David Trinh

I’ve secretly been an admirer of Tim Pawlenty for a long time.  Not because any of his politics resonate with my own beliefs, far from it in fact, but because I was under the impression that he belonged to the ‘grownup wing’ of the Republican Party.  As a strong proponent of a competitive two-party system, I thought our good ‘ol boy from Minnesota was poised to become a leading figure in the effort to remake the Republican Party.  Oh boy, was I wrong.  Recently Governor Pawlenty sat down for an interview with the Washington Post and gave some pretty devastating answers on a wide variety of questions:

After starting off with a pretty weak self-deprecating joke, Pawlenty tried to pivot to typical conservative budget fluff:

FINEMAN: How would you propose to balance the federal budget?

PAWLENTY: Rather than looking to raise taxes, we should pass an amendment to require a balanced budget with exceptions for war, natural disasters, and other emergencies. Congress should reduce discretionary spending, with exceptions for key programs such as the military, veterans, and public safety. (Bold mine, DT)

Err, nevermind the fact that outside of such ‘key programs,’ there isn’t really much discretionary spending left to cut.  Few things annoy me more than when politicians treat defense spending as if it belongs in some magical realm where dollars for extravagant weapons programs materialize out of thin air.  Contrary to this line of reasoning, a dollar spent on an unnecessary plane is a dollar that can’t be spent in some other portion of the budget.  What’s more, there’s plenty of fat to cut in the defense budget!

FINEMAN: How do we pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?

PAWLENTY: We have to push for more fiscal responsibility elsewhere. Congress should cut current domestic spending and reject costly new proposals like a government takeover of health care. (Bold mine, DT)

Said ‘government takeover of health care’ reduces the deficit– ’nuff said.

FINEMAN: Was the TARP a good idea?

PAWLENTY: No. I had numerous problems with it. The goal was to ensure that we didn’t have a lending freeze. [But] there was no requirement that lending would occur, and it hasn’t. No. 2, there were no criteria for who would get the money and under what circumstances and for what. I also thought it was too large. (Bold mine, DT)

Excessively generous lending by financial institutions is what caused the financial crisis!  Pawlenty would have preferred a recovery plan that required banks to make the same risky investments which precipitated the crisis to begin with– really?  The key objective of TARP was to provide the banking system with enough capital to restore balance sheets back to relatively sane levels– not to permit the same kind of foolhardy lending to continue unabated.

FINEMAN: Let me ask you about social issues your party has been dealing with. In her book, Palin claims that McCain’s handlers wanted her to be silent about her belief in creationism. How would you describe your view?

PAWLENTY: I can tell you how we handle it in Minnesota. We leave it to the local school districts. We don’t mandate a curriculum or an approach. We allow for something called “intelligent design” to be discussed as a comparative theory. It doesn’t have to be in science class. (Bold mine, DT)

Uh… that’s actually not how the Minnesota school system operates.  I dunno what state Pawlenty has been running for the past seven years but I am reasonably confident that evolution is mandated at the state level and that teachers don’t have the power to teach intelligent design.  After all, if they did have this flexibility, I would have learned nothing but intelligent design in my hometown.

Tim, what happened?  You’re turning into a joke.

Over at MN Progressive Project, Joe Bordell has an interesting, if slightly wonky, post detailing the challenges which face the GOP if they want to carry Minnesota in a presidential election.  I have no problems with Joe’s analysis or his contention that Minnesota is unlikely to flip from Blue to Red in 2012.  I would only add that this is a pretty obvious point that has been obscured over the past few years by talk of Minnesota as a ‘swing state.’

Sure, Minnesota is a ‘swing state’ in some sense of the term—we tend to have competitive gubernatorial and Senate races—but at the Presidential level we’re relatively uncompetitive compared to states like Colorado, Florida or Ohio.  Could Minnesota flip?  In a bad year for Democrats, yes.  But really, if Minnesota is voting Republican than the election is probably a lost cause to begin with.  Remember, the last time Minnesota voted for a Republican presidential candidate was Nixon in 1972.   Minnesota has the longest continuous streak of casting electoral votes for Democrats in the nation; somehow I doubt that Tim Pawlenty’s mediocre approval ratings are going to allow him to break this long tradition in 2012.

Good lord:

Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) of Minnesota, widely seen as a potential moderate savior for the party, is saying he may try interposition/nullification to block the operation of any health care reform in his state. In other words, giving the ole college try to insurrectionary doctrines that were discredited going on two hundred years ago and were last trotted out, more or less as a stunt, by the most rancid of the anti-civil rights Southern governors in the 50s and 60s.

I am a big fan of the idea that Tim Pawlenty could be the ‘great white hope’ that the GOP needs to salvage its dismal brand; however, this belief is predicated on Pawlenty’s single greatest strength: his ability to straddle  the moderate/conservative divide by talking like a centrist but governing as a conservative.   If Pawlenty loses this cred, he’s got nothing– it’s not hard to join the crazy club in the GOP.

Someone get this man some new, saner advisers.

A poll released last Friday showed Barack Obama with a sizable lead over Gov. Pawlenty in a hypothetical presidential matchup in Minnesota:

A new survey from Public Policy Polling of Minnesotans–those lucky souls now boasting a full contingent of two US senators–shows Obama beating Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty in a potential head-to-head presidential matchup, 51 percent to 40 percent. Obama beat John McCain in Minnesota last year by 10 points, carrying 45 counties.

I’m not at all surprised by these numbers.  Obama is still very popular in Minnesota (although his numbers have softened a bit recently) and Pawlenty just made some unpopular budget cuts that are going to adversely affect a wide swath of Minnesotans.  Also, it’s important to remember that Minnesota is a very blue state.  We’ve voted more times in a row for a Democratic presidential candidate than any other state in the Union, gosh darn it!

Should Tim Pawlenty be concerned about these numbers?  Maybe.  In a general election, it sure would help Pawlenty if he could carry Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin which collectively have as many electoral votes as Florida.  Still, I think Gov. Pawlenty could play well throughout the Midwest and old-Northwest (particularly in Ohio and Indiana); in fact, it’s entirely possible Minnesota might be his worst state in a hypothetical campaign, especially in light of voters’ familiarity with some of his more unpopular policies and the Gopher state’s generally left-leaning record.

I can’t figure this out either:

[Rasmussen] also checked out favorable and unfavorable opinions of these putative candidates, and here’s where the numbers get a little wacky: Romney 73/19; Palin 76/21; Huckabee 78/17; Gingrich 65/39. That’s all very predictable. But then there’s Haley Barbour at 34/37, and Tim Pawlenty at 38/33. Only a fifth of Republicans have issues with Palin, while about half of those who seem to have an idea who Haley Barbour and Tim Pawlenty are don’t like them.

…what on earth has Tim Pawlenty done to offend so many Republicans?

Ed Kilgore says this means either that the Rasmussen poll is screwy or that “the perpetual competition among Republican candidates to outperform each other in ideological posturing has evolved into a mandatory exercise.”  Perhaps.  These numbers certainly befuddle me and put more than a little damper on my pet theory that Tim Pawlenty is the dark horse to watch in 2012.

Still, I have to believe that Kilgore’s former reason is much more plausible than his latter.  After all, I would be shocked if 71% of Republican voters could even tell a pollster which state Gov. Pawlenty is the chief executive of, let alone give their opinion of him as a potential presidential candidate.  (This isn’t a slight against the Republican base; it’s simply an observation on the knowledgeability of the average voter.)  Further, there really isn’t anything objectionable about Tim Pawlenty—at least from the standpoint of the average Republican—he may not be ‘shrieking about socialism’ but he’s definitely in the Republican mainstream and nothing about his personal life strikes me as even remotely objectionable.

I think it may be worth Rasmussen’s time to do a double-take on these fishy numbers.

A day after Tim Pawlenty made his presidential ambitions abundantly clear comes news that supporters of Governor Bobby Jindal (which, let’s be honest, probably means Bobby Jindal himself) have established a PAC and are going to begin fundraising for a Jindal 2012 bid for President.

All told, I really doubt the wisdom of this move.  Jindal is up for reelection in 2011 and it would be unbelievably awkward for him to turn around immediately after he has won reelection and begin running for President.  Indeed, to be a serious candidate, Jindal would likely have to start making trips during Louisiana’s general election.  I know we’re talking about a ruby red stat, but wasn’t this preemptive presidential campaigning the same sort of dunderheaded strategy that hurt Senator George Allen in 2006?  True, Jindal might earn a little extra time by winning a majority outright in November 2011 (and thus bypass Louisiana’s December runoff) but that still leaves only two weeks for serious campaigning before the Iowa caucus-a state that a relative unknown like Jindal would have to do well in to be considered viable.

Interesting enough, a similar dynamic is at work in the upcoming gubernatorial election here in Minnesota.  In my opinion, one of the strongest DFL contenders is the mayor of Minneapolis, RT Rybak.  Unfortunately for RT, the Minneapolis mayoral elections are this November and the DFL caucuses follow less than three months later in early February.  Many, including myself, have been talking up Rybak as an attractive candidate but like Jindal he is going to have to make an uncomfortable pivot from a citywide campaign to a statewide campaign in a matter of weeks.  Could Rybak pull this off?  He is after all a talented politician (and had the good sense to endorse Barack Obama before Obama himself knew he was running for president), but such a quick reversal could certainly grate many DFL caucusgoers.

Polinaut, via Washington Whispers, is reporting that Tim Pawlenty is gearing up for what everyone expected-a run for president:

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who has decided against running for a third term in 2010, will spend the next two years traveling the country to see if he can build enough support to run for president in 2012, according to associates. The Republican, who is expected to play up his humble roots and past in a populist bid against President Obama, will decide in 2011 if there is enough of a base on which to build his campaign. Those close to “T-Paw” said that his focus is the presidency, not a vice presidential nomination or an effort to raise his name recognition en route to a bid in 2016. When Pawlenty made his decision to stick to just two terms, it was viewed as his opening move in the 2012 campaign. GOP officials believe that he is likely to face Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, and others in the early primaries and caucuses if he decides to run.

Scheck notes that Pawlenty is going to need to focus on his outstate fundraising, as he has never before been forced to look outside Minnesota for dollars in previous campaigns.  Certainly this will be an issue for Pawlenty’s candidacy, although I would assume that Pawlenty’s stint as chairman of the National Governor’s Association left him with a few contacts he can leverage into campaign cash.   Additionally, I think it’s important to remember that last sentence from Washington Whispers; Tim Pawlenty’s opponents are expected to be Romney, Palin, Huckabee and Newt Gingrich.

Honestly, this really is shaping up to be one of the weakest field of candidates in recent history on the GOP side: a washed up one-term Governor who had to reverse his position on a string of hot-button issues and who is widely distrusted by the GOP base, a bumbling Governor from a small state who embarrassed herself during a national campaign and is loathed by the general electorate, an extreme social conservative who threatens the interests of economic conservatives and who has little-to-no foreign policy experience, all in a field with a highly disgraced former-Speaker of the House.  What fun!

Seriously-if this field stays static, isn’t this race Pawlenty’s to lose?

Everyone is making much ado about the fact that Sarah Palin failed to make the list of ‘who speaks for the Republican party today.’  Kevin Drum even makes a funny by saying that this “shows a disturbing amount of common sense from the loyal opposition.”

Perhaps.  However, after reading Gallup’s write-up about this poll I think it’s FAR more likely that the pollster simply failed to include Governor Palin on their list of spokespeople, an oversight that led to her being overlooked by poll respondents.  This theory, I believe, is  supported by Gallup’s inclusion on an ‘other’ category that likely includes Palin and which scored a respectable 9%.

I might be wrong about Gallup’s methodology but hopefully we’ll still have good ol’ Sarah to kick around for a few more years.

[Additionally, I'd just like to note that the severe dearth of GOP leaders means Tim Pawlenty is only that much better placed to secure the Republican nomination in 2012.  Honestly, he really is the only non-crazy name in that bunch (other than Romney, but I'm still convinced he's too fake to play with the Republican base).  Given that Jindal and Huntsman look like they're going to bide their time until 2016, I'm thinking about getting into the Intrade market to buy up some Pawlenty shares.]

It seems I was unusually prescient about the obstacles in Al Franken’s way as he seeks his US Senate seat.  Gov. Pawlenty announced today that he will not seek a third term as governor of Minnesota, a move which is seen by many, myself included, to signal that the Governor is transitioning to a presidential campaign in 2010.  Pawlenty, who is widely perceived as a moderate to center-right governor will need to reestablish his conservative credentials (a process he has already begun, as demonstrated by his punitive budget cuts) and working with Senate Republicans to deny Democrats 60 votes in the Senate will help him demonstrate his partisan foison.

All of the above is conventional wisdom.  What actually puzzles me is what exactly the GOP nomination in 2012 is worth to Tim Pawlenty.  Quite a lot can change in three years, but I think it’s fair to say that President Obama will likely be a formidable foe in the general election.  Especially when you consider the disorganized and demoralized state of the Republican Party, it’s difficult to see the current GOP managing to take back the White House.

I believe Pawlenty is aware of this dynamic and that is why I don’t believe he actually expects to win his party’s nomination, nor do I believe he is particularly interested in being put on the ticket as a vice-presidential pick.  Rather, I believe Pawlenty will leverage the coming campaign to raise his national profile (he is still something of an unknown outside the Midwest) and position himself for the presidential race in 2016.

Tim Pawlenty is and ought to be a very attractive candidate for the Republican Party.  He is Mitt Romney, sans Mormonism and general fakery.  He is attractive, hails from a swing state, and has a compelling personal story (first in his family to graduate college, son of a single father and truck driver, etc.) which will make him attractive to a wide swathe of the electorate-particularly lower income Americans.   Of all the names floating around in GOP circles right now, Gov. Huntsman included, I believe Pawlenty is the name Democrats should remember most.