Is there is a relationship between Michele Bachmann's fingernails and her political significance? It seems that as Michele's popularity fluctuates, so too do the size and heft of her signature French tips. Come, let us embark on an exhaustive analysis of Michele Bachmann's cuticles, because, why not?

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[Images via AP]

Recent months have been rough on our flashy-nailed foal. She's down in the polls, her campaign is broke, nobody listens to her, and her entire New Hampshire staff quit. During this time of difficulty, Michele has favored squared-off nails with sizable French tips. Substantial, intimidating, impossible to ignore: Everything Bachmann needs to be if she wants to stay in the race. If only her nails were made out of money. [Images via AP]

Back in the heady days of summer, Michele was the GOP frontrunner. Her nails were longer and less desperate-looking back then, due to a higher pink-to-white ratio, I think.

Of course the GOP race was easier back then, before people started asking hard questions like "Is that a fact, or did you just make it up?" The above photograph was taken at the end of July, shortly before she won the Iowa straw poll. [Images via AP]

But life as the frontrunner is hard! You could crack under the pressure. You could break. Break a nail. Like Michele maybe-possibly did here, shortly after the straw poll. Unless it was a paper cut? [Images via AP]

Back before the cracks began to show, on the day in June when she announced her presidential candidacy, Bachmann's French tips were more modest. Did her fingernails grow with her power? Or do her fingernails actually create her power, just as Samson's hair was the source of his strength, and Katy Perry's boobs comprise her 100% of her talent?

Sidenote: That ring! Marcus Bachmann always had an eye for the finer things. [Images via AP]

Before 2011, Michele rarely sported fake nails in public. (What a consenting woman does in the privacy of her home and nail salon, I would not presume to know.) Photos from her days in Minnesota state politics (at left, 2006) show short, bare nails. Bachmann celebrated her 2006 election to U.S. Congress with a French manicure atop what appears to be natural nails, then returned to bare nails in nearly every photograph of her from then until 2011. At right, attending an anti-healthcare bill rally in March 2010. [Images via AP and Getty]

Of course, Bachmann is not the first politician to sport fancy nails. Remember when Sarah Palin's toenails were the most exciting cuticles in politics? Oh, how the least significant superficial details of two random people in the political landscape have changed! [Images via Getty]