Maybe it’s better not to get that big endorsement
One staple of the U.S. political scene is the quest for endorsements, and Republican front-runner Mitt Romney seems to be leading in the race for support from the GOP establishment.
He picked up the support of Arizona Senator John McCain, who was the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota, who also was a member of the U.S. presidential field until August.
He may not be part of the party “establishment,” but Romney even got the backing of a high-profile party figure — albeit one who declared himself an independent in December — reality television star and real estate mogul Donald Trump, who called the former Massachusetts governor “tough, sharp and smart.”
But does such support really help?
“At best, so far that’s gotten him mixed results,” Republican strategist Keith Appell said, when asked about Romney’s support by party leaders. “Nikki Haley didn’t help in South Carolina. Tim Pawlenty did not help him in Minnesota.”
Prominent supporters can act as useful surrogates. Backers might pay to attend a fundraiser headlined by a well-known supporter, and voters might turn out to hear one speak.
How did Tim Pawlenty spend Iowa caucus day?
The onetime Minnesota governor seemed for a little while like a promising candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. And then came the deadly Iowa straw poll last August, a contest whose meaninglessness has been confirmed by the fact that Michelle Bachmann won it, only to come in basically last–in her home state!–yesterday when the votes actually mattered (as much as they ever do in Iowa).
It’s safe to say that, while CNN sought the wisdom of departed candidate Herman Cain, and Fox the wisdom of not-quite-candidate Sarah Palin, T-Paw was not exactly overexposed on TV during the voting and counting.
So what exactly did Tim Pawlenty do yesterday? Reuters Opinion senior editor Chadwick Matlin has imagined the day, in this piece for nymag.com.
PHOTO: U.S. Republican presidential candidate and former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty speaks at the Iowa Straw Poll in Ames, Iowa, August 13, 2011. REUTERS/Jim Young
Republicans warm up in Iowa debate
Things got a little heated between Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty during the Republican debate in Ames, Iowa.
Early on in the two-hour debate, the former Minnesota governor tried to knock the Minnesota congresswoman down a peg, saying her record of accomplishment and results “is nonexistent.”
Bachmann took aim at his record as governor, blasting his support for a cap and trade environmental plan and individual mandates in healthcare. “That sounds more like Barack Obama if you ask me,” she said.
Pawlenty came back with: “She led the effort against ObamaCare, we got ObamaCare. She led the effort against TARP, we got TARP. She said she’s got a titanium spine. It’s not her spine we’re worried about, it’s her record of results.”
At one point during an exchange between the two Minnesota rivals former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, who spent a lot of time campaigning in Iowa ahead of the debate, jokingly demanded some attention.
“I told you when I traveled around Iowa, you would see me in your city, in your hometown, but you probably wouldn’t see much of me on television. So it’s totally true tonight,” Santorum said when he finally got a chance to be heard.
Five other Republicans chasing the party’s 2012 presidential nomination were on stage Thursday night hoping to show they’re up to the challenge of battling Democrat Barack Obama in the general election.
@CCCHUCK3 — Can you name one issue — ONE — on which Ron Paul has done a Romney-flip? In the past thirty years? I’ll give you a hint: there’s only one. He used to favor the death penalty, but after learning that the rate of false convictions is about 90% (based on a study analyzing DNA evidence for long-convicted murderers) he now opposes it. This is called “integrity.” It’s rare in politicians, but to be treasured.
Pawlenty defends blandness with race card joke
The race card? No, Governor, he just means you’re boring.
Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor running for the Republican nomination to unseat Democrat Barack Obama, the country’s first black president, brought up race on Sunday when asked if he was too boring to win.
“The knock on you is .. that you’re too nice, too bland, and Republicans want somebody who can take the fight to Barack Obama,” “Fox News Sunday” interviewer Chris Wallace said.
Wallace mentioned conservative Fox News pundit Bill O’Reilly’s comment last week that “Haagen Dazs could put his picture on vanilla.”
“Did Bill O’Reilly use the word ‘vanilla’?” Pawlenty asked.
“He did,” Wallace replied.
“Is he playing the race card on me?” quipped Pawlenty, who is white.
The GOP has lost touch with the American people. You guys might as well drop out of the running. No one will beat Obama in 2012. Its as simple as that.
Washington Extra – T-Paw power
Right off the starting line, Republican Tim Pawlenty is fashioning himself as the Chevy of presidential candidates. “We will not be the money champion in the race to start with. My friend, Mitt Romney, will be the front-runner in that regard,” he told NBC’s Today show. His nomination bid, he added, “may not be the BMW or the Mercedes campaign.”
Sounds like T-Paw is calling Mitt a Mercedes. But what Pawlenty isn’t saying is that he is running the Cadillac of campaigns in Iowa. The former Minnesota governor has put more troops on the ground in that early voting state than any of the other candidates combined, according to the Iowa Republican website.
A political scientist in his native Minnesota called it a big and costly operation, “a Napoleonic army sort of thing.” With potent paychecks, Pawlenty has drawn in some of Iowa’s best campaign talent.
Yes, he may be putting all his eggs in one basket in Iowa, but he probably needs to. Romney is likely to do well in the other main early voting state New Hampshire, next door to his Massachusetts. And that means Pawlenty needs Iowa to stay in the race. If there was ever a time for T-Paw to spend lavishly, this is probably it.
Here are our top stories from Washington…
Republicans — still looking for a 2012 savior?
So Pawlenty went from being a Buick to a Chevy in front of the crowd of a dozen onlookers. He was against the GM bail out so one would think that he was a Corolla or a VW bug.
The Republicans may be looking for a savior but Arnold the Inseminator is not available as he is busy in a divorce settlement and couldn’t take the time to arrange for the birthers to forge a birth certificate for him saying that he was born in Kansas.
Pawlenty is in the race for Republican presidential nomination
Tim Pawlenty upstaged Tim Pawlenty on Sunday.
The former Minnesota governor said he is in the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, revealing the news in a polished, campaign-ready video posted on his website.
The surprise announcement came in a preview of the official announcement he was set to make Monday in Iowa. In the video, he says Des Moines is his first campaign stop. But he was already campaigning.
“We need a president who understands that our problems are deep, and has the courage to face them. President Obama does not. I do,” Pawlenty says in the video.
The polls suggest others may not think he has what it takes to take on — and defeat — the Democratic president.
Pawlenty’s consistently ranked near the bottom of the pack, just ahead of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum.
Who’s afraid of Mitt and T-Paw…
It turns out that Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty are the scariest pair of presidential prospects in the GOP field today, judging from a new Democratic ad and remarks by some Democratic Party hierophants.
Priorities USA Action, a political group founded by two former aides to President Barack Obama, targets Romney as a flip-flopper in a South Carolina TV ad that wields Republican Paul Ryan’s Medicare reforms like a political cudgel.
The 30-second black-and-white spot begins with Newt Gingrich’s “Meet the Press” remarks opposing what he called radical right-wing social engineering on Medicare. The ad then recounts Republican South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s defense of Ryan before turning finally to Romney: “Mitt Romney says he’s ‘on the same page’ as Paul Ryan … but with Mitt Romney, you have to wonder: which page is he on today?”
The New York Times says the ad will run this weekend while Romney visits South Carolina.
Pundits view the ad as evidence that Democrats have locked on Romney as the GOP frontrunner, at least for now.
Ed Rendell, a leading Democrat who served as Pennsylvania governor and DNC chairman, put it this way on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”: “What really is instructive here is that this group’s trying to knock out Mitt Romney in the primaries. We don’t want to face Mitt Romney. A Romney-Pawlenty ticket is the most credible general election ticket.”
A monster twosome, perhaps. But that doesn’t mean top Republicans aren’t still baying at the doorsteps of Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie in hopes that one or both will take the plunge.
Glad to see serious (though flawed) GOPers running. The more Palin, Trump and Newt just muddy the waters.
And the GOP favorite is…
Top establishment Republicans are getting more desperate about the GOP’s current presidential line-up all the time. Care to guess why?
Newt Gingrich, once among the most prominent voices in the GOP, appears to be on the ropes only a week after declaring his candidacy – and even before his first official campaign trip to the early voting state of Iowa.
He has apologized to House Budget chief Paul Ryan for calling his Medicare plan “right wing social engineering” in a national interview and admitted making “a mistake.”
But his comments leave the Democrats with a potentially very large stick with which to beat the GOP as the 2012 campaign for president, House and selected Senate seats gains momentum.
He won’t talk about reports of hundreds of thousands of dollars of debts at Tiffany’s.
Meanwhile, another declared GOP White House candidate, Texas congressman Ron Paul, worries publicly that the United States will invade Pakistan next.
Republicans are so used to trash talking President Obama, Democrats, middle Americans, the poor, Social Security and Medicare recipients that they are now trash talking each other. Their tea party faction is ready to eat their own. It will be amazing if President Obama even has a Republican to run against in 2012.
Down to the wire…
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan expects his fellow Republicans to wait until the “last minute” to strike a deal that averts national default by raising the $14.3 trillion limit on the U.S. debt.
Failure to reach a deal could trigger a new global financial crisis, according to analysts and Democrats including President Barack Obama. But on Monday, the day the U.S. debt reached its current statutory limit, Ryan told an Illinois AM radio station that “we’re going to negotiate this thing probably up through July, that’s how these things go.”
“That’s how these things go” could place negotiations at the very doorstep of an Aug. 2 deadline, which is when the Treasury Department believes it will exhaust its bag of tricks for staving off a financial apocalypse.
Ryan’s comments came a day after Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell advised CNN’s viewers to see the approaching default deadline as a source of opportunity.
Meanwhile, inflation worries buttressed by still-way-high gas prices are driving U.S. states to consider making silver and gold coins legal tender. South Carolina is the latest to consider legislation to that effect, joining over two-dozen others in a trend that began this month in Utah.
What happens among the states often has a way of entering the circuitry of presidential politics, as Mitt Romney discovered with the healthcare reforms he championed in Massachusetts.
But at the moment, the presidential campaign debate is focused on Medicare, specifically the mini-GOP civil war between Newt Gingrich and Ryan over the latter’s Medicare reform plan. Newt, currently on the defensive, is being taken to the woodshed today by one of the strongest conservative voices in the United States: The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board.
Republican wannabes edge toward GOP primary race
Don’t look now, but some of those Republican White House wannabes are finally getting ready to run for the GOP presidential nomination. But whether any of the current crop gets further than the latest deficit talks is another question.
Newt Gingrich announces his candidacy today. But don’t expect his lackluster ratings to improve automatically. That, according to Karl Rove, who says people know Gingrich already. But the thrice-married former House speaker, who got blamed for the Clinton-era government shutdown, could “earn” his way into the top tier before the Iowa Caucuses next February, Rove tells NBC’s Today show.
Gingrich would not be alone among top GOP “earners,” either.
There’s the septuagenarian Ron Paul, who’s spent years waiting for his long-held views on government to become du jour under the U.S. Capitol dome. He may announce within the week, according to The Hill.
But that’s not all. The Daily Caller reports that Michele Bachmann, Tea Party darling of the U.S. House, will announce her campaign plans on May 26. She’s the Minnesota tax lawyer known for verbal gaffes — like the American Revolution beginning in New Hampshire – not to mention some late-night parodies.
Former U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman is also on the march. He’s just been to the Hill to see the Senators while en route to early voting states, according to Roll Call. Some say the son of a billionaire could be a formidable candidate. But others doubt he can find a genuine pathway to the presidency.
While the GOP tortoises edge toward the primary race, the hares at the White House are already handicapping the prospective contestants, according to ABC’s Good Morning America. ABC names Mitch Daniels, Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty as those the White House sees as the toughest challengers for hare-in-chief, President Barack Obama.
How could a smart guy like Mitt Romney think that the endorsement of a scam artist like Trump could bolster his credibility with anybody. Romney’s ONLY asset is his business acumen, touching Trump is a “tar-baby: that tarnishes that asset.
PS. If phrase “tar-baby” could not conceivably be considered racist, when applied to anyone as “White” as Trump, pc has truly gone too far.