tim pawlenty – Page 2

Tim Pawlenty comes out against farm subsidies. In Iowa.

In his official speech kicking off his campaign:

I’m here today to tell Iowans the truth, too.

America is facing a crushing debt crisis the likes of which we’ve never seen before. We need to cut spending, and we need to cut it…big time. The hard truth is that there are no longer any sacred programs.

The truth about federal energy subsidies, including federal subsidies for ethanol, is that they have to be phased out. We need to do it gradually. We need to do it fairly. But we need to do it.

Continue reading Tim Pawlenty comes out against farm subsidies. In Iowa.

Annnnnnd Tim Pawlenty’s in, with ‘A Time for Truth.’ [UPDATE!]

[UPDATE] Whoa, whoa, WHOA. Tim Pawlenty’s going to start off his candidacy by ‘speaking truthfully about farm subsidies‘?

Speaking truthfully about farm subsidies?

In IOWA?

Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty released this video (“A Time For Truth”) last night:

…and he’s going to be formally announcing his candidacy at a town hall today in Iowa. My basic take from both the video above, and the excerpts from his planned speech that I’ve seen: Pawlenty’s going to be focused primarily on going after the President, and not worry quite so much about his fellow-Republican candidates. At least, that’s the impression that I get from him taking the opportunity in both to essentially call the President a liar… Continue reading Annnnnnd Tim Pawlenty’s in, with ‘A Time for Truth.’ [UPDATE!]

Tim Pawlenty will officially be running for President tomorrow.

The word is that former Governor Tim Pawlenty will officially announce tomorrow in a town hall in Des Moines, Iowa; judging from his campaign videos, this will be heralded by an overflight of a squadron of F-15E Strike Eagles, an announcement that Minnesota genetic researchers have recreated the passenger pigeon, and T-Paw personally leading a mission to disable the Yellowstone super-volcano caldera before it erupts and destroys the North American continent.

Also, there will be pie.

I kid, I kid: but Tim Pawlenty is certainly taking this campaign highly seriously, and I expect that he’ll be upping said campaigning a good deal in the next few months. With Mike Huckabee and Mitch Daniels out, it’s increasingly looking like Pawlenty is lining up to be the guy to go to if you don’t want to support Romney*. Despite the fact that (at the moment) I am tending towards formally personally endorsing Pawlenty for the nomination, I would actually prefer that the field remain crowded for a bit longer. If only because it frustrates the Democrats so not to have an obvious target for their upcoming smear campaign.

Last thought: you have to wonder whether Rick Perry of Texas is taking a second look. Right now Pawlenty’s in an excellent position to clean up in South Carolina, but Perry could win that state’s primary.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Continue reading Tim Pawlenty will officially be running for President tomorrow.

#rsrh QotD, Get On The Blandwagon! Edition.

Jay Cost, after demonstrating that ‘enthusiasm’ is most useful in the primaries, but perhaps not so much in the general:

…it is not necessarily a problem for Republicans if they are not tremendously enthused about their nominee next year. Conservative dislike of Obama will take care of any enthusiasm gap in the general election. What they need to find is a candidate who shares their values, who can appeal to the middle of the electorate, who will as president implement as much of the party’s agenda as possible, and who can retain the support of the independents during his term. That candidate might turn out to be dull. But he’d still be a keeper. And very possibly a winner.

I have to agree (and I’m coming pretty close to formally endorsing Tim Pawlenty, which should surprise nobody), and it’s partially because of this old graph:

There’s ‘bad,’ and then there’s ‘worse.’ I suspect that the Republican base has had a crash course in the differences between the two, over the last four years*…

Moe Lane

*Democratic activists absolutely hate it when you remind people that their party began seriously mucking things up when they took Congress in 2007. Pass it on!

No, NYT: Tim Pawlenty is not much like John Edwards.

I think that the Old Grey Lady may be a touch worried about the way that former governor Tim Pawlenty is handling his awkward past support of job-killing cap-and-trade schemes:

…Mr. Pawlenty looked right at the camera after the radio ad played, apologized to the American people, and said he had made a “mistake.”

“I’ve said I was wrong. It was a mistake, and I’m sorry,” Mr. Pawlenty told the Fox television audience, presumably filled with potential Republican primary voters. “You’re going to have a few clunkers in your record, and we all do, and that’s one of mine. I just admit it. I don’t try to duck it, bob it, weave it, try to explain it away. I’m just telling you, I made a mistake.”

…particularly since Pawlenty also didn’t take the opportunity to deflect the issue by slamming other Republicans, past and present*. That’s not exactly what you’d call welcome news for some; which no doubt has nothing to do with the fact that the NYT attempted to compare this behavior with… wait for it, wait for it… John Edwards: Continue reading No, NYT: Tim Pawlenty is *not* much like John Edwards.

Tim Pawlenty and the Tea Party.

Interesting post here about Tim Pawlenty and the Tea Party:

A two-term governor who typically emphasizes substance over style, Pawlenty has long been setting the groundwork to run a conventional campaign. He carries many of the calling cards of the kind of “safe” GOP candidates who have, in every presidential election of the modern era, beaten back challenges from grassroots favorites who eventually fizzled out in the end.

Though he may lack the rhetorical sizzle of some of the more fiery White House aspirants, including Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain and Pawlenty’s fellow Minnesotan Rep. Michele Bachmann, Pawlenty has been increasingly aggressive in his efforts to court the insurgent wing of the GOP and has fully embraced the language of the tea party.

Some interesting speculation in there on Iowa, South Carolina, and (especially) New Hampshire. When it comes to South Carolina, I do wonder whether Pawlenty’s commitment to the Thursday debate will help make up Governor Nikki Haley’s mind on an endorsement, now that Gov. Haley Barbour’s out of the race and Gov. Mitch Daniels looks increasingly unlikely to run. I guess we’ll see.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

The Obama Facebook thing today.

Let’s establish something, right from the start *. Tim Pawlenty has a reason besides the stated one in calling for submissions for awkward questions to ask President Obama at today’s gelded Facebook ‘event.’ For those who don’t know, the President is using Facebook to… use Facebook, apparently. Shows that the President’s hip to this entire social media thing, because nothing shouts ‘responsive’ and ‘new media’ by taking carefully screened questions, and answering them with ten minutes of blather apiece.

Anyway: while Pawlenty’s stated reason is, well, reasonable enough – everybody knows that the President’s not going to get a question harsher than ‘Has the intoxicating scent of unicorn flatulence ever affected your job performance?’ – the actual goal here is to get the contact information of all those people who are: paying attention; exasperated with the President already; and energized enough to want to raise a bit of a ruckus. Now, admittedly I may be prejudiced by having Tim Pawlenty be currently at the top of my list – but that hardly sounds like a bad thing. And I suggest that the rest of the GOP field may want to step up their own efforts to get in regular contact with the folks that already give a tinker’s dam about what’s going on.

Because that’s your cadre, right there.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*I respect your collective intelligence, even if it’s an open question whether the current President does.

#rsrh Obama getting in digs against Pawlenty early.

Why else lie about the Minnesota bridge collapse?

Mr. Obama noted that the United States has been given a “D” grade for its infrastructure and said U.S. roads, sewers and bridges are “all deteriorating.” He added: “We cut transportation by another third and what’s going to happen to America? We’re just going to have potholes everywhere? We’re just gonna have bridges collapsing everywhere?”

While experts say America’s aging infrastructure is a significant problem, the bridge collapse in Minnesota, which killed 13 people, was found to have been caused primarily by a design flaw.

Admittedly, that’s about the only thing that the Democrats actually have on Tim Pawlenty, so I suppose that they think that they might as well try to milk the deaths of 13 people for partisan gain. One has to have one’s priorities in order, after all – and there’s almost nothing more important to President Obama right now than getting re-elected*.

Via Hot Air and Jim Geraghty.

Moe Lane

*I refuse to believe that he’d do anything to hurt his kids.

The Quiet Man.

My friend and RS colleague Erick Erickson has just put up a post noting that former Governor Tim Pawlenty has picked up a top-notch campaign manager in Nick Ayers. Erick rightly notes that this is a strong indicator that you have to take Pawlenty seriously as a Presidential candidate; Ayers was actively courted by everybody, and it’s unlikely that he’d sign on with a campaign that couldn’t win. What I’d like to do here, though, is use this opportunity to point out a video from last year that might help explain why this campaign should be taken as seriously as Erick now is.

Continue reading The Quiet Man.

Tim Pawlenty’s new, entertaining, campaign ad.

(H/T: @jaketapper) Tim Pawlenty’s got a new campaign ad out (“A New Direction“) in response to the President’s formal announcement that he’s running again; and it features… Paul Krugman. Paul Krugman, criticizing Washington for giving up on jobs.

I don’t care who you are: that’s just funny, right there. If you’ve lost Paul Krugman…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Tim Pawlenty’s site is here.

PPS: Also: “How can America win the future if we’re losing the present?” I may not know who the nominee is going to be – but that’s going to be the question of the campaign, right there.