Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann stopped just short of endorsing Mitt Romney on Sunday, saying she was “very seriously looking into an endorsement.”
“I think we're seeing a uniting and a pulling together around our eventual nominee," she said on NBC’s Meet the Press. "And I have said that I want my voice to be one of uniting our party, the independents, the mainstream, conservatives, evangelicals, the tea party movement. I want to unite our party.”
Bachmann dropped out of the GOP primary race in early January and has yet to endorse any of her former opponents. But with only three candidates left in the race, and Romney the presumptive nominee, Bachmann has little to lose endorsing Romney. And perhaps little to gain as well.
Still, Bachmann offered glowing praise of Romney on Sunday, a man she once derided, along with Newt Gingrich, as an establishment, insider candidate. In debates and elsewhere, she referred to both men collectively as "Newt-Romney."
But on Sunday, Bachmann called Romney "an extremely smart guy," saying that Americans lives will be "far more improved with a proven, smart, successful businessman like Mitt Romney than someone like Barack Obama, who can only blame his predecessor for his current economic poor choices.”
Bachmann also weighed in on the recent controversy surrounding comments Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen made about Ann Romney. Rosen said Romney “has actually never worked a day in her life,” touching off several days of controversy as Republicans and Democrats clashed over the issue.
Bachmann called the comments “shocking and insulting,” and drew from her own experience to defend stay-at-home moms. “When women are home full-time, they probably have a better pulse on the economy than even their husbands have, because they're the ones who are directly impacted by the price of groceries, by the price of gasoline, by the price of dealing with banking and with all the other factors of running a home,” she said.