Pawlenty slides down list of 2012 contenders

Pawlenty is certainly an impressive personality, but doesn’t seem to have the same strong demeanor of Romney. One GOP leader that has sadly disappeared from this kind of straw poll lineup is Senator Rick Santorum. I really liked him. I’m not as impressed with Florida’s current governor (Crist?) as I was with Jeb Bush, but, alas his name is mud these days. I like the Utah governor, Jon Huntsman (or is that the Chemical industry billionaire?). Anyway, the white haired youthful looking governor of Utah, Gov. Huntsman, I like him even though he’s been getting hammered a lot lately. Don’t care much for Huckabee. I wish there was a picture of Haley Barbour in this article, I’m trying to figure out if it’s a guy or a girl because my daughter spells her name the same, but I would think a woman governor would still stand out these days and we’d be talking about how much she spends on her clothes, yada yada yada. I really like Michael Steele as a sensible commentator, but I think the job of Chair is too abrasive for him.

Here’s a way to send Norman Home to Bauwston.

“The “Dollar a Day to Make Norm Go Away” campaign is being launched by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a newly formed group designed to get progressive candidates into elected office. But it’s getting a friendly push by Democracy for America, Howard Dean’s political arm, which will blast the petition to its more than one million members (PCCC will send to an additional 23,000).

The goal is two-fold: capitalize off of the brewing anger among Democrats over what’s happening in Minnesota while cleverly pushing up the incentives for the national Republican Party to abandon Coleman’s appeal effort.”

Oddly enough I agree with Cillizza on this

Pawlenty’s national political aspirations are hurting the citizens of Minnesota, because he continues to make decisions based on what’s best for a run on the presidency. For example, he’s able to brag to a national audience that he’s never raised taxes in Minnesota, but we in Minnesota have suffered because he’s only shifted the tax burden to local levels of government. There are also devastating cuts to health care programs that result in loss of health coverage by many Minnesotans, leaving too many to rely on taxpayer-paid visits to emergency rooms. Recently, he’s continued to back Coleman’s appeal to the Supreme Court, which is of course popular among republicans nationwide but leaves Minnesota without adequate representation in Congress. He also spends a lot of time and money jetting around the country and the world to build up his national political resume, while threatening to furlough low-paid State workers who have already suffered through paycuts during his administration. Minnesota would be much better off if he quits straddling the line, and doesn’t run for governor in 2012, so we can get someone who’s more devoted to making this a better place to live.

I’m a very strong Romney supporter. He’s amazing and would make a fantastic President. However, I do have to question these rankings in these three ways: I see no way Haley Barbour is even close to second place, probably more like 9th or 10th. Secondly, we may be fooling ourselves if we think Sarah Palin is not higher on the list than this. Thirdly, as much as I hate the fact, I’m afraid Huckabee is also considerably higher than not even hitting the list.

The GOP is toast without Romney. Sadly, the evangelicals in the GOP will do everything they can to stop Romney because they know he’s that good, and don’t want it to reflect positively on Mormonism. Evangelicals are going to be the end up of this country.

Pawlenty doesn’t stand a chance. He’s the governor of a state that is not going to impress large roups of voters on either coast. We are the flyover states!

The only thing he has going is that he may stand a chance in the Iowa primaries. But he’d have to be an overwhelming hit in Iowa to stand a chance down the road. There’s no way he’d make it past the Super Tuesdays etc unless it was an exceptionally small field of weak candidates. The way things have been going, that may not be such a stretch of reality.