The Governor made an appearance to talk about his background, entitlements, and his campaign’s prospects:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkMlqfN0DDU[/youtube]
For my money, the best parts come after the 6:20 mark, when T-Paw again displays his ability to argue for conservative solutions in a manner that can tug at the heart strings – true compassionate conservatism, as our inimitable Matthew Miller put it. He then proceeds to explain why his unique background grants him such a political advantage over his opponents. Good stuff.
May 29th, 2011 at 3:00 pm
Another compassionate conservative?Is that what this country needs?
Bushies,compassionate conservatives,they brought us Bill Clinton,they
rehabilitated him,they brought us several wars,economic meltdown,
real estate boom and bust with phony money orchestrated by crooks on
Wall Street and Crony capitalism,they brought us Obama,they
did everything they could to destroy Reagan revolution……..
T-Paw sounds a lot like them with steady whining and bragging that his
father was a regular guy.
He also sounds like a democrat,no wonder he was governor of liberal
Minnesota.
May 29th, 2011 at 3:03 pm
I think Republicans are seriously mis-underestimating Pawlenty. This deserves an FPP once I can gather my thoughts on the subject, but suffice it to say that T-Paw seems to be the candidate that can make fi-cons, so-cons, def-cons, and swing voters all feel equally welcome, and equally satisfied. None of the other candidates can pull that off. Not one.
May 29th, 2011 at 3:08 pm
Tex,
Right. Because attacking Obama’s decision to cancel a voucher’s program is what a Democrat would do. Democrats love their vouchers. T-Paw’s compassionate conservatism, unlike Bush’s, doesn’t even make modest policy fakes to the left. It’s simply a rhetorical strategy to sell conservative policy. How do Republicans, who almost always lose arguments on issues like education, get the upper hand? Well, why not attack Democrats for refusing to let poor people have vouchers? This is, by the way, mostly for people other than Tex since I know he’ll disregard it, as he disregards everything that doesn’t fit neatly into his narrative that only two people on the plan aren’t squishes (him and Sarah Palin).
May 29th, 2011 at 3:29 pm
Dave – MEM,
The whole GOP Conservative spectrum is starting to go with TPAW. If you watch the Roundtable shows this morning you could sense how impressed they all were with TPAW’s roll out. Now some did say that TPAW will need to pivot away from the cut,cut,cut talk and get to Jobs and Growth lingo, but all of them consider TPAW a real threat to win this thing. When you sit back and think about Rush,NRO.Will,Brooks,REDSTATE,WSJ all saying positive things about your candidacy, well you must be doing something right. That covers a huge spectrum of poltical GOP thought.
TPAW has been doing all the shows, I wonder if Mitt will do the same during and after his roll out?
Should Mitt still stay back and be above the fray?
..or should he start answering questions on his current view of raising or not raising the debt ceiling and things of that nature?
And as for TEX and others who are gettng annoyed with TPAW’s wanting to mention..”blue collar”…”middle class” in all his interviews and speeches…well that’s called staying on message.
TPAW is building a positive narrative about himself before others can imprint a negative narrative on to the brand “TPAW”.
Nick Ayers is the name we all will be talking about real soon, as the next political genius. As you all remember, Ayers is the guy everybody wanted…..it’s the guy that TPAW got.
May 29th, 2011 at 3:30 pm
2012 Rubulican poll – Show your support: http://republicanvideos.blogspot.com/
May 29th, 2011 at 3:38 pm
Look.
He comes off as a nonthreatening, kinda bland, but certainly acceptable guy. I mean I really like his positions stated in this video.
He is most people’s second choice for that reason.
But there is no fire there, and no groundswell of support. He doesn’t inspire that type of support. Period.
Most people wouldn’t cross the street to hear him speak.
That’s why I don’t see him in this race after the first few contests.
Has anyone ever marshaled a string of second and third place finishes into a nomination?
If he doesn’t win Iowa or NH he will run out of money and his vaunted paid staff will go where they can get a steady paycheck.
I just don’t think it’s going to happen.
Sorry T-Prawns
May 29th, 2011 at 3:38 pm
Matthew,
Since you’re talking about Sarah Palin,why don’t you visit
Drudge headline:
PALIN ROLLIN’
with a great photo of the Governor.
Today she’s in Washington,BIKER MAMA GRIZZLY.
May 29th, 2011 at 4:09 pm
I was a Romney guy last time and currently still am, but I thought this was a very good interview. I thought he showed passion and confidence without sounding like an ignorant emotional firecracker. This type of interview is the same reason I like Mitt Romney. Dont give me folksy quips or riot raising rhetoric, I want calm (some find it boring)clear rationale and solutions. I know it will have to get intense later but right now pawlenty sounds good. I thought his refference to the heart and not just the head, and his shot at the academic guy who writes the white paper was clever. It was a good clean hit, I dont think it fits Romney but a good move on pawlenty’s part. I believe they are both comparable so pawlenty being repetitive on his mom’s death, his dad’s truck job, and his siblings lack of college plays well. Good luck to Mr. Pawlenty
May 29th, 2011 at 4:13 pm
tele,
The passion TPAW speaks with in this video in regards to what Obama did in taking away scholarships and vouchers away from the kids of DC is more passionate then I have heard any of the candidates speak on any issue in this cycle…period.
And this OL’Smackdaddy passion for TPAW is unsurpassed by any of the other posters on here for their beloved candidates.
You underestimate TPAW, you and most people here have done it from the get go.
There is no lack of passion for TPAW….come into TPAW’s volunteer camp for just one afternoon in Iowa and you will get rid of that thought mighty quick.
Why do you think I talked passionatley about TPAW in February when he was at 1% in the polls?
Now TPAW is at 6% Nationally…TPAW is at 12% in WIS..and next week we will see TPAW cracking 10% in Iowa……waaayyy ahead of where Huck was at in Iowa in June of “07″.
The passion is there. The structure is there. The money is there (enough of it) The victory in Iowa will be there.
But most important we have the candidate.
The TPAW SURGE on RACE42012 is being replicated in other places as well……..watch and learn my boy, watch and learn.
May 29th, 2011 at 4:19 pm
“True” compassionate conservatism means keeping federal money pouring into the higher education bubble? I like Tim Pawlenty less and less, the more I figure him out…
May 29th, 2011 at 4:36 pm
Common Josiah,
It’s easy to figure out T-Paw.Very moderate republican with liberal
tendencies.
T-Paw and Mitt changed some of their liberal positions only because
and since they want to be president.No other reason,period.
It’s called phony,fake and a fraud.
May 29th, 2011 at 4:43 pm
Yeah, I defiantly agree with you guys.
We’ve also got to stop the Fed printing money. I wish these candidates would address that more.
May 29th, 2011 at 6:37 pm
Excellent interview!
Don’t use the “compassionate conservative” term. That means spend money and grow government.
Pawlenty didn’t use it. Do not sabatoge him.
I like Mitt, I like Tim, or is it Tom? See. He still needs to do some work on name recognition!
And honestly, a few minutes later, I can’t remember what he said. Other than vouchers for schools and his siblings not going to college… and Kristianne pushing the default button. Not at all sure what his anwser was.
Over all he made a great impression. I hope he grows into the roll of POTUS. But it is still hard to picture such a mild mild man running the world.
May 29th, 2011 at 6:44 pm
Yes, everyone should be able to go to college…
But it starts with public education.
Those 1/3 of people TPaw speaks about, those who are undereducated, many of these people never got a good education in high school.
We need to fix public schools, not just hand out thousands to poor students so they can get a worthless degree.
We need engineers, scientists, health care professionals, and the like.
May 30th, 2011 at 12:00 am
4 – Just like they all went with Daniels (and Christie, and Ryan). He is simply the anti-Mitt flavor of the month. Just wait until Perry gets in. You will be left crying in your beer when everyone abandons you for the next “conservative hero” that is going to unite the party and save us all from the evil ex-Massachusetts governor that is going to force us all to be socialists.
May 30th, 2011 at 12:19 am
Education is one of the top issues for me, and I love TPaw’s passion on the issue. That was the best moment I have seen from him. I do not like the “blue collar” populism talk though. Having blue collar roots is an advantage for TPaw, and it for me it is an advantage over Mitt (not enough to make me change allegiances though), but making it a point of issue in the campaign really turns me off. I am not a fan of making political points out of issues that people have no control over. Should Palin make a point out of being a woman or Cain out of being black? There are certain advantages and disadvantages to those facts. But no one can control race or gender. No one can control the wealth of their parents either, and I hate that it becomes an issue in these campaigns.
Mitt has a lot of experience connecting with people of all classes, races, and genders, by the way. So the inferences that come from emphasizing class in the race are not accurate. As an ecclesiastical leader for many years of his life, he has had plenty of experience empathizing with those who struggle in ways he didn’t growing up. It is a false issue and I do not like that it is being made an issue by TPaw. I can see how some people will like it though and it is probably a smart move for him. Personally though, he goes down a few notches in my book for it.
May 30th, 2011 at 1:19 am
As a [nearly] life-long Minnesotan, I’m REALLY growing tired of those lacking even the most basic understanding of MN political geography and demographics putting themselves forward as self-described experts on the state’s political landscape.
Listen folks, MN is a large, generally rural state; it’s much more like the Dakotas than it is like MA. Pull up a county by county map of the state on election night and you’ll notice something that might surprise the uninitiated: it’s a pretty red place. Other than Hennepin and Ramsey counties (home to Minneapolis and St. Paul, respectively), there are a heckuva lot of folks in MN that are quite conservative (how else do you explain Bachmann, Paulson and Kline?). Cross the MN countryside by car and you’ll see more pro-life billboards than just about anywhere outside the bible/gun belt of the South (I know firsthand because I drive all over the US).
Recall that in the 2010 election, an EXTREMELY conversative candidate, Tom Emmer (who beat out the center-right Republican, Marty Seifert, for the party’s nomination), very narrowly missed taking the governor’s office in MN (and he easily would have had breakaway Republican-turned-Independent Tom Horner not run interference for the Democrat). Seems the only way Dems can win statewide offices in MN nowadays is to have their friends at MPR and in the local newsrooms bang the political drums loudly for unelectable “Independent” candidates. Their job is to lavish these long-shot losers with endorsements and praise so that Democrat clowns like Frankenfish and the Dayton Family Joke can wiggle their way into statewide offices.
The Dems aren’t idiots (well… at least not some of them). They learned their lesson after Skip, the Humphrey family scion, placed 3rd in the 1998 governor’s race – a real embarrassment for a prominent Democrat in a so-called Blue State. Siphoning undecided and independent voters off/away from the GOP [and over to a 3rd party that's only produced one winning candidate in its entire history] has been the Dem key to victory in MN since 2002.
Surprisingly, T-Paw was able to pull enough undecideds from the MN Independent Party’s base [while still firing up the conservatives] to eke out small margins of victory in tight 3-way races not once, but twice. I don’t see why this is to be taken as a fault…
…for those who still think MN is a bastion of liberalism, wake up and smell the lutefisk already. The Dems sure did when Rod Grams beat down their lefty throwback in 1994…
The Upper Midwest is not the “North Coast” as some Dem goons like to portray it as. There’s a reason the GOP put the convention up in St. Paul in 2008. The Minnesota “Old Blues” like my grandparents (socially conservative, pro-labor Democrats) who grew up watching Humprey and Mondale are abandoning the Democratic party in droves as it’s moved further and further left.
I think one of my sister’s friends said it best shortly after she arrived in the Land of Lakes from CA: I thought this [MN] was supposed to be such a progressive place, but everyone here is soooooooooooo conservative (and she hadn’t even gotten out of the Twin Cities metro area yet when she made the statement…).
As some are right to point out, MN was indeed the only state to vote for Mondale in ’84. And that’s proof of…?
Mondale was a VERY prominent Democrat in MN at the time (being that he was a local boy and had already been a Vice President of the US and all) and he “won” the state by LESS than 4000 votes(!). Some margin of victory that was. Can you imagine Ted Kennedy winning MA by only a few thousand votes [out of millions cast]? I can’t either. And to Mondale’s credit, he never drove anyone off a bridge.
Say what you want, TEX, but Texas hasn’t had half as many Republican governors in its history as MN. And no offense, but for the sake of the conservative moment, I pray the GOP doesn’t turn to another Texan, Rick Perry, for an answer to its prayers in 2012 (8 years of George W. Bush was enough).
I’m still trying to find it in my heart to forgive the Lone Star for foisting LBJ and his bubonic plaguesque Great Society programs on us back in the ’60s…
May 31st, 2011 at 12:45 pm
Fantastic interview with T-Paw. Just fantastic. I cant say I see anyone in the field that I saw as presidential as Mitch Daniels. But T-Paw is what Steve Schmidt referred to Romney2008 as…”A learning organism”.
Every week he is at this his message is getting more succinct and simpler for consumption yet deeper and easier to sustain in longer conversations and policy wonk discussions. He looks more comfortable with himself. He should continue these interviews and do as many debates as possible. Its great prep for Fall 2012.
I see T-Paw as the presumptive nominee a year from now.