Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and the Daily Caller marked the occasion of author Gore Vidal's death by recounting a story Bachmann has told before: That her disgust with a Vidal novel was what finally influenced her to become a Republican in the late 1970's.

"It's very interesting because I had been a Democrats — and I'd actually worked on Jimmy Carter's campaign. And I was reading a novel by Gore Vidal, and when I was reading it he was mocking the Founding Fathers. And all of a sudden it just occurred to me: I set the book down on my lap, I looked out the window of a train I was riding in, and I thought to myself, 'I don't think I'm a Democrat. I think I really am a Republican.' Because the Founding Fathers were not the characters that I saw Gore Vidal portraying in his novel.

"And that snotty, mocking attitude, to me didn't reflect in any way who we are as a nation. And I just thought that's a completely different philosophical view of the United States. And I know that Gore Vidal has passed away today, I understood he was 86 years old. And it's interesting how his work — while he intended I think one particular way — it was used actually to help me see a completely different way, which is the conservative way. And I started then examining the conservative position, and realized at heart I really am a conservative. And that's far more reflective of American values, than the values that Gore Vidal was espousing."