Occasional Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has taken the next and vital step in his 2012 presidential campaign: quiet outreach on Capitol Hill. Why has he taken this dramatic step? Because he is continually polling in the low single digits. And what high profile Republican has he got to lead this crucial next step in his campaign?
Rep. John Kline (R-MN).
When it comes to greasing the wheels and opening doors on Capitol Hill, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) has tapped Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.) to lead his outreach to members ahead of his prospective 2012 White House campaign.
"I have been, frankly, encouraging him to run for president," said Kline, who counts Pawlenty as a constituent and is the governor's first Congressional endorsement, should he run. "Like everyone else, he has not announced that he's doing that."
(CQ Politics)
Really? That's the best he could do? I guess Pawlenty lives in Kline's district if that's worth anything.
Kline isn't exactly a mover and a shaker on Capitol Hill. Kline was a three term back-bencher until at the start of his fourth term he was promoted to ranking minority on the House's Health, Education and Labor Committee for the sole reason that he was scandal-free.
The only positive thing about Kline from Pawlenty's perspective is that Kline is just as conservative as Michele Bachmman which I'm guessing Pawlenty hopes will play well with Republicans in the House.
The article goes on to say that Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-MN) is also introducing Pawlenty to fellow newbies.
And, according to the article, Bachmann isn't helping because she is "not in any camp at all" which taken out of context is pretty funny because ... well ... do I have to spell everything out for ya?
Presidential candidate and occasional Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty is doing everything he can to boost his chances for 2012. In the wake of what Stephen Colbert termed "healthcarepocalypse," Pawlenty is returning to a debunked constitutional claim that the teabaggers really like: mandated health insurance is unconstitutional. Pawlenty is going tenther, again. He's trying to get DFL Attorney General Lori Swanson to do his bidding.
Gov. Tim Pawlenty sent a letter to Attorney General Lori Swanson on Monday urging her to file suit against the federal government to block health care reform from coming to Minnesota. Swanson's office says the bill hasn't even become law yet and the individual mandate doesn't take effect for four more years.
So now that the bill is law, Swanson is in no hurry, according to the MN Independent. Pawlenty will be long gone from the Governor's mansion by the time most parts of the bill are implemented in 2014 anyway.
The funny thing about the Tenthers, is they are quite hypocritical about applying the Tenth Amendment. For example, Pawlenty sure likes all of the federal transportation dollars that flow into MN and I'm sure he wouldn't want to ruin his chances with senior citizens by advocating for the repeal of Medicare.
Poor Tim Pawlenty. The DFLers won't cut him any slack and, apparently, neither will Minnesotans. A recent SurveyUSA poll shows that a majority of Minnesotans don't like the job he's doing. These are his worst numbers as Governor.
Not great news if you're running for president: A new SurveyUSA poll finds that 52% of Minnesotans disapprove of the job Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) is doing and only 42% approve, "giving him some of the lowest marks he's gotten in his seven plus years at the state's helm."
(Political Wire)
It's going to be fun as his 2012 presidential campaign "ramps up" and we Minnesotans get to tell the nation what a rotten Governor he's been. I'm trying to think of slogans for his 2012 campaign.
Rather than governor in the state where he was elected, Tim Pawlenty went to Washington, DC last week and through this weekend to attend and speak at the Conservative Political Action Convention (CPAC). This was an opportunity for him to push his viability as a not-crazy, not-disgraced 2012 presidential candidate. And, boy, did he whelm them. The DNC was kind enough to compile the conservative pundits' reactions to his speech and email it out ...
Jim Geraghty (National Review via Twitter): Tim Pawlenty seemed like a decent, very vanilla guy; his Woods comment today suggests brief demonic possession and/or trying too hard.
Reid Wilson (National Journal Hotline): Pawlenty fell short of the overwhelming ovations other speakers won. On Thursday, ex-MA Gov. Mitt Romney and ex-FL House Speaker Marco Rubio won bigger applause from attendees, while Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) earned more ovations than Pawlenty on Friday.
Ben Smith (Politico): Tim Pawlenty spoke to a drowsy morning crowd in a two-thirds full ballroom at the Conservative Political Action Conference, taking a while to wake up the crowd with a series of folksy jokes.... Pawlenty was at pains to differentiate himself from Romney, referring to his blue-collar roots and to "elites" who eat brie and drink Chablis "at parties in San Francisco."
Mike Memoli (White House Reporter, Real Clear Politics): Well, the good news for Pawlenty is he still has two years to hone a stump speech.
Yup. Governor Teabag did not impress the knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers who dozed through his remarks. You can read more of their reactions here.
It gets worse for Governor Gutshot, though ... cuz they did a poll of attendees ...
2012 Republican presidential candidate and occasional Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty wrote an op-ed at Politico earlier this week. He wrote about our national deficit and, probably without any intent to be ironic, entitled it "Ponzi Scheme on the Potomac." The thing is Pawlenty wants everyone here in Minnesota who knows him to forget that he's been playing a Ponzi scheme on Minnesotans.
First he explained what a Ponzi scheme is. When he lists all the things he thinks prove the federal government is doing is a Ponzi scheme, he probably doesn't want anyone to know that he's done the same thing to Minnesota. Finally gets to the crux of the matter:
That's why we need an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to require a balanced budget with limited exceptions for war, natural disasters and other emergencies. Every state but one has a balanced budget requirement, and while such requirements make for difficult decisions, they work.
The president also should be given line-item veto authority power as a budget enforcement tool. The experience of the states shows that this is an effective way of preventing excessive spending.
[my emphasis]
Imagine Pawlenty with that power in MN? Oh wait, you say? Wouldn't that be something like unallotment? Think about it!?! He could do to our nation what he's done to Minnesota!
2012 Republican presidential candidate and occasional Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has his priorities straight. His presidential ambitions come first. Before his state. Before anything.
So it is no surprise that he's proposing to steal $90 million from Minneapolis kids as part of his plan to slash the state's budget to deal with the financial mess he and his Republican colleagues have created. This is roughly 20% of the Minneapolis school budget.
I have gotten my hands on his proposal on education cuts. You can look up how much he would like to steal from the kids in your town here (warning, PDF). This research is from the nonpartisan House Research folks.
The Rochester Post Bulletin quoted 2012 Republican presidential candidate and occasional Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty saying he "does not intend to take executive action to reduce local-aid payments later this month." I guess he decided that he's damaged Minnesota enough already.
On Tuesday, Pawlenty wrote to city and county leaders to tell them that the second-half payments for this year's state aid won't be touched to help balance Minnesota's $1.2 billion budget deficit for the current two-year budget period.
"Given the imminent expected payment of December local aid, I have determined that additional local aid program cuts, if any, should be focused on future payments," Pawlenty wrote in his letter.
The announcement doesn't make much difference to Tom Dankert, director of administration for the city of Austin.
"It just appears to me the dollars we're still not getting, we're still not getting," he said.
Dankert said further reductions to Local Government Aid -- the state property tax aid that makes up a good chunk of the city's budget -- will still happen. The city has already lost $380, 012 in LGA to unallotments and has balanced the budget by making cuts. The lost LGA represents 3 percent of the city's budget.
If legislators are unable to pass appropriate budget reductions, Pawlenty stated, future state-aid payments likely will be reduced.
If only he'd pull a Palin and quit to focus on his presidential bid. The last thing we need is a GINO (Governor in name only).
2012 Republican presidential candidate and occasional Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty's top priority for the upcoming legislative session is his presidential bid. He will put up a facade of wanting to negotiate with the Democrats, but I'm telling you now that he won't negotiate in good faith. If he negotiates at all.
2012 Republican presidential candidate and occasional Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty appeared on right wing radio the other day. Host Laura Ingraham confronted Pawlenty with a Republican presidential poll in which Pawlenty didn't even make the list.
"Nobody really knows who I am," Pawlenty said. "So, if you have any polls about how people feel about candidates that aren't well known or people who aren't well known, of course, that is the result."
"That doesn't surprise me or concern me, just because outside of Minnesota or a few other places, nobody knows who I am," he added.
Pawlenty also defended his conservative credentials, assuring Ingraham's listeners that he's "a mainstream conservative."
(Politico)
Let me help in case someone wants to get to know the real Tim Pawlenty. By "mainstream conservative" Pawlenty must mean right wing evangelist because he is one. It's no longer breaking news that the Republican Party has lurched so far to the right that loonies like Michele Bachmann, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin now represent the core values of the party. Of course, Pawlenty isn't obviously and demonstrably insane which means that he'll be vying to replace Mike Huckabee as the Republican's Great White Hopebland, boring white guy after Huckabee's downfall for pardoning a cop killer.
Furthermore, most Republicans will appreciate that Pawlenty
wants tougher budget standards for MN even though he has practiced irresponsible borrow-n-spend fiscal policy up until now. In other words, he talks about fiscal responsibility frequently, but never actually practices it.
believes vote fraud is a major problem despite not having any evidence of vote fraud.
2012 Republican presidential candidate and occasional Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty is on the radio airwaves every Friday on WCCO. WCCO has been confronted about allowing Pawlenty air time without allowing a Democrat to provide any counterbalance. WCCO refuses to acknowledge that Pawlenty is a GINO (Guv in name only) and is a full-time presidential candidate.
Gov. Tim Pawlenty has been on WCCO Radio nearly every Friday for almost seven years, carrying on a tradition begun by Jesse Ventura. The Republican governor regularly discusses developments at the State Capitol and frequently takes aim at DFL legislators.
But in the last few months, Pawlenty has also been aiming criticism at another target. He's blasted President Barack Obama on issues ranging from health care reform to the cash for clunkers program.
Democrats have long complained that the "Good Morning Minnesota" program gives Pawlenty an unfair advantage to push his political agenda. They've asked for equal time and filed formal campaign complaints without success. But now Pawlenty is widely viewed as a potential GOP presidential candidate in 2012, and he recently formed a national political action committee to help elect other Republicans.
(MPR)
Considering that any Republican can appear on WCCO's Esme Murphy's Sunday TV show and push any lie they want to without confrontation and WCCO sees no problem in helping Pawlenty's presidential bid, where is the balance?
Doesn't WCCO claim to be unbiased source of news?
Aside from Pat Kessler's occasional reality check, WCCO's political coverage seems to me to be strongly Republican-leaning.
2012 Republican presidential candidate and occasional Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty's presidential campaign official jumped the shark today. Or maybe this is the official kick-off. Hard to tell.
In 2006, Pawlenty talked about how important it was to address global climate change. In 2007, he signed comprehensive legislation to drastically reduce MN's greenhouse gas emissions. However, by 2008 it was clear he wouldn't be implementing the law and had stopped talking about it. Early this year he'd started making jokes that would go over well with the climate change deniers.
Now his transformation is complete:
Speaking to the Economist recently, Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) told reporters that he questions the science underpinning climate change. Pawlenty explained that while the earth might be warming, it is unclear "to what extent that is the result of natural causes." As ThinkProgress has noted, Pawlenty has veered sharply to the right to appease a right-wing, tea party base. Although the tea party movement demands strict adherence to far right positions, as a Democracy Corps study shows, much of the movement sees political issues through a prism that is simply divorced from reality.
2012 Republican presidential candidate and Minnesota GINO Tim Pawlenty (GINO = Governor In Name Only) likes to talk. Since he's a presidential candidate he's going to do it a lot. Unfortunately, he also has a problem of telling different things to different people. He also has the propensity to talk about bipartisanship and doing what's good for Minnesota before legislative sessions then play hardball partisan politics at the end of the session.
He probably would want us to forget this:
Barely a year into his first term, Gov. Tim Pawlenty set out to end long-term homelessness in Minnesota by 2010, an audacious-sounding goal that he insisted was "very real and attainable."
"Our homeless population in Minnesota isn't so large that we can't solve the problem in the near and intermediate term," he said in his January 2004 State of the State address.
Almost six years later, the problem remains. The two-term Republican governor's plan to create housing for the persistently homeless has stalled, with 1,500 of an estimated 4,000 long-term homeless housed and little development this year. Meanwhile, advocates say more people are becoming homeless as the recession and its aftereffects chew into once-stable lives.
(WDAY News6)
January 2004 is at the start of the legislative session. It makes me wonder what actual homelessness bills actually passed and were signed by Pawlenty that session.
It's comical that the compassionate conservative who cared about the welfare of his state back in 2004 has devolved into the hyper-partisan hack presidential candidate of 2009. With hindsight, we can now see that Pawlenty was planning for unallotment at the start of the 2008 legislative session.
2012 Republican presidential candidate and occasional Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has joined sides with some interesting right wing extremists in the NY-23 race. This race pits conservative Democrat Bill Owens, Republican Dede Scozzofava and right wing extremist Doug Hoffman against each other.
This district hasn't elected a Democrat since the Civil War era, but infighting amongst Republicans might gift us the seat. The Republican's circular firing squad had a new development today: the right wing, anti-immigrant vigilante group The Minuteman endorsed Hoffman.
Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate for New York's traditionally Republican 23rd District, has just won the right-wing support of the Minuteman Political Action Committee - the political action arm of a "nativist extremist" armed vigilante group. The Minuteman PAC is currently running Independent Expenditure radio spots and predicts that Hoffman is "positioned to win a landslide victory" over Republican Party nominee Dede Scozzafava.
(Think Progress)
Pawlenty's presidential aspirations hinge upon his ability to win over the knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers and it's interesting that he's climbing into bed with them on NY-23. Since the K-D/M-Bs won't tolerate a candidate who doesn't hate immigrants less than they do, is Gov. Teabag's positions on immigration about to become more explicitly racist?
Newt Gingrich, a man who knows a wee bit about hypocrisy, called his fellow 2012 Republican presidential candidates who endorsed the right wing extremist Doug Hoffman hypocrites today. This group includes Sarah Palin and occasional Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty. I love it when Republicans throw rocks in their glass mansions.
GINGRICH: Well, I just find it fascinating that my many friends who claim to be against Washington having too much power, they claim to be in favor of the 10th Amendment giving states back their rights, they claim to favor local control and local authority, now they suddenly get local control and local authority in upstate New York, they don't like the outcome.
...
So I say to my many conservative friends who suddenly decided that whether they're from Minnesota or Alaska or Texas, they know more than the upstate New York Republicans? I don't think so. And I don't think it's a good precedent. And I think if this third party candidate takes away just enough votes to elect the Democrat, then we will have strengthened Nancy Pelosi by the divisiveness. We will not have strengthened the conservative movement.
Of course, we Minnesotans are used to Pawlenty's hypocrisy. Like talking about bipartisanship and doing what's good for MN before legislative sessions then never negotiating to protect his no-new-taxes pledge. Like saying one thing in front of conservative audiences and the opposite or something completely different when adults are present.
2012 Republican presidential candidate and AWOL Governor of Minnesota Tim Pawlenty endorsed the far right extremist candidate Doug Hoffman in New York's hotly contested special election, NY-23. Pawlenty's rightward swing isn't surprising because he needs to convince the party base that he is a viable candidate. In other words, farther right than Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney.
Interestingly, there is a Republican Party endorsed candidate, but Dede Scozzafava isn't far enough to the right. Doug Hoffman, who defected to the Conservative Party of NY, is. Gov. Teabag joins an illustrious group including Sarah Palin, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Steve Forbes, GOP Head Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and the Club for Growth. I'm probably missing a few neocons and wingnuts who are participating in this circular firing squad.
But I certainly am enjoying it.
See ... this is supposed to be a omen of things to come in the 2010 election. Normally, the party in control (that'd be us) lose seats in mid-term elections. But considering the dysfunction in the Republican Party, you can see why I'm experiencing a wee bit of schadenfreude right now. The Republicans are tearing themselves apart of purity and the Democrat is most likely going to win in a very strongly Republican district. According to Rachel Maddow this will be the first Democrat elected since around 1850.
Speaking to the Economist recently, Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) told reporters that he questions the science underpinning climate change. Pawlenty explained that while the earth might be warming, it is unclear "to what extent that is the result of 
