I can't believe that I have gotten into a little tiff over Michelle Bachmann. I understand why because when people talk in religious terms, specifically Christian terms I will clarify because that is what I know, they tend not to speak and explain fully. Do you ever wonder why deeply religious Christians carry a Bible around with them everywhere? With highly religious Christians like that, because when they talk they reference the Bible so much, they have to use the Bible to confirm what another devout Christian tells them. Go to any downtown street corner of a major American city and you will have the street preacher arguing with the religious absolutist about the same passage in the Bible. Both will have their own interpretation of it, and both won't admit it is a futile argument because in the end the passage is written for interpretation.

Michelle Bachmann, at the Iowa debate, answered a question about a statement she made earlier where she said she submitted to her husband to become a tax attorney. She equated submission with respect. Pundits mostly everywhere, including people I yack with on Facebook, thought she was changing the meaning of the word.

Not to fully defend her, but Bachmann, I believe, was using the Christian dictionary in her head when she said submission means respect. It's kind of a polite way of saying she gave what she thought was the right answer to the wrong crowd.

When I said pundits mostly everywhere had problems with her, notice the audience groaned at the question, not the answer. If you listened to devout Christian bloggers and pundits they had no problem with her answer. If you do a Google search on wives being submissive to husbands, you will get an education in word gymnastics. There is a lot of words it takes to get from submissive to respect, but looking at through a number of Bible verses, this is how the interpretation fits for devout Christians. A wife must be submissive to the husband because there can only be one head of the household, according to the interpretation. Kids submit to their parents, people submit to governments and everyone submits to the higher power. Those are talked about in very different areas of the Bible, and how they all tie together to the respect part is one big trickle down theory. Everyone can pray to God, but in our selfish nature we can manipulate those words to fit what we want, in some cases. In the Bible case, we should respect the words of others we submit to because the truth of God will come through their mouths. That's why the respect comes in, because while we are suppose to submit, we also respect the words these people tell us because it all comes from God.

So if Michelle Bachmann was being honest and was tailoring her words to a skeptical audience, she would have joked that she didn't want to be a tax attorney, but her husband nagged her so much she submitted to his request. In retrospect, I knew in my heart I should do it but I needed the nudging I got from my husband to do the right thing.

Now, I can hear the groaning of some people, still insisting she didn't say that. Listen to any politician who runs for office. At some point, they will tell the same story about how their significant other forced them to go into politics. They never go on their own; it is a wife, co-workers, family, whatever that puts pressure on them to do something, they claim, they didn't want to do. That's what Bachmann said, but she got caught in her religious verbiage.

As much as I have defended her in this article, I could be completely wrong with my interpretation, and that is where I definitely agree with people that this is a strange possibility. The reporter asking the question also didn't phrase what he said correctly, because the real issue people want to know is, when leadership decisions need to be made, will it be Bachmann or her husband calling the shots? While this has been a political question since the 2 for 1 comment by Bill Clinton, this is a situation where the candidate publicly stated she was submissive to her husband to the point of taking a course of action he suggested blindly. That is dangerous.