MICHELE BACHMANN, the founder of the Tea Party caucus in the US House of Representatives, has withdrawn from the race for Republican presidential nominee, hours after she finished last of six contestants in the Iowa caucus.
“Last night, the people of Iowa spoke with a very clear voice and so I have decided to stand aside,” Ms Bachmann said at a morning news conference in West Des Moines yesterday. “I have no regrets, none whatsoever. We never compromised our principles.”
An evangelical Christian who was briefly the Republican frontrunner last August, Ms Bachmann said she “looks forward to the next chapter in God’s plan”.
After taking only 5 per cent of the vote in Tuesday night’s caucus, she initially said she would skip the January 10th primary in New Hampshire, a less conservative state, and move on to the January 21st primary in South Carolina.
Ms Bachmann was the only woman in the Republican race.
“She was a great candidate,” Mitt Romney, who won Tuesday night’s poll by eight votes, said yesterday in New Hampshire. “We’ll miss her.”
Like Ms Bachmann and former senator Rick Santorum, who nearly tied with Mr Romney, Texas governor Rick Perry spoke often of his Christian faith during the campaign.
Mr Perry replaced Ms Bachmann as frontrunner in September but, like her, floundered because of questions about his intellect.
Ms Bachmann confused the film star John Wayne with John Wayne Gacy, a serial killer, and mistakenly claimed that Nato air strikes killed up to 30,000 civilians in Libya.
In a televised debate, Mr Perry could not remember which government departments he wanted to dismantle.
Mr Perry was assumed to be on the verge of dropping out too, after winning only 10 per cent of the caucus vote, but yesterday tweeted supporters that “the next leg of the marathon is the Palmetto state . . . Here we come South Carolina!!!”
