Michele Bachmann not qualified to be president, says former chief of staff Ron Carey

Bachmann: Not ready for prime time, according to her former chief of staff.

​Ron Carey is one of Rep. Michele Bachmann's former chiefs of staff. He's the former chairman of the Minnesota GOP.

Now, as Bachmann gets ready to deliver an important speech this morning to conservatives in Washington, D.C., he says that she isn't electable, and isn't qualified to be president.

How embarrassing.

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"While she passes the conservative test, my opinion from my association with her is she's not going to be an electable candidate for us," he told AP. "And even if she were elected, I don't believe she would be ready for the position of the president of the United States."

​Bachmann has teased her tea party fans and the press for weeks now with a carefully orchestrated idea that she may throw her hat into the 2012 presidential election ring.

She's making trips to Iowa.

She did an end-run around GOP leaders and delivered her own State of the Union response.

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And she's scheduled to deliver the keynote speech this morning at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C.

Carey's lead-in has to sting. It's one thing for her to be mocked for ineptitude on Saturday Night Live, or to have a former Democratic president, Bill Clinton, use an international stage to denounce her as divorced from reality.

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But Carey was an insider. Carey was the fifth chief of staff in four years on Bachmann's team. He took over in February 2010 from Michelle Marston, who helped engineer Bachman's anti-health-care-reform protest in Washington, D.C. That was the same rally where Sean Hannity was busted by Jon Stewart for a bogus video clip that vastly inflated the size of the crowd.

After Marston's departure, one GOP congressman told Politico that Bachmann couldn't hold on to staff because of her penchant for headlines and fact-challenged rhetoric.

"When your captain's crazy, it's time to find a new ship," the lawmaker said.

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