Mitt Romney is set to announce his candidacy on June 2 in New Hampshire.

Rick Santorum will be announcing four days later on June 6 in Pennsylvania.

And Michelle Bachmann tells reporters she will be announcing in June, the announcement will be made Waterloo, Iowa (her hometown), and that the campaign will be releasing a date and a time later.

This flurry of early June activity leaves just two large questions marks and two tiny question marks now: Palin, Huntsman, Roemer, and Moore.

Today, Gov. Pawlenty publicly affirmed that he would sign Paul Ryan’s Path to Prosperity, but only under a condition:

“If that was the only bill that came to my desk, and I wasn’t able to pass my own plan, I would sign it,” Pawlenty said Thursday. Speaking to reporters during a visit to Cirtronics, a small New Hampshire electronics firm, he said: “I’ll have my own plan, which will have some similarities to the Medicare plan of congressman Ryan. But it will have some differences, as well. It will be out shortly. We just have some other ideas that we think we can add to it that would make the package even better.”

…even with Pawlenty’s careful wording, he is the first presidential contender to offer even a qualified commitment to supporting Ryan’s proposal since Newt Gingrich sharply criticized it — before later describing it as a great first step.

By going out on a limb and becoming the first 2012 candidate to suggest that he would sign the bill, Pawlenty again displays his new strategy of taking up Mitch Daniels’ “Truth Teller” mantle. I know I’m not the only one who looks forward to seeing just how closely T-Paw’s own plan resembles Ryan’s.

Also on the health care front today, Pawlenty took a clever shot at President Obama over Twitter:

@BarackObama sorry to interrupt the European pub crawl, but what was your Medicare plan?

Again, she’s in. From Politico:

Sarah Palin is launching a nationwide bus tour starting Sunday in Washington, a Palin source has confirmed to POLITICO.

The first stop will be at the annual Rolling Thunder motorcycle rally. Palin will then travel up the East Coast in a trip that will include her first stop in New Hampshire since running as the GOP’s vice presidential nominee in 2008.

Palin will also be stopping at other spots of symbolic national significance on the East Coast, including the Civil War battlefields at Gettysburg and Antietam, and the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia.

If she does get in a few things happen; Pawlenty’s Iowa strategy is in instant jeopardy, Bachmann/Cain are likely pushed further to the sidelines, and Romney vs. Huntsman in New Hampshire becomes the major battle to become the establishment Anti-Palin, a battle that Romney is winning by far at the moment.  The daydreaming for a Jeb/Christie/Ryan/Perry “white knight” will end and the establishment will rally to one of the current candidates to head her off.  She will also likely drag anyone playing hard in Iowa further right, endangering their electability in a general election.

Also, don’t be surprised if the rumors from the Giuliani camp are connected to a Palin bid.  I predicted a while ago that Rudy would be her best bet as VP, a position he may be working for by going after Mitt in New Hampshire.  Giuliani is one of the few establishment types that she respects; for example, he was one of the few people she discussed her resignation with before the announcement. Rudy might be betting on her and hoping to secure a Cheney-like role on a Palin ticket.

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Tim Pawlenty’s quest to thread the needle between the more libertarian-minded grassroots and the more mainstream establishment of the Republican Party seems to have hit a bump in the road.  Pawlenty’s much-anticipated address at the free market Cato Institute apparently left a sour taste in the mouths of liberty lovers who attended.

Most of the discord centered around Pawlenty’s absolute refusal to trim defense spending.

“I’m not one who is going to stand before you and tell you we should cut the defense budget,” Pawlenty said.

Pawlenty also said he would not consider closing down any outdated military installations or bases around the globe, saying, “I’m not for shrinking America’s presence in the world.”

Pawlenty apparently also drew ire from audience members for opposing medical marijuana, an issue where he is out of step with 80% of the American people, according to a recent Newsweek poll.

Multiple Cato representatives described Pawlenty’s performance as “disappointing“.  Cato President Edward Crane expressed doubts about Pawlenty’s sincerity, telling the Washington Post that “I think he probably views Cato as a symbolic venue.”  Crane praised the “A” grade Pawlenty earned in his last year of office, but qualified the grade in a Politico interview by pointing out that Pawlenty had received “C” and “B” grades in earlier years, describing Pawlenty’s fiscal conservatism as “evolving”.

Cato’s director of tax policy studies, Chris Edwards, also made it known he is still wary of the tax and spending increases Pawlenty supported as Governor, and dislikes Pawlenty’s attempts to re-label those taxes as “fees”.

Change is from the previous update one week ago:

Only candidates who have announced an exploratory committee or a candidacy, or who have greater than a 3% chance at the nomination are included. Yellow indicates an exploratory committee; green indicates an official candidacy.

According PJ Tatler, Tim Pawlenty had the following statement on the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Arizona’s E-Verify law and on Elena Kagan.

I applaud the United States Supreme Court in upholding Arizona’s right to do what the Federal government has failed to do and confront the problem of illegal immigration. President Obama broke his promise to address illegal immigration, leaving states and businesses in an untenable situation. As governor, I took aggressive steps towards better enforcement of illegal immigration, but ultimately we need a President who will be serious about fixing America’s immigration system.

I also am pleased that Justice Elena Kagen properly recused herself from participating in this ruling because of her previous position as President Obama’s Solicitor General, a precedent she must also follow when Obamacare is presented before the court.

Gallup National Republican Primary

• Romney – 17% (13)
• Palin – 15% (10)
• Paul – 10% (6)
• Gingrich – 9% (6)
• Cain – 8% (-)
• Pawlenty – 6% (3)
• Bachmann – 5% (4)
• Huntsman – 2% (1)
• Johnson – 2% (3)
• Santorum – 2% (2)
• None / no opinion – 22%

Without Palin

• Romney – 19%
• Gingrich – 12%
• Paul – 12%
• Cain – 8%
• Bachmann – 7%
• Pawlenty – 7%
• Huntsman – 3%
• Johnson – 3%
• Santorum – 2%
• None / no opinion – 25%

Survey of 971 Republicans and Republican leaning independents was conducted May 20-24 and has a margin of error of +/- 4%.

Yes, you read that right. The candidate who often gets chided for valuing ideological purity over party building apparently has a strategy to expand his support base in Iowa:

Three-time presidential candidate Ron Paul is courting Iowa Republicans who backed former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee in the 2008 Iowa Caucuses. Huckabee announced earlier this month that he would not run again in 2012.

“I think that opens up the door for us because he is one that stood for family values and it’s something that we’ve been pushing real hard,” Paul said Monday during a news conference in Ankeny. “And I think there’s a chance that we will be able to capture a lot of those votes.”

The article proceeds to explain how Paul, obviously a libertarian-minded candidate, has turned to an unlikely issue to appeal to former Huckabee supporters: gay marriage.

Now, at first glance, Paul and Huckabee may appear to mix like oil and water, but polling data has actually suggested that the Congressman would see a greater relative increase in support in Iowa than any other candidate if the Governor opted against a 2012 run.

One factor could throw a wrench in Paul’s plans, however: the entrance of Sarah Palin. Should she jump into the race, she would most likely draw a considerable amount of Huckabee’s Tea Party support – voters who would probably take a favorable view toward Paul’s candidacy.

Stay tuned on this one, folks. This story could definitely turn some heads.

Morris Poll National Republican Primary

• Romney – 30% (22)
• Gingrich – 15% (11)
• Bachmann – 7% (6)
• Cain – 7% (-)
• Pawlenty – 5% (3)
• Santorum – 3% (-)
• Huntsman – 1% (-)

With Palin

• Romney – 25%
• Palin – 16%
• Gingrich – 11%
• Everyone else – below 6%

Survey of 800 likely primary voters was conducted May 20-23 and has a margin of error of +/- 3%. Numbers in parentheses are from the survey completed May 15.

Not too long ago, Intrade added an “Ames Straw Poll” market.  Here’s who people are betting on, so far:

• 30.0% Michele Bachmann
• 20.0% Ron Paul
• 18.5% Tim Pawlenty
• 12.5% Mitt Romney
• 10.0% Any other individual
• 3.5% Newt Gingrich
• 3.0% Sarah Palin
• 1.9% Jon Huntsman
• 0.1% Gary Johnson
• 0.1% Rudy Giuliani

Cuz it’s a brilliant idea to nominate a Texas Governor who looks exactly like the guy who played Dubya in Oliver Stone’s biopic.

Goodness knows Obama would hate to run against George Bush 2 election cycles in a row.

T-Paw hardest hit?

Texas Gov. Rick Perry just can’t seem to shut the door on a 2012 presidential run.

With conservatives aching for more choices in the approaching 2012 Republican primary, Perry declined Tuesday to rule out a White House bid during a press conference about a new anti-abortion measure. Also Tuesday, his top strategist told the Tribune that the governor is, naturally, “thinking about it” given the flattering comments made recently by some in the GOP, although he “doesn’t see any change in his direction.”

I’m pretty much staunchly in the Pawlenty camp at this point, which is why I am more than a little worried about the manner in which Perry may be able to effectively compete with Pawlenty for the meat in the middle of the GOP electorate, the folks who want an electable conservative candidate. We’re nearing a point where Pawlenty would pretty much have these voters to himself. Moreover, with recent rumors that Palin and Giuliani are taking a second look at 2012, Pawlenty could simply hope for a Bachmann/Palin catfight in Iowa, and a Rudy/Romney grudge match in New Hampshire to clear the way for T-Paw in the early states. Then it would be on to South Carolina, where the likely endorsement of Nikki Haley would make a Pawlenty victory a done deal, and would set the stage for a rout on Super Tuesday.

But all of that changes if Perry enters the race. Indeed, Perry would probably be a game-changer for a lot of prospective candidates, as he would eat into the Bachmann/Palin evangelical support in Iowa, the Palin/Cain Tea Party support, the Giuliani/Palin tough-guy support, etc. He would also fill the void for a Southerner, making him downright dangerous in South Carolina.

If Perry gets in, he probably has a decent shot at the nomination. That would result in a deep red Texan with revolutionary rhetoric attempting to win suburban women in Bucks County, Pennsylvania in the general election. I am more than a tad skeptical that someone like Perry would play in Pennsylvania. Pawlenty, meanwhile, would have a pretty good shot at taking the Keystone State, especially if he named Sen. Pat Toomey as his running mate. Pawlenty has a proven ability to win the Northern suburbs. Perry’s ability to do the same has yet to be tested.

A more likely result, though, is that Perry and Pawlenty split the “mainstream conservative” vote and allow the showdown that we’re all dreading: Romney v. Palin or Bachmann. That sort of race would easily take on the same dynamics as Castle v. O’Donnell, only at the national level. We all saw how that turned out for Republicans.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxvURgyJ26w[/youtube]

Yes, Chrysler has finally squeaked out a profit and more than repaid to the government the amount of money that was taken from taxpayers.  There’s just three, basic, Economics 101 problems that the DNC conveniently ignores:

1). The automaker bailout money was taken from taxpayers, and then repaid to the government.  Much like the bait-and-switch played when some Wall Street firms “repaid” their share of the TARP bailout money, the bailout apologists fail to follow the money.  $7.6 billion was taken from taxpayers, redistributed to Chrysler, and then Chrysler paid $7.6 billion back into the government’s bloated coffers, to be wasted on more government programs and bailouts.

2). The problem of moral hazard is actually worsened by Chrysler’s survival.  Failing firms in the future will be even more confident in going to the taxpayer trough, hat in hand.  They will take more unnecessary risks from now on, because they know there’s an increased chance they will be bailed out if their investments don’t pan out.

3). Praise of the “success” of the Chrysler bailout falls into Bastiat’s “That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen” fallacy.  It’s easy to see the new cars in Chrysler plants, the preserved automobile industry jobs in Detroit, and the modest profits finally eeked out by American car companies.  But we can never see the necessarily superior goods and services that would have been produced with the same money, had it been left to consumers to direct, rather than being forcibly redistributed to an inefficient car company.  Consumers weren’t buying Chrysler vehicles for a reason: they were more satisfied with goods and services being produced by other sellers.  By keeping Chrysler afloat, consumers were deprived of the goods and services that would have satisfied them more than these new Chrysler cars.

Celebrating Chrysler’s profits is like celebrating the 2% return that a robber earned on money stolen from you, despite the fact that if you had kept the money, you would have earned a 10% return.  The small return on the “investment” the US government made in Chrysler was not worth it, when opportunity cost is factored in.

Whereas the veteran national figure Newt Gingrich has had a close-to-disastrous formal beginning to his race for president, neophyte national politician Tim Pawlenty has come out of the gate with an intriguing (and so far positively received) counter-intuitive approach in his first few days as an official candidate.

There are certain strategic orthodoxies, usually not violated, about running for your party’s nomination for president in primary and caucus states, to wit, do not offend local special interests and upset local party base voters expectations.

Claiming he will be the candidate who “tells the truth,” former Governor Pawlenty has told Iowa Republicans he will phase out ethanol subsidies; and Florida Republicans that he will reform Social Security by extending the mandatory eligibility age as well as cut off cost of living allowances to rich retirees. This is not what Iowa farmers and Florida senior citizens usually hear from candidates who seek their votes. Pawlenty is betting that economic conditions are bad enough that most voters know that certain entitlements, including some of their own, will have to go. Of course, at the same time, Pawlenty is telling these same voters that he will not raise taxes and will cut public spending. That is what conservative voters do want to hear in 2011, and Mr. Pawlenty cites his record in Minnesota as evidence he will do this from the White House office.

As a constant contrarian, I have long held the opinion that a politician who can compellingly tell voters what they don’t want to hear, and yet win their allegiance could do much better than expected.

On the other hand, we are quite a distance from the first voting in the nomination contest. For that reason, Mr. Pawlenty has far to go to overcome Mitt Romney’s initial lead and considerable political resources. Speaking of Mr. Romney, he too has had mostly smooth sailing so far. This tells us that he did learn from his 2008 experience when he failed to do well in Iowa and South Carolina. Instead of avoiding these two states, Mr. Romney’s campaign decided to contest them, even before Mr. Huckabee and Mr. Daniels withdrew. Mr. Romney’s strategy needs to be, and apparently is, to win as many delegates as early as possible, thus preventing anyone from overtaking him. This is a lesson Hillary Clinton ignored, including conceding the caucus states to Mr. Obama, and when she after woke up after Mr. Obama had won a large number of delegates, it was too late to recover. With all the money he needs to spend on organization and advertising, Mr. Romeny can maximize his chances from the beginning, provided also that he learns strategically from his mistakes and shortcomings in 2008. From his first foray into South Carolina, it would seem he may well do so.

Aiding (unintentionally) Mr. Romney’s strategy is the candidacy of Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann who was born in Iowa. With Mr. Huckabee out of the race, she is making a major effort to woo the numerous evangelical and Tea Party GOP voters in Iowa. If she outpolls Mr. Pawlenty in their neighboring state, it will be difficult for him to create the momentum he would need to overtake any early Romney lead, if that develops.

Mr. Gingrich may have been paying too much attention to his political enemies and to his own party’s political elites when they constantly spoke of his “baggage” of divorces and controversies from his days as speaker of the House. I would suggest that neither his alleged “baggage” (nor Mr Romney’s Mormon faith, for that matter) is the impediment the “experts” and the media say it is. Mr. Gingrich, regardless if he agrees with that or not, nevertheless acts as if he does by making so much of his recent emphasis on his new marriage and faith. These are positive matters, but making them so visible makes the former speaker look defensive. Before he goes much further, Mr. Gingrich might find it useful to sit down and reassess how his campaign organization and what he says publicly might better advance his ideas and his true political strengths. Almost everyone agrees he is the best idea man in the GOP. But it’s another matter to persuade voters that he is the best person to execute and administer those ideas. Mr. Gingrich has. over recent years, assembled an excellent staff for his many organizations. He has been doing the same for his campaign staff so far. But, as far as I know, few successful candidates for president are their own campaign managers. (Tuesday night’s upset election of a Democrat in a traditional New York state congressional special election is a demonstration that Mr. Gingrich’s reservations about Medicare reform may have more merit than originally judged. Nevertheless, his mistake was not his political intuition about the risk of Medicare reform, but the way he spoke about his fellow Republicans who were advancing it.)

Former Governor and Ambassador Jon Huntsman is apparently soon to enter the race. He is a blank slate, and at this point, it is difficult to assess his chances. But the field of candidates, as I have been pointing out recently, is unexpectedly small, and thus there are some genuine opportunities for a late entrant. Former Governor Jeb Bush and current Governor Chris Christie have enough stature right now to realign singlehandedly the nomination contest if they got in, but the word from both is that they will not. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was a great mayor, and remains an enormously articulate figure, but his 2008 campaign was a political disaster, and there is no reason to think 2012 might not be the same for him. Texas Governor Rick Perry so far refuses publicly to indicate any interest, although he would be the only southerner in the race. Of all the minor announced candidates, businessman Herman Cain has so far aroused the most interest, but it is difficult to see how might advance to the first tier.

Thus we return to Mr. Pawlenty as the candidate so far with the most potential to upend political expectations for the GOP nomination. In each cycle, there are those who bring innovations to the race (as he has now done). Some succeed, such as Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and some do not, such as Howard Dean, Lamar Alexander and Steve Forbes, so innovation alone is not sufficient to win the right to preside in the Oval Office for four or eight years, Yet, as I have pointed out before, a heavy dose of luck combined with innovation and skill, often makes the difference.

A great deal is going to happen before those first votes will be cast early next year.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

-Please visit Mr. Casselman’s personal site, The Prairie Editor Blog.

Looks like she’s in:

Shortly after Republicans swept last November to a historic victory in which Sarah Palin was credited with playing a central role, the former Alaska governor pulled aside her close aide, Rebecca Mansour, to discuss a hush-hush assignment: Reach out to conservative filmmaker Stephen K. Bannon with a request. Ask him if he would make a series of videos extolling Palin’s governorship and laying to rest lingering questions about her controversial decision to resign from office with a year-and-a-half left in her first term. It was this abdication, Palin knew, that had made her damaged goods in the eyes of some Republicans who once were eager to get behind her potential 2012 presidential campaign.

The response was more positive than Palin could have hoped for. He’d make a feature-length movie, Bannon told Mansour, and he insisted upon taking complete control and financing it himself — to the tune of $1 million.

The fruits of that initial conversation are now complete. The result is a two-hour-long, sweeping epic, a rough cut of which Bannon screened privately for Sarah and Todd Palin last Wednesday in Arizona, where Alaska’s most famous couple has been rumored to have purchased a new home. When it premieres in Iowa next month, the film is poised to serve as a galvanizing prelude to Palin’s prospective presidential campaign — an unconventional reintroduction to the nation that she and her political team have spent months eagerly anticipating, even as Beltway Republicans have largely concluded that she won’t run.

 

After Tim Pawlenty publicly came out in support of reductions in ethanol subsidies yesterday in Des Moines, many postulated that it would damage his chances in the state. On the contrary:

So much for the uproar: the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association welcomed Pawlenty’s support, noting that the industry is already united behind Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley’s legislation to draw down and reform the current ethanol incentive.
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“Gov. Pawlenty further pointed out that energy incentive reforms must be across the board,” said Walt Wendland, the association’s president, in a statement. “We agree that the massive amount of federally funded petroleum incentives must be a part of any reform discussion. Iowans look forward to Gov. Pawlenty further detailing his plans to ‘phase out’ petroleum subsidies, perhaps in a speech in Houston, Texas.”

Wow, didn’t see that one coming! The good news just keeps coming for T-Paw this week. It appears that Mitch Daniels’ decision to forgo a 2012 run may turn out as the best thing that has ever happened to Pawlenty, as it presented him with the opportunity to take up the “truth-teller” mantle and corner the anti-Romney establishment market.

Can he pull off the coup de grace and secure Haley Barbour’s backing – and the well-oiled fundraising machine that comes with it?

Insider Advantage National Republican Primary

• Romney – 16.2% (13)
• Bachmann – 11.8% (6)
• Palin – 11.0% (12)
• Cain – 10.9% (-)
• Pawlenty – 7.4% (6)
• Gingrich – 6.4% (8)
• Paul – 5.0% (-)
• Someone else – 5.3%
• Undecided – 25.5% (23)

Survey of 770 voters was done May 23 and has a margin of error of +/- 3.5%. Numbers in parentheses are from their April poll.

The former Minnesota governor continues to speak truth to power:

A day after telling Iowans their beloved ethanol subsidies will have to go, Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty used a stop in senior-heavy Florida to call for reining in Social Security and Medicare benefits for future retirees.

The former Minnesota governor, who launched his campaign Monday, talked about entitlement reform during a 30-minute Facebook town hall and in a question-and-answer session with reporters at the Biltmore hotel.

It’s part of a tough-medicine tour, designed to highlight Pawlenty’s willingness to tell “hard truths.” He’s also planning to visit Washington to call for less-generous pay and benefits for public sector employees and to New York to call for an end to Wall Street bailouts.

“We won’t have Medicare or Medicaid or Social Security as we know it in the future if we don’t make changes and adjustments now that can preserve these important programs,” Pawlenty told the Facebook audience.

Pawlenty said Social Security’s retirement age must “gradually” increase for people who are not yet in the system. He also called for ending cost-of-living increases for wealthy retirees. He said he’ll release details soon and said the changes would not affect current retirees.

On Medicare, Pawlenty applauded — but stopped short of endorsing — a plan by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan to change Medicare for those now 54 and younger to a program in which the government provides subsidies to retirees to buy private insurance.

“As to the Ryan plan, I support the courage, I support the leadership, I support the general direction of it, but I’m going to have my own plan shortly and we’ll be rolling it out in the coming weeks and months,” Pawlenty told reporters.

Pawlenty said his plan will have some similarities to the Ryan plan, but also include “payment reform,” which Pawlenty said “will incentivize both consumers and providers to get to higher-quality, more efficient providers.”

I suspect that T-Paw will marry his prospective entitlement reform blueprint with a Toomey-like approach to domestic discretionary spending that will, on balance, be at least as fiscally serious as anything put forth by Paul Ryan. As such, Gov. Pawlenty continues to establish himself as the consensus candidate for conservatives in the coming presidential election.

You know how it happens every time a new year comes ’round. All through January we tend to date checks and other documents with the previous year until we finally retrain our brains to the new year. By February, it’s usually accomplished, and we no longer have to think about it.

Well, since the Democrats and Liberals have been fond of telling us all about Obama’s superior intellect, you would expect him to be better at this sort of thing than anybody else. And you would be right:

This is how President Obama signed the guestbook at Westminster Abbey earlier today, where he got a tour from the Very Reverend Dr. John Hall and laid a wreath on the Grave of the Unknown Warrior.

It is a great privilege to commemorate our common heritage, and common sacrifice.

Barack Obama

24 May 2008

(photo at link)

So where we mere mortals might continue to use the wrong year for a lousy three weeks or so, the incredibly bright and intelligent President of the United States universally proclaimed by the media and Democrat pols to be the smartest man ever to occupy the office uses the wrong year more than three years after the change in the calendar. Could anyone expect anything less from such a dazzling intellect such as he?

With Pawlenty’s announcement yesterday as the second major official candidate in the race, the Club for Growth has released their “white papers” detailing his views / comments on growth related items. Here’s an excerpt from their summary:

It’s clear that Governor Pawlenty is, for the most part, hard to pin down on his exact ideological moorings. Minnesota is not a conservative state by any means, and Governor Pawlenty did veto tax hikes passed by the liberal legislature and made a relatively strong push to keep a lid on taxes. Pawlenty deserves tremendous praise for keeping Minnesota’s spending growth remarkably low. For this, and for his consistent stances on school choice, tort reform, and political free speech, he deserves credit – while his record on health care and entitlement spending is mixed. However, Pawlenty has some simply inexcusable tax hikes in his record, and he made a mistake by taking no clear position on the 2008 Legacy Amendment. His tacit support for bailouts, more job-choking regulations, and various tariffs make it difficult for us to identify his core ideological identity. His support of things like mandatory vegetable oil in gasoline, cap and trade, and a statewide smoking ban make him sound overly eager to support big government proposals to address policy fads of the day.

Given all of this, we struggle to identify the real Tim Pawlenty. We agree with those who say that Governor Pawlenty did the best he could in a state as liberal as Minnesota. And we believe he would be a stronger pro-growth executive in a more conservative climate, but his “clunkers” as he himself describes them are difficult to ignore. A President Pawlenty, we suspect, would fight for pro-growth policies, but would be susceptible to adopting “pragmatic” policies that grow government.

Read the whole piece – it’s an interesting summary of Pawlenty’s terms as Governor and his tenure in the State Legislature prior, specifically on fiscal issues. Also, if interested – you can check out their previously released white papers on Newt Gingrich here.

_______________________________________________________

-Matt Newman is a conservative blogger from Maryland who blogs at Old Line Elephant and Tweets far too often.

Via Washington Whispers (hat-tip Argo Journal):

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani isn’t just thinking about running for president next year: It’s his obsession and he’s already mapping out a strategy to knock off GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney in New Hampshire.

According to a long-time supporter, New York Rep. Peter King, running and winning this time is “almost a full-time business for him.” [See a slide show of who's in and who's out in the GOP 2012 primary.]

What’s more, adds King, Giuliani has already been “talking to people in New Hampshire” about his strategy to focus all his early attention there, not the Iowa caucus, because beating Romney in the former Massachusetts governor’s political backyard will propel the New Yorker’s candidacy into the next two showdowns in South Carolina and Nevada. [Check out a roundup of political cartoons on the 2012 GOP candidates.]

“He would focus on New Hampshire almost entirely,” said King at a Monday night dinner organized by the conservative American Spectator magazine. “He is very close to running.”

Giuliani ran a poor race in 2008 and King said some of the blame goes to all the strategists the former mayor hired. “They were keeping Rudy from being Rudy,” said King. He said one of the political selling points Giuliani has going for him is that “you’re a son of a bitch” when it comes to fighting crime, reforming welfare, and cutting taxes.

Despite being quiet on whether or not he plans to run, Giuliani has polled well. In the most recent Suffolk University poll, he was the third choice of GOP primary voters.

GOP pollster Frank Luntz said that Giuliani would have to work hard to win back supporters who felt he blew a great chance at the GOP nomination in 2008. “If he were to run, it would have to be all-out and he’d have to show people that he would be a different candidate from 2008. He upset donors because he didn’t campaign hard enough. If he wants to almost literally move to New Hampshire, he’d be credible.”

Read the rest here.

PPP (D) Ohio 2012 Presidential Survey

• Barack Obama 46% [46%] (44%)
• Mitt Romney 42% [40%] (42%)

• Barack Obama 49% [50%] (47%)
• Newt Gingrich 40% [38%] (41%)

• Barack Obama 50% [52%] (49%)
• Sarah Palin 40% [36%] (42%)

(more…)

UT-Austin/Texas Tribune 2012 Republican Primary Survey

• Sarah Palin 12%
• Newt Gingrich 11%
• Ron Paul 10%
• Mike Huckabee 10%
• Mitt Romney 7%
• Michele Bachmann 7%
• Donald Trump 6%
• Tim Pawlenty 4%
• Rick Perry 4%
• Rick Santorum 3%
• Jon Huntsman 1%
• Mitch Daniels 1%
• Someone else 10%
• Don’t know 14%

Survey of 388 registered Republicans was conducted May 11-18, 2011. The margin of error is +/- 4.98 percentage points.

–Data compilation and analysis courtesy of The Argo Journal.

While watching the Pawlenty rollout over the past few days, I was struck by two things.

First, this rollout has been nothing short of political brilliance. As close to perfection as we’ve seen in a long time. This is going to set Pawlenty up well for the rest of the race.

And secondly, I now understand why some folks don’t trust Mitt Romney. Because I’m seeing a lot of Mitt Romney in Tim Pawlenty, and I have a feeling my gut reaction to T-Paw is what some folks feel about Mitt.

Romney has famously undergone his shift of personas throughout his political career. Romney 1.0 was the Pragmatic Massachusetts Moderate, a fiscally sound businessman who was more politically moderate on issues such as abortion, gun control, and gay marriage.

When Romney decided to run for President, he morphed into Romney 2.0: the three-legged stool conservative who could check off every conservative box down the list.

And now in 2011, we are seeing Romney 3.0, which is a kind of Romney 1.0 redux: a businessman whose heart is more in fiscal matters than social issues – with a dash of unbuttoned-top-button and no-tie thrown in for good measure.

What I have watched from Tim Pawlenty are the same morphing personas, only coming in more rapid-fire succession as he is handled by his campaign team.

Pawlenty 1.0 was the Pragmatic Minnesota Moderate, a man who not just accepted but championed cap and trade, campaigned and lobbied for federal ethanol subsidies, signed and celebrated a statewide smoking ban, raised corporate taxes, and instituted new state fees. He wasn’t known as a dyed-in-the-wool conservative back then, but as a practical leader who got things done — just like his counterpart in Massachusetts.

Pawlenty 2.0 was the conservative remake of T-Paw – a candidate who disavowed his support for the cap and trade policy that he had, just a couple years prior, hoped would become “de facto national policy”… a candidate who pandered to South Carolina crowds by claiming he could balance the budget without cutting defense spending… and who told a social conservative radio show that he would reinstate “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” if he was President. Pawlenty was falling into the same trap as Romney did in 2007: he needed support from the early states to gain traction as a candidate, and that meant espousing positions that folks in those early states valued – even if they didn’t exactly match up with who you were personally or ideologically.

But then, in a masterstroke politically, all of the old McCain hands that Pawlenty surrounded himself with reinvented T-Paw once again – just in time for his big campaign rollout when everyone would start paying attention to him. Hearkening back to the days of the Straight Talk Express, the campaign handlers invented Pawlenty 3.0: The Truth Teller. Pawlenty would now, like John McCain, tell folks the truth even if they didn’t want to hear it.

Even if it meant contradicting Pawlenty’s past positions even further, a la Mitt Romney ’07.

The issue that Pawlenty’s campaign chose to be the tip of the spear with this new truth-telling persona was designed to make as big of a splash as possible and make people sit up and take notice. Ethanol subsidies are a sacred cow in Iowa politics, and Pawlenty ensured headlines and head snaps by going toe to toe with the ethanol industry.

The only problem is that Pawlenty has a history of being one of ethanol’s biggest champions and supporters. As a midwestern governor, that stance is almost a given. Pawlenty defended federal ethanol subsidies as Governor, once famously explaining that hey, “every other fuel is subsidized, too.” Katrina Trinko noted in an NRO column entitled Cornhucksters that in 2005, Pawlenty signed legislation mandating all gas sold in Minnesota contain 20% ethanol by 2013, up from 10%. That same year, Pawlenty, who was a member of the Governors’ Ethanol Coalition, urged all other members to pass mandates that all gasoline have at least 10% ethanol.

In 2007, Pawlenty was the keynote speaker for the nation’s largest ethanol advocacy group, the American Coalition for Ethanol. In 2008, the Minnesota Corn Growers Association endorsed Pawlenty as a VP hopeful because of his “moderate views toward ethanol”. Pawlenty was a huge supporter of the E85 Everywhere program in Minnesota, requesting $12 million in additional federal subsidies to encourage gas station owners to offer E85 gas. Pawlenty said his personal goal was to see 1,800 E85 stations in Minnesota, leading to a boom in the ethanol industry powered by the very subsidies he now opposes.

As recently as last month, Pawlenty was defending federal ethanol subsidies. So you’ll have to excuse me if I can’t quite get excited about his new Pawlenty 3.0 call to eliminate ethanol subsidies. This man practically bleeds ethanol from every pore of his body. Politically, it’s a great move. Practically, I seriously doubt a President Pawlenty will make it happen.

But I suppose ethanol to Pawlenty is what abortion is to Romney. And I can see why folks don’t really trust either of these fellows.

Which is sad to me. I guess maybe this is why I like both Romney and Pawlenty so much: they are so much alike. Both are, generally speaking, moderates who successfully and pragmatically governed their liberal states in fiscally sound ways. But now both are the twisted products of a political primary system gone awry, where pragmatic and moderate governance isn’t enough to win (or at least isn’t to be worn as a badge of honor).

The irony of the whole situation is that Romney’s biggest competition now is a man who is following his exact path of four years ago – reinventing himself for political gain. Only Pawlenty 3.0 may just prove to be more adept and beat Romney 3.0 at his own game.

Harry Reid spoke to AIPAC yesterday. Politio picks up the story:

The most powerful Democrat in Congress, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), on Monday night publicly rejected President Barack Obama’s decision to use a recent speech to lay out aspects of a potential peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

“The place where negotiating will happen must be at the negotiating table – and nowhere else,” Reid declared in a speech to an annual gathering in Washington of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). “Those negotiations … will not happen – and their terms will not be set – through speeches, or in the streets, or in the media.”

When the Senate leader added, “No one should set premature parameters about borders, about building, or about anything else,” the lights quickly came up on the vast audience and most in the crowd at the Washington Convention Center rose to their feet and applauded.

…

Reid also warned that the Palestinian Authority faces a cutoff of U.S. assistance if Fatah moves forward with the power-sharing accord it announced last month with Hamas, which controls Gaza but is committed to the destruction of Israel and is considered a terrorist group by the United States and Israel.

“The United States of America will not give money to terrorists bent on the destruction of the State of Israel. If the Palestinian government insists on including Hamas, the United States will continue to insist that Hamas recognize Israel’s right to exist, that it renounce violence, and that it honor the commitments made by prior Palestinian Authority governments,” Reid said in his speech, which, at 27 minutes, clocked in one minute shy of Netanyahu’s.

Ouch! Double Ouch! That doesn’t just hurt. That stings!

One could almost feel sorry for Barack Obama — almost. He made what he and his advisers were convinced was a bold new proposal for progress in the Middle-east — a chance to show real leadership. So what happens? He finds himself increasingly isolated. When even your most staunch ally in the Congress publicly rebukes you, you know you’re in trouble.

Hey, Barry. Did you ever stop and think that maybe your new job might be a little bit more challenging than being a Community Organizer?

The St Paul Pioneer Press, Tim Pawlenty’s home paper, ran the story of his formal announcement of candidacy…

…on the obituary page!

Do they know something we don’t know?

CBS News’ Jan Crawford tweets that Rep. Peter King told guests at a D.C. dinner that Rudy Giuliani is “very close” to entering the 2012 presidential race.

Hat-tip: The Argo Journal

On YouTube, someone’s put up Pawlenty’s response to one of today’s townhall questions addressing education.  Altogether, it’s a great response but pay close attention to the bit from 4.00 on where T-Paw talks about Waiting for Superman and a little Hispanic girl who got left behind.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSPSxr5LXPg[/youtube]

This has always been Pawlenty’s bread and butter and it’s one of the reasons why, no doubt to the bewilderment of the national political class, he was regarded as Minnesota’s most charismatic politician.  As conservative orthodoxy, it lacks for nothing.  As an emotional argument, it packs a megaton wallop.  Pawlenty does a compassionate conservatism which does not cede a millimeter ideologically.  This is what he means when he says he can “connect to people on a heart and gut level” and convince them.  I’ll tell you, briefly, the story that brought me aboard the Pawlenty train nearly 5 years ago.  Republicans were getting pummeled.  George Allen looked like he might hang on and make a mess of the Presidential contest.  Iraq was deteriorating and it looked like, when the ’06 elections wrapped up, Bush wouldn’t have the capital or the numbers to maintain our presence there.

And so I was searching for something, anything, to get excited about.  When I stumbled on a story in one of the Minnesota papers about a guy named Tim Pawlenty and his uphill battle for re-election.  The tone of the piece was “Tim Pawlenty is trailing and can’t possibly win…and yet…”.  And it pointed to just this factor.  His likability.  His ability to connect.  And it told a story of an ordinary day of campaigning.  Pawlenty saw a girl and her parents on the sidewalk,  the little girl crying.  He went over to them and her parents said that the little girl had just seen a car accident and it had really upset her.  So he talked to the girl for a bit and went on with his campaigning.  Later, as he was walking down the street, he saw the accident himself and mentioned it to someone.  No one had been hurt the man said.  Pawlenty said something like, “Oh Gosh, I’ve got to tell her” and then he took off at a run down the street, his handlers following him, to find the little girl and tell her she didn’t need to cry.  It was alright.  Everyone was safe.

So the article ended up, “Tim Pawlenty is trailing and can’t possibly win…and yet…there’s this”.  And about a week later Tim Pawlenty won a race he’d been losing for over a month, according to every poll.  It’s been 4 years since I’ve read that story and I’ve never forgotten it.  In a Presidential Race; where you’re expected to fire up supporters; where megaphones are better than whispers; where opening pocketbooks is more useful than talking pocketbooks, it’s harder to bring the heart out.  You need to work a little bit.  You need to pick your spots.  Find a comfort zone.  But the heart is still a potent political tool and Pawlenty has a great big one.

Millions of his followers were disappointed Saturday, as the Big Day arrived without much fanfare.   Detractors can rest easy.  It’s not the end of the world, as we know it.

By 8 pm Central Standard Time, it became apparent that the hopes of some and the fears of many others did not materialize.  No announcement of impending doom came forth through the airways of every news channel in the country.

No, I’m not talking about May 21^st and Harold Camping, but May 14th and the second running of Mike Huckabee.   The former non-event was an epic fail, as Camping’s prediction that the earth would be swallowed by an earthquake and all of God’s people would be “raptured,” did not come to pass.   Neither did the second event.

Those of us who wanted Governor Huckabee to be our next president were very disappointed, but few of us thought it was the end of the world.  We were glad to see him put his Lord and faith first.  A few candidates remain that are strong pro-life and pro-marriage.   Cain supports the Fair Tax, and a few, like Huckabee did, may oppose both a governmental mandate on buying insurance, and the mandate on coverage of pre-existing conditions.  His consistent likeability to most folks may go unsurpassed.   Nobody put all of this together like Governor Huckabee.

I have no idea where others may turn.  Some may drop out of politics altogether.  Others will seek feverishly for another candidate to live and die for.  I will fall between those two extremes, though closer to the former than the latter.  I will patiently decide who to vote for, and perhaps that person will inspire me to work for them.

Who will it be?   Rick Santorum, Hermann Cain, Michelle Bachmann, and Tim Pawlenty are on my short list.  I would like to see Santorum come to his senses on his support of Arlen Specter.  I will look into Pawlenty’s record on social issues.  I think he is where my vote might go if he passes muster. Though there are other candidates running I am no fan of, I certainly would not work against them in the primary season.   I vote for people, not against them.  I’d probably hold my nose and vote for Ron Paul in the Iowa Caucuses, if it came down to him, Palin, Romney and Gingrich.

There is one Senator who ruled out running that I could support, if he changed his mind: Jim DeMint.  I would be thrilled if he would run.  None of the other candidates inspire me, much.   Contrary to what some would intimate, it isn’t because they aren’t “Christian” enough for me.  It is not my place to judge their personal faith.  All politicians have flaws, Huckabee included.  But some of those flaws make it difficult to support them with anything beyond a vote in the general election.

I supported Huckabee because of who he is, not his position on just one or two specific issues.  I could have lived with some differences on economic issues (though they were few and far between, as he really got a raw deal on those, in my opinion).  A lot can happen in nine months.  Maybe Huckabee will end up on the ticket as VP.  No rapture there, but a few minor shouts of joy, nevertheless.

Readers will forgive me for that allusion to Richard Nixon, who famously sold out economic conservatives while in office to the extent that Milton Friedman lamented, “We’re all Keynesians now.” Indeed, Nixon’s leftward movement in office, making him the George W. Bush of the previous generation, is one of the reasons that I cannot support one of the Republican moderates running for president as I attempt to find a candidate in a field that is largely settled. With the exit of Donald Trump, Mike Huckabee, and Mitch Daniels from the race, and with Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, and Rick Perry giving “no means no” responses to queries on the subject, the doors to the field are about to slam shut, leaving us with the “Dirty Dozen,” 12 Republican candidates for president. Of those 12, my goal, and probably the goal of most Republican voters, is to find a candidate to support who is both conservative and electable. From my point of view, there is only one such candidate in the race as of now. That candidate is Tim Pawlenty.

The Dirty Dozen can really be broken down into 6 separate groups of candidates. First, there’s the Mormon Moderates, two former governors who happen to belong to the LDS faith, and who are viewed suspiciously by the base for past heterodoxies. This duo includes Gov. Jon Huntsman and Gov. Mitt Romney. Both of these men are probably electable in a race against Obama. Both would win lots of swing voters, and the success of both would be dependent upon just how much the base could stomach in order to beat the president. But both are scions of Republican families and both have a political history that doesn’t necessarily suggest a rooting in conservatism at a philosophical level. It’s certainly possible that those who don’t support these candidates are missing something, and that either one could end up being a great conservative president. But for those of us who watched George W. Bush drift leftward, and for those a little older who remember Nixon doing the same, it is hard not to be a bit wary of candidates who appear to lack a clear philosophical footing.

Next come the various factional groups of candidates. There’s the So-Con Set, comprised of Rick Santorum and Roy Moore, the Libertarian Legion, with Ron Paul and Gary Johnson representing, and the Tea Party Trio, made up of Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, and possible late entrant Sarah Palin. In each of these cases, the candidate in question is conservative, but probably not electable. Santorum and Moore are best known as social-issues-first conservatives, yet they are running during a year when pretty much every other issue, from the economy to health care to entitlements to the debt to our foreign engagements, trump social issues. Paul and Johnson are running as one-legged stool conservatives, and, as much as I like what Gary Johnson did in New Mexico, that’s probably not going to fly with the vast majority of the base.

Meanwhile, the Tea Partiers are running as the converse of the Moderates. While Romney and Huntsman are suspect to the base because of their seeming lack of principles, the Palin/Bachmann/Cain set would be anathema to swing voters due to their dearth of actual policies. Sorry, but taking the fight to Obama is only half the battle. That gets you 40 percent in a general election. To get to 51 percent, a bit more is needed. The fact that Herman Cain seems clueless whenever a foreign policy question comes his way isn’t a badge of honor, nor a symbol of authenticity. It’s a sign that he shouldn’t be president. The fact that Michele Bachmann responded to the State of the Union with a history lesson while Paul Ryan responded with actual ideas and policies doesn’t mean that the latter is a RINO. It means that the former shouldn’t be president.

Finally, there’s the Washed-up Windbags, with Newt Gingrich and Buddy Roemer rounding out the pack. Roemer fans will forgive me for the alliteration; Newt, of course, is the one I’m targeting with the term, “windbag.” Both of these men are over the hill and it shows. Roemer running for president would be like John Engler, Tommy Thompson, or Tom Ridge doing the same. These men were from a different generation of Republicans, with different challenges, and a different electorate. Do they understand YouTube? Twitter? The power of new media? Meanwhile, Newt seemingly comes a bit closer to ending his own campaign every time he opens his mouth. The Speaker is past his prime, and will eventually realize that.

That leaves one man standing, Gov. Tim Pawlenty. He’s a conservative. He knows how to win elections in a blue state. He understands the way modern media and modern campaigns operate. He’s neither too old to be viewed as over the hill, nor too young to be taken seriously. He’s a social conservative, but running on economic issues. He’s an evangelical, but of a more mainstream strain than some other prominent Republicans. He’s a successful two-term governor with an “A” grade from the Cato Institute, who is running to restore the economy, reform entitlements, reduce government, and end ethanol subsidies in Iowa and everywhere else. Of the Dirty Dozen, he’s the only candidate who is both electable and conservative. As such, it makes little sense to consider supporting anyone else. We’re all Pawlenty-ites now.