Tim Pawlenty is officially in the Governor’s race, surprising nearly nobody that’s been paying attention for the past few months.
Ideological conservatives are unimpressed, of course. Being an ideological conservative myself, I completely get it. Pawlenty wasn’t and isn’t a doctrinaire conservative. He’s the sort of pragmatic center-right small-c conservative that is a product of a career in the legislature, rather than as a doctrinemonger.
But remember – just four years before he was elected governor, the Minnesota Republican party had gotten Arne Carlson elected. Carlson may have been to the left of the liberal, Rudy Perpich, that he beat in his first bid for office on many bedrock Republican issues.
Is Pawlenty “conservative enough?” Of course not.
Is Minnesota going to elect a doctrinaire conservative? Highly doubtful (although I do hope for a Wisconsin-like miracle one of these days).
Indeed – is conservatism in and of itself a winning ideology, statewide, in Minnesota? I have my doubts.
I follow the Buckley doctrine – elect the most conservative Republican who can win.
I’m still open to being convinced.
Let’s be blunt here; I can go with someone who doesn’t do everything I want if only I can get someone who doesn’t try to defund rival branches of government in a fit of pique. I might be persuaded that someone else could be even better, but Pawlenty has my support over Walz for that reason alone. Walz is one who talks a good talk about supporting things I like, but when it comes down to brass tacks, getting him to actually act like he’s concerned about the things he talks about is too much.
For example, with the ACA, do I see any repentance of voting on a bill before he or anyone on his staff could possibly have read and understood it? Do I see any attempts to fix the mayhem that he’s caused? He’s like a lap dog with the runs, leaving waste all over and not caring about it.
If there’s a better candidate out there, we haven’t seen that individual yet. T-Paw is maybe 70% of what I’d prefer, but Walz will be about 0%. Maybe someone can convince us their candidate is better. I’ve seen little evidence of it thus far.
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How ’bout a conservative that can fight back and win?
How ’bout a conservative that can fight back and win?
Based on the MN Never Trump people I know, “fighting back” means saying things that just aren’t very nice. Or dignified. Or are even hateful. Much better to lose nicely, with dignity, and without hate.
Of course, these same people are willing to say things that are quite nasty, undignified, and hateful against those of us who are pretty happy with Trump. It’s odd.
Trump nearly won MN. It’ll be interesting to see how much impact he will have on the race.
MBerg, what is Pawlenty’s “current” 2A position?
I’d be happy with either Jeff Johnson or Tim Pawlenty as governor, so it comes to down to who has the best chance of actually winning in the general election. Pawlenty was the last Republican to win a statewide election in Minnesota albeit in a three-way race where he won by just under 1 percent of the vote and where 8 percent of the voters went for the (now defunct) Independence Party. But considering it was a really bad year for Republicans both nation and statewide, I don’t know that anyone else could have done better. Johnson came really close losing just under 5.5 percent with a Ron Paul supporter running as the Independence Party candidate in the race drawing 2.8 of the vote away. It’s a tossup IMO which one would fair better this fall.