Tim Pawlenty, Bragging About His '05 Government Shutdown, is Toast
How done is former governor of Minnesota Tim Pawlenty with his own state? Today the candidate for the 2012 Republican nomination released an ad bragging about how, as governor, he shut down state government in 2005.
Pawlenty knows his own former Minnesota Republican party is screaming bloody murder because the Democratic governor elected to follow him just shut down state government, right? Yes, Pawlenty knows and doesn't care; as a GOP nominee he stands to accomplish the impossible in Minnesota.
Recent poll numbers show that Pawlenty wouldn't even carry his native Minnesota, a swing state no less, against Obama, with votes going 51 percent for Obama and only 43 percent for T-Paw. Sure, Bachmann, also a Minnesotan, loses 56% to 35%, but she's a joke candidate, of whom the press will tire soon. Pawlenty is a guy everyone talked about as a serious possibility.
Just how terrible is this? Minnesota is the only–only!–state that did not go for Reagan in 1984 because it voted instead for native son Walter Mondale.
The one state that did not vote for the Gipper in his prime because it felt obligated to stick with the homeboy now will not vote for its own once-governor. Jeez.
Abe Sauer can be reached at abesauer at gmail dot com.
Wow, at least Gore had the excuse that he was from Tennessee on "paper only" (being a senator's son, and really being from DC) when he lost his home state.
I think the usual caveats are worth noting here, which is that the first primary contest is still some months away, and the presidential vote is more than a year away. Polls this far out don't mean a lot, as once you get to the actual votes in IA and NH, all the dynamics will change. And if Pawlenty were the GOP nominee, that would instantly improve his competitive ability, and MN would be in play, even if he's poisoning his potential to ultimately take it.
Pawlenty is probably an also-ran, but it's too early to play anyone's dirge, and not because of polls.
@heroofthebeach To which I would add that the DFL was much stronger in Mondale's day.
Mondale also won the District of Columbia, which I know is not a state, but gets dissed enough that the occasional shout-out is warranted.
Did Mr. Bookman from that Seinfeld library episode do the voice-over for that ad? A concerned citizen demands answers Mr. Pawlenty.
Abe, your usual savvy about the subtleties of midwestern politics may be deserting you here. Pawlenty never won statewide office in Minnesota by significant (or even actual) majorities. His success, like Bachmann's and like almost all other "extreme" conservatives in Minnesota during the last decade, came from the DFL's continuing inability to come up with a program that will stop defections to Independence/Reform candidates. It isn't a surprise that his home support looks weak in a straight, two-horse Presidential election. The rump of The Body's party isn't there to drain votes from the Democratic candidate. And bearing that in mind, and bearing in mind the generally suspicious view of Pawlenty's governorship among Minnesotans, he will likely be pleased to be polling as well as he is in the state.
Meanwhile, the salient question is: how well is Pawlenty polling in the rest of the midwest? His message sells very well. It is only through hard experience that Minnesotans soured on it. Thus far, no one has been able to communicate that experience to the rest of the country. He may be willing to sacrifice Minnesota's declining share of the electoral vote in order to win several states that McCain couldn't.
Of course, there are several other Republican candidates who are selling the same message and aren't burdened with the baggage of having actually tried to govern according to it. As a result, they're probably stronger than him. So he may not be electorally viable, but it isn't because his program isn't viable.
@Ganya Well, that doesn't sound that different from the national level. Even after Dayton squeezed by with the slightest of margins (and might lose that same election tomorrow), Pawlenty is polling that badly at home? As for other nearby states, thanks to Walker, the GOP's name is mud in Wisconsin for the time being.
And I don't think that's the salient question. I think the salient question is if Pawlenty cant even be relied upon to carry his home state, why would somebody like Perry or Romney want to put him on an undercard?
@Abe Sauer We're probably saying the same thing, just I'm too stupid to figure it out, but Pawlenty's numbers are low in Minnesota precisely because, while governor, he was perceived to act as if he were willing to sacrifice the state in order to gain national office. I always assume that politicians think they know what they're doing, so I assume that, years ago, he and his strategists made the calculation that Minnesota's best use for him was not as a source of electoral votes but as a salesman's sample and springboard. He certainly made no attempt to act or govern otherwise. That seems like a rational and sensible decision for a politician whose message always had more "natural" appeal in other midwestern states than it had in Minnesota. That putative wider appeal is what he's trying to market to Republican heavy-hitters, which is why I think his future depends more on how he's polling in Missouri, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, etc. — even Pennsylvania — than how he's polling in Minnesota. If Minnesotans don't like him, well, "that's because those they don't like a man willing to make the tough, honorable, hard-headed decisions necessary to preserve individual liberty and to return our country to an honest economic footing . . . ."
The irony of Pawlenty is that he's been planning for the presidency ever since he slid out of the womb. Once Mike Hatch in 2006 blew an election that he was set to win and allowed Pawlenty to stay on as governor, Pawlenty immediately ceased to care at all about the state of Minnesota and instead set out to do crazy-assed crap to woo Republican presidential primary voters nationwide.
And he's getting lapped by Bachmann with the very group of people he's been wooing for the past five years.