Bachmann tweeted:

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According to a report by CBS News in July, the then-33 unsuccessful attempts by House Republicans to repeal the law had used up around 80 hours of time in Congress, or two full work weeks, at a cost of around $48 million.

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These fear-mongers won’t be able to spread their hysteria from the bully pulpit of a House seat any longer. But that doesn’t mean that the House Republican caucus has rid themselves of the scourge of anti-Muslim politicians who stoke that sentiment for political gain. On the contrary, the House Republican caucus remains the place where the ugly head of Islamophobia rests comfortably.

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“I think the straw poll has outlived its usefulness,” Branstad said of poll, which is 33 years-old and has traditionally been used as a dress rehearsal for the Iowa caucuses. “It has been a great fundraiser for the party but I think its days are over.”

The Wall Street Journal points out that even Bachmann aside, the poll has only correctly predicted the winner of the caucuses twice: Bob Dole in 1995 and George W. Bush in 1999, though only Bush went on to win the election.

“You saw what happened the last time,” Branstad said. “I don’t think candidates will spend the time or money to participate in a straw poll if they don’t see any real benefit coming out of it.”

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“The events in Benghazi have proved that the United States remains under attack, both in the Middle East, and here in the United States,” she continued last night. When the moderator noted that there’s no proof that the Muslim Brotherhood was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. diplomats in the Libyan city, Bachmann replied that “we are only just beginning” to investigate and suggested that all radical Islamists groups are tied to the Brotherhood.

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Virgil Goode Jr. (Va.)

Office sought: President of the United States

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But Islamophobia -- even from elected officials -- is still dramatically undercovered by the media. So you might easily have missed some of these 10 most disgraceful examples of bigotry, ignorance and hate -- from obscure county parties to the halls of Congress -- during an election cycle with plenty to go around:

10. Allen West is Allen West -- Florida Rep. Allen West is known for making inflammatory statements about pretty much everyone, but he has particularly targeted Muslims. This cycle alone, he’s commemorated 9/11 by screening an anti-Islamic film, said that Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison “really does represent the antithesis of the principles upon which this country was established," and another time theorized that “George Bush got snookered into going into some mosque, taking his shoes off, and then saying that Islam was a religion of peace.”

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So it's not uncommon to hear a prominant conservative, even one who holds elected office, make patently offensive remarks. Yet some occasionally hit an unimaginable low. This week, it was revealed that Republican Rep. Jon Hubbard has published a book in which he wrote that “[T]he institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise." He defended his book on Wednesday, telling the Jonesboro Sun that he still believed slavery to be a blessing because it helped blacks come to America. Yes, he praised slavery. And when given the opportunity to backpedal, he doubled down.

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AP editor Jim Drinkard, who oversees the fact-checking, said in a panel yesterday: “We had to have a self-imposed Michele Bachmann quota in some of those debates.”

From the Washington Post:

"After the session, Drinkard said that there wasn’t an actual numerical quota on Bachmann at the AP. It’s just that if the AP had gone back and vetted all her claims that looked dicey, the result would 'overload' the debate story. 'Often she was just more prone to statements that just didn’t add up,' said Drinkard."

One more infamous instance of those statements was when Bachmann said that the HPV vaccine could have "very dangerous side effects," a claim that was quickly refuted by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the CDC, and basically everyone else.

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One group of Bachmann supporters, the National Republican Trust PAC, responded in stride, running an ad that attacks Bachmann opponent Jim Graves for calling her comments "outrageous." The ad ties Graves' comments to footage from the Middle East during the attack.

The NRTPAC got a little bit of attention in 2010 for running an ad that parroted pretty much every conservative talking point about Obama ever, tying him to everyone from ACORN to the New Black Panther Party.

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So it comes as no surprise, perhaps, that the two top members of the Republican ticket, presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his running-mate, Paul Ryan, would court the Family Research Council at its recent Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., where, on Friday, Ryan delivered a speech, and Romney appeared via video message. But what is appalling is that the event this duo endorsed quickly devolved into a hate fest directed against an American religious minority.

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"This week, as we have seen to our horror, there is a very real war that is going on across the world," Bachmann said.

As Mitt Romney's response to the Libyan crisis demonstrates, the entire Republican Party had moved to the right on the issue of radical Islam, and as Bachmann sees it, she saw this coming all along.

"When members of Congress, myself included, started to ask questions about the identities of who these people were who were leading this purge in our government and what it was they were purging from our training materials, the Obama administration told us the information was closed; it was classified; we couldn’t know who was behind this. I’m here to say, my friends, that we’re now today very late in the game.  We’re quickly losing our sense of who we are as a nation, and we’re losing our ability to identify our radical Islamist enemy," she said.

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Overall, the poll shows Bachmann leading Graves 48-46 percent, within the margin of error. The race has moved significantly among independents, with a 20-point net shift toward Graves, from a 41-45 percent disadvantage in June to a 52-37 percent lead now. Among independents, Bachmann's favorability rating has slipped 4 points while her unfavorability rating has jumped 7 points. Overall, she’s viewed mostly negatively. Among all voters, 40 percent give her a positive job rating, while a sizable 57 percent give her a negative one, with a plurality of 35 percent giving the most negative answer possible -- “poor.”

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"I'm sad that they have decided to go into this dark ugly place where they see the whole world as their enemy," Ellison continued. "And this is the thing: I don't mind debating taxes and spending; we probably should. But they're the party that is basically a bigoted party and they have now officially declared themselves against a whole segment of the American population, because if we said we were going to put a plank opposing Jewish law, or Catholic canon, it would be an outrage. This is also an outrage. But you know, it'll pass."

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We were sitting just outside the Tampa Bay Times Forum minutes after Mitt Romney spoke at the Republican National Convention Thursday night, and Berden, a grandmotherly delegate from Michigan, was talking about Ann Romney's declaration that women's lives are a little harder than men's. Berden agreed with Romney about that, and also, apparently, that it wasn't government's role to do anything about it. She'd told me that we'd been hearing so much this week about women because while "Democrats pander to women on reproductive rights, Republicans really respect women as joint partners."

I was surprised to hear her use the phrase "reproductive rights," which I'd never heard a conservative use. Berden blamed it on seeing Sandra Fluke on TV all the time, volunteering with a chuckle, "She's a grown woman, we shouldn't have to pay for her stupid birth control. She could cross her legs."

"To be fair," I replied, with some hesitation, "she never talked about herself. She talked about her friend who was raped, she talked about her friend who had a medical condition…"

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New government regulations encourage the sale of the bulbs, which conservatives see as a radical environmentalist power grab. “When the 100-watt incandescent light bulbs are outlawed only criminals will have them. That means me. I will be a criminal,” said Rush Limbaugh in a courageous outburst of civil disobedience. Rep. Michele Bachmann made supporting old-fashioned incandescent bulbs a key piece of her presidential campaign, “I think Thomas Edison did a pretty patriotic thing for this country by inventing the light bulb,” she said.

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The "taxpayer funding" part is transparently false -- the Hyde Amendment, named after a congressman reverentially celebrated at the lunch today, prevents almost all federal funding of abortion, and the Obama administration hasn't changed a single thing about that, in the Affordable Care Act or elsewhere. No one else tried to make a similar claim, nor did anyone else seem particularly excited about that act's contraceptive coverage mandate, either -- it was the only time it came up.

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Abedin is a close personal aide of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and is married to former New York congressman Anthony Weiner. In an open letter to the State Department’s inspector general sent in June, Bachmann suggested that Abedin should have her security clearance revoked because of alleged familial ties to the Muslim Brotherhood (her dead father had worked for an organization supported by a guy who worked for another organization that was allegedly connected to the Brotherhood in Europe in the 1970s).

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By the standards of congressional Republicans, Todd Akin isn’t a fundraising powerhouse. According to OpenSecrets.org his Takin Back America PAC has raised a measly $78,743 and sloshed out four-figure checks to Republicans Reps. John Carter (Texas), Michele Bachmann (Minn.) and Denny Rehberg (Mont.) who is running for Senate.  Takin Back America also contributed $5,000 to Voice for Freedom, Rep. Tom Price’s (R-Ga.) PAC.

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