Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann on Wednesday told Christian students at Liberty University in Virginia "don't settle" for easy personal and political choices in life.
During a half-hour address to some 10,000 students at Liberty's weekly campus-wide convocation, she briefly tied a message mostly about personal values and responsibility to an appeal to reject President Barack Obama's agenda, including his health care reforms.
She made no mention of her GOP primary rivals in a talk laced with Scripture that took on the tone of a sermon, Associated Press reported.
Badly trailing front-runners Rick Perry and Mitt Romney and struggling in national polls, Bachmann sought a breakout moment with her base of support - Christian conservatives.
Liberty's chancellor, Jerry Falwell Jr., said Bachmann won a recent student straw poll over the GOP field, largely because of her evangelical roots.
Bachmann evoked a few standing ovations and an occasional amen in speaking of her conversion to Christianity and how she would set her alarm for 5 a.m. as a teen so she could wake and read the Bible.
"Even though I hadn't been a drinker, even though I never did drugs ... even though I hadn't been chasing around, it didn't matter. I was a sinner," she said. "I radically abandoned myself to Jesus Christ."
