Bachmann: I'm the 'Consistent Conservative'

Michele Bachmann blasted rival Newt Gingrich as soft on illegal immigrants and insisted she is the “consistent conservative” in an interview with The Washington Post.

The Minnesota congresswoman also said she’s not worried by her decline in the polls.

“Like Wall Street, the candidates have risen and fallen,” she told Jennifer Rubin in an interview published Friday. “They [GOP voters] like to shop around. They’ve been shocked. Now I think they’ll come home.”

She insisted she has stood by the principles most important to Republican voters: “I am the consistent conservative.”

Bachmann said Gingrich’s recent comments about showing compassion to some illegal immigrants “isn’t going to work” with conservatives in Iowa and around the country.

At the last Republican presidential debate, the former House speaker said he thought otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants who have been in the United States for years could be allowed to remain so as to not break up families.

Bachmann translated this for the Post as “11 million illegal immigrants should be made legal.”

Gingrich has denied that's what he meant, telling Newsmax he was referring to a specific group, those in the country for decades who've established significant community ties.

Bachmann told the Post Gingrich had caved in to Democrats on issues such as the federal government’s bank bailout.

“Newt sat on the couch with Nancy Pelosi. I remember him talking to a group of us in Congress. He said, ‘We’ve lost this issue.’”