.
Bachmann is a supporter of the Tea Party and started the Tea Party Caucus in the House. She appeared alongside Palin, the anti-Washington movement's most vocal cheerleader, at an April rally in Minnesota.
Palin told the crowd that Bachmann was a "fireball" and had a "stiff spine."
Bachmann's constant criticism of Obama that ranges from his economic policies to his overseas trips helped her raise a record $13 million in the runup to winning her third term in Congress last November.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Bachmann questioned whether Obama held "anti-American" views, though later backed off her claim after backlash from Democrats and Republicans such as former Secretary of State Colin Powell.
However, last March during a speech at a Pro-Life event, Bachmann seemed to revive her earlier view of the President.
"I said I had very serious concerns that Barack Obama had anti-American views," Bachmann said. "And now I look like Nostradamus."
Bachmann was elected to the Minnesota state Senate in 2000 and ran successfully for Congress in 2006.
During her House campaign, she once told a rally that she and her husband, Marcus, prayed and fasted in the hopes that God would tell her to run.
"And in the midst of that calling, God then called me to run for the United States Congress," she said.
