The True Believer

Becky Magee is one of Michele Bachmann's biggest fans. "I love her," the bubbly 50-ish woman exclaimed minutes after Bachmann electrified a crowd in Aiken, S.C., on July 19. Speaking to about 150 people in an alley off the town's main square, Bachmann had vowed to repeal the "abomination" of Obamacare and to slash federal spending and regulations, which she likened to "tying cement blocks onto the job creators in this country." As usual, the petite Minnesota Congresswoman delivered a fireworks display of colorful metaphors. "They're now experiencing morbid obesity in Washington," she said. "They're gonna go on a diet!"

Magee relished the performance, particularly Bachmann's vow that Barack Obama would be "a one-term President" — a phrase familiar enough to members of the crowd from her first declaration at a recent debate that they chanted along with every word. "I want her to take our country back — and may God go with her," Magee said. "Obama is ..." She searched for the right words. "It's just like evil has taken over." (See why Iowa republicans love Michele Bachmann.)

Plenty of Republican voters see American politics as nothing less than a battle between good and evil, and sometimes especially one with biblical overtones. (Magee likened modern America to "the last days of Saul.") For months, those voters just couldn't get excited about their party's 2012 presidential contenders. Mitt Romney's record is full of ideological heresies. Tim Pawlenty fails to inspire. Newt Gingrich has baggage galore. But ever since Bachmann joined the presidential race in June, she has been thrilling voters like Magee. Polls show Bachmann running first in Iowa, the first test of 2012 (and a state where 60% of caucusgoers called themselves Evangelicals in 2008), and running second to Romney in New Hampshire. She placed first in a July 19 nationwide poll of Republicans, with 21% to Romney's 20%. And the money is following the poll numbers. In just a few weeks of fundraising, Bachmann pulled in more than $2 million — or about half the haul of former Minnesota governor Pawlenty, who has been running at full speed for months. That's why some Republican insiders have gone from chuckling at Bachmann as a woman in search of her own talk show to contemplating the possibility that she might win the Republican nomination. "I think Michele is the real deal, and she is not to be underestimated," says longtime Christian conservative activist Ralph Reed.

Follow-Up Act
Now that she's translated her political celebrity into early campaign momentum, the easy part is over. Even in Iowa, where she was born before her family moved one state north, she's drawing only about a quarter of Republican voters. The question is whether she can broaden that appeal to become more than a cathartic primal scream from the party's base, a conservative Howard Dean for 2012. "She's shaken up the race," says Republican consultant Scott Reed (no relation to Ralph). But he notes that while Bachmann may win Iowa, it remains unclear how she'll fare in states with less conservative Republican electorates. "She needs a follow-up act," he says. (See inside Bachmann's fundraising magic.)

For the moment, she is banking on voter frustration with the extended Washington fight over the federal debt limit. While most of her campaign rivals hem and haw, Bachmann has outflanked them, and even some stalwart conservative GOP members of Congress, by opposing any debt-limit increase. "I have the will and I have the courage to see this through," she declares in a new television ad airing in Iowa. Bachmann was one of just nine Republicans to oppose a House GOP — backed "cap, cut and balance" bill — which Democrats called radical — because, she said, it didn't go far enough. Such stands may help her overcome fresh scrutiny about her past, including the five years she spent hounding tax delinquents as an attorney for the Internal Revenue Service.

Perhaps more worrisome for Bachmann is the slew of disgruntled former aides — she has burned through staff the way a chain smoker goes through Camel Lights — sharing unflattering stories with reporters about her temperament and health. The morning she visited South Carolina, Bachmann was contending with a report in the online Daily Caller, sourced to anonymous ex-aides, that she suffers from "incapacitating" migraine headaches that force her to miss important events. A former aide confirmed this account to TIME, adding that the headaches seemed "stress-induced," particularly "if things didn't go the way she wanted."

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