Bachmann Flubs Fifth Grade American History

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) made a high profile trip to New Hampshire today as part of a potential 2012 presidential run, but the tea party favorite, who often refers to the early days of the Republic in speeches and media appearances, embarrassingly mangled basic American history, incorrectly stating that the battles of Lexington and Concord, and the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock, to have occurred in New Hampshire, instead of Massachusetts:

“What I love about New Hampshire and what we have in common is our extreme love for liberty,” the potential GOP presidential candidate said. “You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord. And you put a marker in the ground and paid with the blood of your ancestors the very first price that had to be paid to make this the most magnificent nation that has ever arisen in the annals of man in 5,000 years of recorded history.” [...]
“I’m thankful that you are the first in the nation state because you are the liberty state,” Bachmann said. “That is your charge. You keep that baton of liberty. You’ve done it very well for almost 20 generations from the time the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, and I’m sure the very first one came up to New Hampshire and said, ‘This is where I want to be.’”

Of course, as the school children in attendance at the speech could likely tell her, the Battles of Lexington and Concord that sparked the American revolution in 1775, and the Pilgrims’ landing, took place in Massachusetts, not New Hampshire, “but Bachmann did not correct her error when she referenced the battles again later in her speech.” Ironically, The Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire, which hosted the event, handed out pocket-sized copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution “on a table a few feet from where Bachmann spoke.”

This is hardly the first time Bachmann has flubbed the country’s basic history. She hasrepeatedly pronounced that America was founded on diversity and guaranteed freedom for all from its beginning, completely whitewashing the existence of slavery from America’s past. In January, CNN host Anderson Cooper lambasted Bachmann for “flunking history,” saying her diversity comments were “either a deliberate rewriting of our history, or signs that she has a shaky grasp on our history.”