Rep. Michele Bachmann might have arrived a half-hour late for the first nationwide Tea Party Town Hall, but she got there in plenty of time to raise the alarm – Paul Revere style – about the imminent threat of a faraway government with designs on its citizens’ freedoms and liberties.
 
(Judging from her tweets, she had a scheduling conflict with Fox).
 
Taking part in the Tea Party Express’ live webcast (produced by Tea Party HD, the folks who brought you Bachmann’s State of the Union rebuttal) the three-term Minnesota Republican had some sobering news for followers taking part Tuesday via Twitter, FaceBook, YouTube, Chat and just plain old email.
 
Since the Founding Fathers, she said, 21 generations of Americans have “passed the torch of liberty and freedom” to their children.
 
Now, thanks to Obama and Co. and their Big Government ways, “that question is up for grabs on the table.”
 
“No one is really quite sure if we will successfully transfer that torch of liberty to the next generation,” she told a packed room of activists at the National Press Club, plus an undetermined number of Internet followers.
 
Sharing the stage with Bachmann were Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch, Rand Paul, and Mike Lee, along with House allies Steve King and Allen West, the freshman Florida Republican who described Minnesota Democrat Keith Ellison as the “antithesis of the principles upon which this country was established.”
 
Asked via a Web questioner whether her Tea Party rhetoric might be considered divisive, Bachmann said that “far from being divisive in any way, what we’re trying to do is bring together a great unity.”
 
The source of that unity? The Constitution and the Bill of Rights, documents about which differing interpretations are apparently of little use.
 
“Our founding documents, they cannot be improved upon,” said Bachmann, giving an almost Biblical rendition of the work product of the nation’s first generation of politicians. “They’re brilliant. We believe in them. That’s not divisive.”