Bachmann Plays Down Comments Linking Disasters and Deficits

By SARAH WHEATON and TRIP GABRIEL
NYT

As municipal crews around the Northeast worked to clean up after Hurricane Irene, Representative Michele Bachmann did her own damage control after she used a Florida political rally to suggest that the recent natural disasters were God’s way of sending a message to Washington.

“I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians,” she told a group of generally older residents on Florida’s Gulf Coast on Sunday, referring to the need to rein in spending. “We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said: ‘Are you going to start listening to me here? Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now.’ ”

Mrs. Bachmann’s comments came less than a week after a 5.8-magnitude earthquake near Mineral, Va., shook a large stretch of the East Coast, including Washington and New York — areas that would have to brace for a hurricane days later. Irene, as both a hurricane and tropical storm, knocked out power for more than a million people and left nearly 30 dead, according to The Associated Press’s latest count.

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