Rep. Michele Bachmann, the tea party champion serving her final weeks in the U.S. House, told
Newsmax TV on Friday that she will be a visible and outspoken ex-member of Congress on matters including public policy, the presidency and the direction of the country.
Calling the next White House contest "pivotal," the retiring four-term Minnesota Republican told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner that she occupies a "unique space" in political life as a former GOP presidential candidate and that "one way or another" she will be "heavily involved" in the 2016 race.
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"In particular," she said, "if Hillary Clinton is the nominee on the Democrat side."
Bachmann discussed conservatism's future, Tuesday's midterm election, and the outlook for a new Republican majority in the U.S. Senate with bright prospects such as Colorado's Cory Gardner leading the way.
She also addressed President Barack Obama's expected move to legalize millions of undocumented immigrants through an executive order bypassing Congress.
"This will be the most significant achievement of President Obama's second term," she said.
"I've done a lot in the eight years that I've been in the United States Congress, and at this point what I want to do is have my voice on a national level weighing in on these very important races," said Bachmann.
If voters hand Republicans a Senate majority for the new Congress opening in January, Bachmann said the party will be well positioned to push "major positive reform" in everything from the Affordable Care Act — by repealing its mandates — to the U.S. tax code — by simplifying and streamlining it.
"And also I want the United States to claim our position of respect in the world when it comes to foreign policy," she said. "We've lost a lot under President Obama, and I want us to see us reclaim that position of being an economic powerhouse and also a military superpower."
Bachmann joined Congress before the advent of the tea party movement that put many like-minded conservatives in the House Republican caucus, but she became strongly identified with its small-government, low-tax, secure-borders message.
On Friday, she challenged the idea that tea party fervor has faded after primary losses this year to more establishment-friendly Republican candidates.
"The tea party is the most active, vigorous portion of the Republican Party today, and really of conservatism in general," she said. "They're the ones that are doing the phone banks. They're the ones that are dropping leaflets at doors and doing door-knocking. They're the ones that are geared up to drive voters to the polls.
"They are the active voice of the conservative movement and I thank God for those who are standing up for American values and American principles," she said.
She said conservatives such as Colorado's Gardner are running first-rate campaigns and eviscerating the Democratic accusation of a Republican war on women.
"He's raising the tenor of the debate, and people appreciate that Cory Gardner is not insulting women, he's not insulting men, he's actually raising the intellectual climate," she said.
"That's working," said Bachmann, who predicted that a number of Democratic political consultants "are going to be very surprised at the end of this election that their very bad advice didn't work."
Meanwhile, the president appears to be keeping his own counsel on mass amnesty for illegal immigrants, with a path to citizenship expected to open up for millions shortly after the midterm election, said Bachmann.
"It is what he wanted from the very beginning," she said, "and that's to flood our nation with millions of new sure-thing Democrat voters … who will be looking to the United States government as their source of supply.
"It is sad, but that's the direction that the president wants to take the country," she said.
She called the policy cynical, contrary to the electorate's wishes, and damaging to American workers' wages and benefits — and in a way that will ultimately hurt Democrats.
"We'll see millions of jobs no longer go to the American worker, and we will see a vast reduction in wages and benefit packages for the American people," Bachmann predicted. "That won't help the Democrat Party."
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