WASHINGTON – When Marcus Bachmann came home that Saturday evening in 2000 he checked the telephone answering machine and was mystified by the many messages congratulating his wife for something. “Michele,” he said, “do you have something to tell me?” She did.

The state senator from her district in suburban Minneapolis-St. Paul had been in office for 17 years, had stopped being pro-life and started supporting tax increases, so that morning she had skipped washing her hair, put on jeans and a tattered sweatshirt and went to the local Republican nominating caucus to ask him a few poin...

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