PORTSMOUTH, VA -- Looking to preempt President Obama's first official campaign rally in the state this weekend, Mitt Romney hammered the president's record and rhetoric today, accusing him of pushing energy prices up, weakening the military and casting blame for a tepid economic recovery elsewhere.

“The president is going to be here on Saturday,” Romney said to boos from a crowd of several hundred at a marine construction company in Portsmouth. “He’s going to be kicking off his campaign here. And you know there are two things you can expect from him, at least: Number one is a lot of blame. Alright, he’ll be pointing around because he doesn’t want to talk about his own record and his own failures. He’ll instead be trying to find other people to blame."

Romney renewed his attack on President Obama's energy policy today, saying the president's policies have made it harder for Americans to take advantage of home-grown energy sources, and accusing the administration of dragging it's feet in approving exploration permits for oil and gas drilling off Virginia's coast, while quickly funding pet projects like failed solar company Solyndra.

"The Department of Interior says they’re studying it. Studying it. Didn’t study very long to get the money, $500 million, to Solyndra, did they? They got that out in a big hurry.” Romney said.

The Obama campaign responded to the swipe, accusing Romney of looking to steamroll environmental review processes for the benefit of his supporters in energy industry, and of deploying rhetoric "as reckless as it was dishonest."

In attacking the president's stewardship of the economy, Romney mocked the new advertising slogan "Forward," rolled out by the Obama campaign earlier this week.

"This president says he wants to lead [the country] forward. If the last three and a half years are his definition of forward I'd hate to see what backward looks like," Romney said.

Romney also tried to appeal to Virginia's large military and veteran populations, accusing the president of gutting military spending, while promising to increase naval shipbuilding and military spending (a goal some analysts have said may be incompatible with his tax cut and balanced-budget plans).

"This president," Romney said, "is intent on reducing our commitment to our military, cutting our military spending." 

Romney brought two Republican heavyweights out from his corner today to help in pummeling the president, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, and Rep. Michele Bachmann, who formally endorsed Romney's candidacy just today.

Bachmann, who battered Romney for his support for a health care mandate in Massachusetts during the primary season, today praised her former presidential rival, and vigorously worked the crowd on his behalf after vowing to "lend my voice and my endorsement" to the cause of electing the former Massachusetts Governor.

McDonnell, who campaigned with Romney earlier this year in South Carolina and Virginia, and who attended a fundraiser with him last night in Arlington, also stepped up his attacks against President Obama in what many political observers said was yet another audition for a possible Romney vice president.

"Remember three and a half years ago we heard that tune about hope and change?" McDonnell asked the crowd during his introduction to Romney. "Now what do we have? We have recession, division and malaise. Its time for a change, don't you think?"

Despite declaring himself more than happy with his current job (which he is prevented by term limit laws from seeking again in 2014), McDonnell has remained high on the speculative Romney shortlist due to his popularity in a prominent swing state, his military background and his early and strong support for Romney.

"I think they would be an excellent, excellent pair," Martha Stevens, and administrative manager from Newport news said.

Asked if she thought McDonnell's support for a controversial bill limiting abortion rights might hurt McDonnell's appeal to women, Stevens conceded it might, but on the question of whether McDonnell would bring enough punch to the GOP ticket, she was bullish.

"We don't need to be entertained. We need to have someone there that knows the facts and has a plan and can help us get back to the America that is working and can feel good about itself," she said.

Kevin Walker, a defense contractor and registered independent who said he planned to support Romney this fall, was less impressed with the idea of his governor as Romney's running mate.

"I don't know what he brings to the party," Walker shrugged.

Jamie Novogrod / NBC News

As her mother, Jean LaFave, looks on, Michele Bachmann signs books at Barnes & Noble in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa -- In a continuing back and forth over Newt Gingrich’s immigration policy, Michele Bachmann criticized the former House speaker Saturday over a letter he co-signed in 2004 in support of President George W. Bush's immigration initiative.

Bachmann's campaign staff handed copies of the letter to the media Saturday morning before an event marking the release of Bachmann's new book, "Core of Conviction," at the Radisson Hotel in Davenport.

“He has a long history of supporting amnesty,” Bachmann told reporters of Gingrich, “and that’s not something that people in Iowa are supporting.”

The letter, originally printed in the Wall Street Journal in February 2004, was sent to the newspaper by the National Foundation for American Policy, a conservative think tank.  Its signers include Gingrich, Jack Kemp, Grover Norquist, and others. Ed Goeas, Bachmann's former campaign pollster, also signed the letter.

Asked by NBC whether Goeas’ signature blunted her attack, Bachmann said, “I did not know him at the time that he signed that letter, nor does he share my opinion.” Goeas left the Bachmann campaign in early October.

The letter supported Bush’s effort to launch a temporary worker program. "We applaud the president and believe his approach holds great promise to reduce illegal immigration and establish a humane, orderly, and economically sensible approach to migration," the letter reads.

Gingrich has taken fire from Bachmann and other candidates, including Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, since Tuesday's CNN debate in Washington, where he called for a "humane" immigration policy for illegal immigrants "who have children and grandchildren, who are members of the community."

Bachmann’s charge that the policy amounts to "amnesty" is being met with increasingly sharp language by the Gingrich campaign.

"Either Michele Bachmann can't get her facts straight on understanding immigration reform, or she is intentionally lying," Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond told NBC News on Saturday while the former speaker was campaigning in Florida.

Gingrich is proposing that longtime illegal residents leave the country and apply for citizenship. He told reporters Saturday he doesn't recall the 2004 letter.

“I have a deep history of supporting efforts to solve the problem of illegal immigration, going back to 1986,” Gingrich told reporters following a book-signing event of his own, citing legislation passed during the Reagan administration.

Despite her attacks, Bachmann spent part of Saturday on the defensive, knocking down comparisons – first noted in Politico and on the conservative website Townhall  –  between Gingrich’s outlook on immigration and remarks she made at the Sept. 7 MSNBC-Politico debate.

At that debate, Bachmann was asked how she would handle the more than 11 million people living in the United States without documentation.  "It depends upon where they live, how long they have been here, if they have a criminal record," Bachmann said.

Asked Saturday how those remarks diverge from Gingrich's position, Bachmann insisted she was speaking about determining which illegal immigrants should be forced to leave the country first. "It is 180 degrees different from where the speaker stands. Because what I'm talking about is order of deportation," Bachmann said.

The book tour Saturday took Bachmann from Davenport, to a Barnes & Noble store in Cedar Rapids, and to a Christian store in West Des Moines.

Bachmann drew about 150 people to each of her second and third stops. But her Davenport visit drew only about a dozen people and will be rescheduled, according to her campaign, which blamed the low turnout on a planning error by the book’s publisher, a conservative imprint of Penguin Books.

Bachmann’s 80-year-old mother joined her at the Cedar Rapids event, beaming as her daughter signed books. Sunday, Bachmann continues her book tour, making stops through northwest Iowa.

NBC's Alex Moe contributed to this report.

WEBSTER CITY, Iowa -- Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann suggested Newt Gingrich was "shilling" for Freddie Mac in his career since stepping down as Speaker of the House.

Seizing on a report that Gingrich -- or, at least, his consulting firm -- received at least $1.6M in fees from the mortgage lending giant from 1999-2008, Bachmann told an Iowa audience that she was a candidate of a different sort.

"Whether former speaker Gingrich made 300-thousand dollars, or whether he made $2 million dollars, the point is he took money to also influence senior Republicans to be favorable toward Fannie and Freddie," Bachmann told reporters. "I want them ended...I wasn't shilling for them, I was fighting for them."

Gingrich acknowledged an extended relationship between his consulting firm and Freddie Mac, one of two mortgage giants (the other being Fannie Mae) forced into government conservatorship in part due to their support of subprime lending practices. Since that point, they've become a favorite bogeyman of conservatives.

Gingrich wasn't the only focus of Bachmann's criticism on Wednesday; she was critical of President Obama's plan to boost the U.S. military presence in Australia. Obama, who's traveling to Australia, said that 2,500 troops would be stationed there. It was an announcement interpreted as a move to curb China's growing influence in the Pacific.

After seeming to be taken off-guard by a question in the morning ("Are you kidding? For what reason?" she responded to a question.) about the new stationing development, Bachmann struck a more critical note in the afternoon.

"The president has put us in Libya.  He put us in Uganda.  Do you know about that war?  We're at another war there, at the request of Uganda. And now, Australia.  It's like, what is going on with this guy?  Mr. anti-war has put us in what, three more locations, two of which are wars?" she said in response to a question in Webster City.

In response to a question from NBC, she explained afterward: "This is a new issue and that's something that we'll weigh in on. But again it shows that this president has no hesitancy when it comes to utilizing his military, whatever his purposes are, completely incoherent."

Meanwhile, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum said in Iowa that he commended Obama for the troop placement in Australia.

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Michele Bachmann will announce two additions to her South Carolina team this morning, including a state campaign chairman -- state Sen. Lee Bright, a man who pushed an anti-federal health care law through the statehouse, and boasted, "If at first you don't secede, try again."

The other, Rep. Bill Chumley is a career landscaper, who launched a primary battle last year against a two-term Republican legislator and almost doubled his opponent's vote total. Chumley will help in the socially conservative Upstate region of the state.

Both men come from the city of Spartanburg, which is located just south of the North Carolina line.

Bright, first elected in 2008, is an outspoken proponent of states’ rights. He received national attention earlier this year when he introduced a bill that proposed studying the adoption of a state currency as a protection against “a major breakdown of the Federal Reserve System.”

His "secede" remarks followed the passage of a separate bill affirming South Carolina's rights under the Second, Ninth, and 10th amendments -- dealing with guns, individual rights, and states' rights, respectively. The bill also repudiated the federal health care law, and seemed to burnish Bright’s reputation as a conservative with a strict understanding of the constitution –- an outlook shared by Bachmann and her team of advisers.

"Lee Bright's attitude is, he's just fed up with the way federal government is acting,” said Wesley Donehue, Bachmann’s South Carolina communications director. He added, “[He's] sick of it like a lot of us are.”

Bright told NBC, “The folks of South Carolina are tired of settling. They want a true conservative, and I believe Michele Bachmann is a true conservative.”

WASHINGTON --  Without calling GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney or any of her other rivals by name, Republican presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann on Monday described others in the GOP field as "frugal socialists," adding that some are "confused" about their core beliefs on abortion, same sex marriage, and the "urgency" of repealing the Obama-passed health care law. 

"Unfortunately for too many Republicans, they also aspire to be frugal socialists," Bachmann said in an address at the Family Research Council headquarters in Washington D.C., adding that "some" of the GOP candidates tolerate "socialized" medicine because of a flawed understanding of government that sheers too closely to the president's. 

"We cannot preserve liberty for ourselves and our posterity if the choice in next November is between a frugal socialist and an out-of-control socialist," she said in a clear but unnamed reference to Romney. 

Pressed by a reporter to identify exactly at whom she was leveling her charge, Bachmann demurred, replying against a soundtrack of giggles in the room: "You see, that's part of the puzzle that you figure out." 

In an address heavily focused on the proper role of the federal government, Bachmann listed what she believes are cracks in the conservative philosophies of others in the presidential contest, labeling as "naive" those who would use executive orders to roll back the health are law (which Gov. Rick Perry has proposed), and pledging that there will be no "policy surprises" from her campaign (referencing flip-flops from the likes of Romney and Herman Cain.)  

"I am far from a perfect person, but I know who I am and I will never deviate from the principles that I have fought for all of my life," she said. 

Zeroing in on the issue of abortion rights, she also took anonymous aim at rivals Romney and Cain, whose past statements on the issue have been muddled in the eyes of some social conservatives.

"Some Republican candidates seem confused about what it means to be 100 percent pro-life," she said. "I am both personally and publicly pro-life and our candidate has to do more than just check the box on the issue of life." 

While aiming most of her criticisms against the GOP rivals she refused to name, Bachmann also swiped at the current president, linking his political philosophy to the ongoing nationwide protest movement against the top percentage point of the nation's wealthy. 

"He has been willing to engage during his presidency in a massive redistribution of wealth and in the politics of an 'Occupy Wall Street' envy to achieve his purposes," Bachmann said. 

The Minnesota congresswoman charged that Obama's beliefs run counter to a basic tenet of Christianity. "The 10th Commandment teaches those shall not covet thy neighbor's goods," she said. "It's time to act on this self-evident truth." 

She also offered particularly harsh words for the United Nations, which she called a "threat to the American family" due to its international standards for children's rights, and she called the threat of the institution of Sharia Law in the United States "an issue that Americans are rightly concerned about." 

Bachmann travels today to South Carolina, where she will campaign before Wednesday's CNBC debate in Rochester, MI. 

NBC's Jamie Novogrod contributed. 

In an interview airing Monday, Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann told radio host Scott Hennen that Herman Cain has been "inconsistent” on key issues -- the most forward-leaning attack she has made to date on Cain, who remains neck-and-neck with GOP front-runner Mitt Romney in recent polling.

Notably, Bachmann declined to directly answer questions about charges of sexual harassment against Cain -- dating back to his time running the National Restaurant Association during the 1990s -- that have threatened to stall his campaign for a week now, and instead hit him on matters of policy.

“Well people are looking for an adult in the room. That’s what I am,” Bachmann said, deflecting a question about whether the Cain saga helps her own campaign.

An excerpt of the interview was made available on a blog run by the co-host of “The Scott Hennen Show.” The interview was taped Friday during a brief telephone call into the show, according to the Bachmann campaign.

"There ha[ve] been 10 instances in the last month where he’s changed his positions on significant issues," Bachmann said during the call, citing Cain’s shifting statements on abortion, on a federal marriage amendment, and his modification of his own 9-9-9 plan.

“He said that 9-9-9 would be equitable and fair, then he changed it to '9-0-9' after people called out his errors,” said Bachmann, referring to a provision in Cain's economic plan that would exempt people in selected lower-income areas from paying federal income tax. 

On this point, the attack may be more than just a matter of inconsistency. Bachmann is also the only Republican candidate demanding that all Americans -- including the poor -- pay income taxes, a position she outlined during an economic policy address last week in Ames, Iowa.

Bachmann also took aim at Cain on foreign policy. “He said that he would allow the terrorists to go out of Guantanamo Bay," Bachmann said. "In other words, he would release the terrorists. Then he changed his mind and said, ‘No.'"

She continued, “He just said this week that China was developing a nuclear weapon. They’ve had one for 47 years.”

The statements may also be a preview of a kind of damning-with-faint-praise attack Bachmann will use against Cain during the run-up to Iowa caucus -- the nation’s first primary contest -- to be held Jan. 3.

A recent Des Moines Register poll (released a day before the scandal erupted) put Cain in first place in Iowa with 23%, followed by Romney with 22%. Bachmann trailed in fourth place with 8%.

“Everyone loves him," Bachmann said of Cain. "Who doesn’t? He has a great personality. But, this is the leader of the free world that we’re talking about.”

DES MOINES, IA -- The two current Iowa front-runners were conspicuously absent, but five other GOP presidential candidates were on hand to promote their conservative bona fides to about a thousand Iowa Republicans Friday night in Des Moines.
 
With Mitt Romney and Herman Cain giving the state Republican Party's annual Ronald Reagan Dinner a pass, the remaining candidates refrained from taking shots at each other, focusing their fire squarely on President Barack Obama.
 
“Sixty days. Sixty days from right now we start the process of choosing Barack Obama’s Republican successor, and it starts here in Iowa," state GOP Chairman Matt Strawn told attendees just before the candidates spoke.
 
For the third Iowa candidate confab in a row, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich won one of the strongest responses from the conservative audience. (He was equally well received at the National Association of Manufacturers Forum this week and at an Iowa Faith and Freedom forum two weeks ago.)
 
Gingrich spent much of his speech praising the four other rivals with whom he shared the stage. "This is a great group. There are a couple I wish were here tonight. I would have said nice things about them. But we'll skip over that,” he said. “I am here with very fine competitors, but no opponents. We only have one opponent, that's Barack Obama.”
 
Gingrich also brought up his idea of Lincoln-Douglas style debates, promising he will hold President Obama to them if he is the nominee.
 
“If I end up as the nominee, in my acceptance speech if the president has not yet agreed, I will announce that from that day forward for the rest of the campaign, the White House will be my scheduler,” Gingrich told the crowd to cheers. “Wherever the president appears, I will appear four hours later.”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry won laughs for joking that the Republican field is "involved in a project called Operation Occupy the White House," going on to describe his anti-Washington credentials.
 
In a speech heavily themed around having the "courage" to address tough issues like spending cuts and entitlement reform, Perry declared that "the future of America is too important to be left to the Washington politicians."
 
He promised to freeze salaries for members of Congress and non-military federal employees, and he criticized the ongoing congressional "Super Committee", addressing competitor Newt Gingrich directly by asking "we've had 20 different committees over 30 years?" to address the debt.
 
"It's easier to people to put studies together than it is to have the courage to stand up say here's what needs to be done and do what needs to be done," Perry said in an energetic speech that received just polite applause from the crowd.
 
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum was quick to tout his recent achievement in the Hawkeye State.
 
“I am proud to announce that I did a Grassley –- I have been to all 99 counties in the State of Iowa,” Santorum said as he started, referring to Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley. “I have had a wonderful experience.”
 
Later, Santorum, who is still trailing in the polls despite his constant presence in Iowa, talked about the Faith, Family, & Freedom Tour he launched today.
 
“Everybody else has put up an economic plan; I’ve put up an economic plan. But no one has put up a plan to strengthen the American family, to make sure we have strong marriages in our country, to defend the institutions of marriages,” he said. “I did."
 
Perry, Santorum, and Ron Paul worked the crowd before the event started, posing for photos and taking questions from some famously inquisitive Iowa voters, while Michele Bachmann and Gingrich lingered in the VIP room until the dinner began.
 
During her address, Bachmann sounded themes familiar to Iowans who visited her high-energy stump events of July and August, during the run-up to her win at the Ames Straw Poll.
 
Reprising her message from this summer’s fight over the debt ceiling, Bachmann also voiced concerns about events in Europe, where Greece at one point this week deferred a bailout package from the European Union, setting off panic in world markets.
 
“Maybe they just didn’t want to cut back on their spending,” Bachmann said. “The rest of the world looked at Greece and said, ‘Are you out of your mind? Take the deal or you go down the drain.’”
 
Reiterating a message she introduced during an economic policy address earlier this week, Bachmann used Greece’s story as a warning.
 
“What we need to do right now in the United States is take a real good look in the mirror,” she said.
 
Texas Rep. Paul advocated for the elimination of the income tax, saying that the idea of liberty means that Americans should be able to keep what they make.
 
“Shouldn’t it also follow that we have a right to the fruits of our labor? Which implies that there should be no income tax!"
 
Paul offered a typically passionate pitch to slash spending, end wars aboard, and eliminate numerous federal agencies -- including the Education Department.

Talk to the hand: Rep. Michele Bachmann hit back at former senior aide, who called her campaign a "mess."

DES MOINES, Iowa, and WASHINGTON -- Congresswoman Michele Bachmann swatted back at former campaign manager Ed Rollins, who has derided her presidential campaign as "a mess."

“There are some things I will never understand, put it that way,” the Minnesota congresswoman said during an appearance here on WHO Radio this morning after being asked about Rollins by host Jan Mickelson.

Bachmann quickly pivoted to why she is running for president -- building a border fence, getting rid of subsidies for illegal immigrants, making English the official language, cutting taxes, decreasing business regulations and repealing “Obamacare.”

That’s when Mickelson politely reminded her of his question, “I think the two words I asked was, Ed Rollins.”

Bachmann replied with a laugh, “You did!”  The presidential hopeful then glanced over at her staff sitting in the studio and said, “I don’t understand that, but I do understand why I’m running.”

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- While Michele Bachmann’s campaign “announced” its seven-member South Carolina campaign staff today, only one of those members is actually a new hire to the team.

The staffing announcement comes as Bachmann will be returning to the Palmetto State early next week, according to sources in the campaign.

Following a trial period with the campaign last weekend, political strategist Wesley Donehue will be joining the team full time as a South Carolina consultant and South Carolina communications director. Donehue will also help the campaign with national new media outreach.

While senior South Carolina adviser Ron Thomas and state campaign director Sheri Few were both in fact listed as “previously announced” staffers, most of the other members of the Bachmann South Carolina team have been on the ground here for months.

The three regional coordinators listed today, Natalie Lennon (Upstate), Patsy Dabney (Midlands) and Taylor Mason (Lowcountry) were being paid by the campaign at least since July, according to the Bachmann campaign’s quarterly FEC report that month.

Gavin Smith, announced today as Few’s assistant, was listed on the Bachmann campaign’s October FEC disbursement report.

OSKALOOSA, Iowa—Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann waded into a sensitive area of immigration policy Saturday during a somewhat charged exchange at a campaign stop in southeast Iowa.

Bachmann entered an extended exchange with a college student (and Democrat) over how to handle the immigrants who are brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

After finishing a speech that focused in part on repealing the federal health care law and overhauling the tax code, Bachmann opened the floor to questions from the 100 or so people gathered at Smokey Row restaurant.

A 19 year-old college student, identifying himself as Latino, asked what Bachmann would “do to” the children of illegal immigrants.

Bachmann responded that she is “not doing anything to them,” and described why she is against the federal government rewarding citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants.

“Their parents are the ones who brought them here,” Bachmann said.

"They did not have the legal right to come to the United States," Bachmann added, of the parents.  "We do not owe people who broke our laws to come into the country.  We don’t owe them anything.”

Bachmann went on to draw a parallel to her own family’s journey to the United States more than 150 years ago.

"I dare say that probably every single person in this room descends from immigrants,” Bachmann said.

“I did—my immigrant family came here in the 1850s, and they came into the United States legally.  They received zero benefits.”

The exchange was somewhat charged, because the student, Roy Aguillon, cast the question in personal terms.

“These guys were my friends," Aguillon said.  "They are the guys who sit next to me in class, who I see in Walmart.”

Aguillon, who is from San Antonio and is a student at nearby William Penn University, is a second-generation American citizen and is active in local politics—serving as the vice president of the College & Young Democrats of Iowa.

In an interview with NBC News, Aguillon said he didn't intend to draw Bachmann into a discussion about the DREAM Act—legislation which would offer benefits, including citizenship, to the children of illegal immigrants.

Instead, he says, he was looking for a practical answer for young illegals, given Bachmann's hard line position.

“These guys don’t know anything else," Aguillon said during his interview with NBC.  "What are you going to do, send them back to Mexico?  The place is basically in the middle of a drug war.”

Aguillon says he didn’t attend the event to raise trouble, and despite his leadership role in the Iowa College Democrats, he would consider voting Republican in 2012.

He complains that President Obama abandoned the DREAM Act, and hasn’t been hard enough on Wall Street.  He says, of Obama: “He’s not enough of a fighter to be my president right now.”

Despite the personal tone of their exchange, Aguillon and Bachmann chatted following the event, and they posed for pictures together afterward, along with Aguillon's girlfriend.

As the campaign team left the restaurant, Iowa state co-chair Brad Zaun, a state senator from Urbandale, pulled him aside.

“Thanks for your honesty,” Zaun said.

GREENVILLE, S.C. -- Addressing a gathering of Republican women here, Michele Bachmann said her victory at a straw poll in Iowa, a state with a record of electing fewer female politicians than other states, was evidence that she could win the presidential nomination.

“This is a state that would be least likely to elect a woman and yet they gave me the No. 1 spot overall in the Iowa straw poll,” Bachmann said, referring to the Ames straw poll, held more than two months ago. She cited, as her evidence of Iowa’s inclination against female politicians, the state’s deep conservatism and large elderly population.

In fact, Iowa is one of only two states, Mississippi being the other, which has never elected a woman governor or to Congress. The highest position attained by a woman is lieutenant governor, currently held by Kim Reynolds.

Bachmann experienced a surge in polls after her Ames victory, but her star has fallen since, as voters flocked to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, then businessman Herman Cain. In an NBC/Marist poll of likely South Carolina Republican voters earlier this month, Bachmann received only 5%, tied with Ron Paul for fifth place.

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Submitting his wife’s filing papers for the primary, Marcus Bachmann dismissed a Tea Party leader’s call for Rep. Michele Bachmann to drop out of the presidential race, saying she and the Tea Party are a good match.

“Of course you’ll get some people who will say--, and have a different view," said Marcus Bachmann after he completed filing paperwork at the South Carolina Republican Party headquarters here. "But if you really study and understand who Michele Bachmann is and who the Tea Party is, it’s a tremendous match."

On Thursday, Ned Ryun, president of a group called American Majority and son of former Kansas Rep. Jim Ryun, wrote, “It’s time for Michele Bachmann to go," because, he said she is spending too much time talking about social issues -- something that is not in line with the Tea Party's fiscal focus.

Marcus Bachmann also said there was “nothing mysterious” about the fact that the campaign’s entire New Hampshire staff quit last week.

“Staff changes do happen," he said, "and I think that there’s nothing too mysterious about that occurring."

And when asked whether Rep. Bachmann would stay in the race past the Iowa caucus if she doesn’t win that contest, Marcus expressed optimism that she would.

“I think, as we’ve done our research," he said, "we would humbly say that Iowa is going to be a winning state for Michele. I have not heard of anything other than keep going ahead."