Yes, he really does call himself "T-Paw." Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) moves one step closer to the starting line for the 2012 presidential race today.
A team of veteran Republican consultants -- Terry Nelson of the Bush and McCain campaigns, Sara Taylor, the Ken Mehlman-trained ex-White House political director, and Phil Musser, a former RGA executive director who remains close to Mitt Romney -- and fundraisers will be announced as charter members of his Freedom First political action committee, which will allow him to perform the help-GOP-candidates-win-and-collect-presidential-chits two-step that is a necessary precondition before starting a campaign. Pawlenty has enlisted virtually every major Republican Web 2.0 consultant -- Liz Mair, Patrick Ruffini, Mindy Finn and Patrick Hynes, to help him create a website that is so 2.0y, it's like one of those supermarkets with every single specialty area.
The founding message of the PAC is this:
"Right now, our freedoms are being challenged on many fronts," Pawlenty will say, in a press release that'll go out later. "This organization is dedicated to putting freedom first again in America. By helping candidates and translating our ideas into policies that everyone can relate to and support, we can turn back the growth of Washington and renew the promise of freedom."According to Politico's Jonathan Martin, the PAC will be co-chaired by veteran Bush fundraiser William H. Strong, Morgan Stanley's vice chairman, and Republican ubiquitite Vin Weber, the former Republican congressman from Minnesota. Alex Conant, a former White House policy aide, will be the communications director.
Instead of surrounding himself with the same old DC consultants who recycle rhetoric from old campaigns, Pawlenty would be better off staying in Minnesota and sticking with the Sam's Club message that first won him notice on the national scene.
As it stands now, TPaw sounds an awful lot like LAMAR!
Yawn.
I look forward to supporting policies everyone can support! Ponies!
T-Paw is absolutely right. Our freedom to make our own reproductive decisions is being challenged. Our freedom from religious instruction in public schools is being challenged. And those are just two of many.
I look forward to reading his platform on how he will ensure these freedoms as President.
This guy sounds like Bush, Part 3. Regarding the Web 2.0 bit, I used to contribute to a site run by one of them that kept getting spammed and had a major security hole. I offered to fix both of those for them and never heard back. Then, I was banned for posting a couple of completely factually-correct posts like this one about Howard Kurtz there.
Palin could find someone more experienced and more centrist and run on some kind of a reform platform to clean up the swamp and at least push out the Bush-linked incompetents.