With Stakes for Bachmann Higher Now, Her Words Get in the Way - You can be a cable television darling by saying provocative things, but not President.

From The New York Times:

In the pugilism of this week’s Republican presidential debate, Representative Michele Bachmann seemed to have landed a clean blow against Gov. Rick Perry over an order he issued requiring Texas schoolgirls to be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted virus.

But then in follow-up interviews, Mrs. Bachmann suggested the vaccine was linked to “mental retardation.”

As experts quickly pointed out, there is no evidence whatsoever linking the vaccine to mental retardation — and Mrs. Bachmann ended up shifting the focus off Mr. Perry and on to her long-running penchant for exaggeration.

It is a pattern her current and former aides know well — her tendency to let her passion for an issue overwhelm a sober look at the facts, resulting in indefensible remarks that, in a presidential primary race, are raising questions about her judgment and maturity.

“She made a mistake,” said Ed Rollins, Mrs. Bachmann’s former campaign manager and still a senior adviser, on Wednesday in an interview with MSNBC.

“Mrs. Bachmann’s an emotional person who basically has great feeling for people,” he added. “Obviously she’d have been better if she had stayed on the issue.”

People close to the campaign echoed Mr. Rollins. They spoke of their frustration that Mrs. Bachmann, who entered the race with a reputation for making unsupportable statements on cable television, has not found the discipline to win credibility with major Republican donors and influential referees in the conservative news media.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, for one, accused her of “vaccine demagoguery.”

Jim Dyke, a former communications director for the Republican National Committee unaffiliated with any candidate, said: “This is the nail in the coffin in her campaign. Because you can be a cable television darling by saying provocative things, but you can’t be president of the United States.