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“Don’t you love new beginnings?” she said from the altar. “Hold on, things will get better.”
Outside the church after the service, it was time for the hard sell of a closing argument to the socially conservative Christian voters upon whom the hopes of her once-ascendant candidacy have rested. “I am not a politician,” she insisted despite having held the House seat for the Sixth District of Minnesota since 2007. “I am not an establishment person. I am a real, authentic Iowan.”
For Mrs. Bachmann, it may be too late. Just over four months since her surprise victory in the Iowa straw poll, a contest that typically rewards the candidate with the strongest field organization, Mrs. Bachmann, a founder of the House Tea Party Caucus, has tumbled far from the top tier of candidates. A state poll published by The Des Moines Register the day before Mrs. Bachmann announced her candidacy in June showed her and Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, with significant leads over other candidates. By August, she was on the cover of Newsweek.
But according to the latest Des Moines Register poll, published on Saturday, Mrs. Bachmann now has the support of just 7 percent of likely Republican caucusgoers, ahead of only John M. Huntsman Jr., who has stopped campaigning in the state. In contrast, Mrs. Bachmann has devoted most of her early efforts to Iowa, so a defeat here could raise questions about the viability of her candidacy.
It is unclear what, if any, grass-roots lift she gained from her recent 10-day tour of all 99 counties. And in this last crucial week of campaigning, Mrs. Bachmann suffered from negative publicity that came when her top adviser left for the rival campaign of Representative Ron Paul of Texas. Her response — in which she accused the Paul campaign of essentially bribing her aide, a charge he denied — struck some voters as overly defensive.
And some in her home district have begun to wonder whether Mrs. Bachmann’s presidential aspirations, and the scrutiny that has come with them, have cost her some popularity in Minnesota, where she is expected to run for re-election if she does not become the presidential nominee. Over the course of her campaign in Iowa and in debates, Mrs. Bachmann has made several mistakes that have raised questions about her grasp of certain facts.
There have been other last-minute distractions. On Saturday, just before she was to make one of her final campaign appearances, Occupy the Caucus protesters blocked the entrance to her headquarters when she was scheduled to give her phone bank callers a pep talk and speak with reporters. Some of her supporters got caught in the ruckus.
Inside, her headquarters was packed, but many of the people there were students from Oral Roberts University who had come for the academic experience of watching a campaign in action. Some were receiving college credit. Several of the students were not even Republicans, said Jonathan Townsend, 22, president of the college’s Young Democrats club, who was there.
Still, Mrs. Bachman used the backdrop of young faces to reinforce her message. “I’m a very unique candidate who draws strong support from young people,” she said to a throng of television cameras.
Outside the church on Sunday, Mrs. Bachmann seemed to be making a final argument pitched to social conservatives and evangelicals who have struggled to find an acceptable candidate this election cycle. She stressed that she was the candidate who would fight for “faith, marriage and the protection of life from conception to natural death,” because “it matters what’s true. It matters what’s right.”
When a reporter asked if the recent rise in support for Rick Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, had to do with social conservatives finding him the more electable candidate, she said Iowans should not pay attention to polls or a candidate’s stature so much as character. “Who stands for marriage between a man and a woman?” she said. “Who stands for life, and the protection of human life from conception to natural death? Not just to be politically popular, but who really means it, and who’s going to do something about it?”
Then she called herself “the complete package.”
The pastor of Jubilee Family Church, Bill Tvedt, had all but endorsed Mrs. Bachmann from the altar, stopping short of telling the faithful whom to vote for but extolling her in the most flattering religious language as “a great expositor of the word of God.”
“I’m very moved by her story,” said Suzy King, 53, of Oskaloosa. “I think more Iowans need to pay attention, as the pastor was saying, to a person’s character.”
Ms. King said she found Mrs. Bachmann’s poor poll results “disappointing.”
“I think she’ll place well,” she said. “I’d love to see her come in first place, but if she doesn’t, I’ll accept that.”
For her part, Mrs. Bachmann believes that there are many undecided Iowa voters who will show up to the caucuses and decide, at the last moment, to support her. Before boarding her bus after the church service, she said, “We feel very confident.”
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