Michele Bachmann: crazier and richer than Sarah Palin

Michele Bachmann, the Republican congresswoman whose politics are slightly to the right of Genghis Khan, has raised even more money through her Political Action Committee (PAC) than Sarah Palin.

Yesterday, The First Post reported that Palin has been fundraising with such fervour it was seen as confirmation of her intention to run for the White House in 2012. Will Bachmann beat her to it?

According to Republican blogger Tim Mak, while Palin's 'Sarah PAC' raised more than $865,000 in the second quarter of this year, Bachmann's committee managed $1.7m. This despite a US electoral commission rule which limited the maximum each donor could give her to $2,400, while Palin's benefactors could give up to $5,000.

In March and April of this year, in fact, Palin was even beaten in the fundraising stakes by Mitt Romney – another mooted candidate for 2012. All this prompts speculation about whether Palin is underperforming: has her bubble burst?

As for Bachmann, an anonymous figure in the UK, she is arguably even more a darling of the US right than Palin. Dubbed "batshit crazy" by less kind bloggers on the left, she is a committed Christian who last year equated homosexuality with paedophilia in a speech in Congress.

A hawkish advocate of regime change in Iraq and of the campaign in Afghanistan, she once told the press she knew of a secret territorial deal struck between Iraq and Iran, which was "going to get half of Iraq, and that is going to be a terrorist safe-haven zone where they can go ahead and bring about more attacks in the Middle East, and come against the United States".

During Barack Obama's election campaign she said she was "very concerned that he [Obama] may have anti-American views", while her most high-profile gaffe was to be filmed apparently crouching in the bushes to watch a gay pride march without being seen - she claimed her high heels were bothering her.

If she takes on Palin in a struggle to become the US's first female president, Bachmann will be counting on one powerful ally. She once explained: "God called me to run for the United States Congress."

With her husband, she "took three days, and we fasted and we prayed, and we said, 'Lord, is this what you want? Is this your will?' And long about the afternoon of day two, he made that calling sure." ·