Did Michele Bachmann Really Expect To Get Away With Her Jesse James Story?

Michele Bachmann has been making quite a habit of revising her family history since entering the GOP primary race. Needing to sound more Iowan while campaigning in the all-important state of Iowa, she became a 7th generation Iowan, turning the story of her Norwegian immigrant ancestors into something straight out of Little House on the Prairie.

Bachmann probably never expected anyone to fact check her little family history story, but that's exactly what I did. And, as I suspected when I first heard her telling it at Iowa's "Rediscover God in America" conference back in March, her story was far from the truth, as I detailed in a piece I wrote in April. Then, in August, Ryan Lizza included a summarized version of my debunking of Bachmann's story in his New Yorker article, "Leap of Faith: The making of a Republican front-runner."

Now, you'd think the realization that her fantastic family history stories were, indeed, being fact checked would have stopped Bachmann from using them. But, no. She's just kept on using them.

More