tpaw-closeupIt was the speech that was supposed to introduce Gov. Tim Pawlenty as a national figure to GOP party leaders, and he did get applause — and even some laughs — from the 200 people at the Republican National Committee luncheon yesterday. But his address seemed to be on the meek side for a potential Republican standard-bearer. Did T-Paw flop?

Pawlenty described himself as “one voice from the heartland” as if he didn’t want to be a diva about it. He boasted that his hometown of South St. Paul had “the world’s largest stockyards,” but couldn’t help adding, “at least for a while.”

It’s not that he didn’t try to soar: “We are the freest people who have ever had the privilege to live in this great nation.” But don’t speakers usually say we’re the freest in the history of the world? (Sure, we’re freer than slaves, indentured servants, tenant farmers and Native Americans — at least after they got shunted onto reservations.)

He retold a story about a construction worker who falls from a great height, miraculously escaping serious injury, and finished with a flourish as the worker is carried off on a gurney mere feet from the ground, pleading, “Please don’t drop me, please don’t drop me.” Pawlenty voiced the worker’s words in a studied tremolo … to an elephant-sized silence in the room. The story, meant as an allegory for the GOP’s woes, fell flat.

His jokes didn’t get much more of a rise, with the possible exception of one that went like this: The only thing rising faster than the deficit is the “man crush” that Chris Matthews (of MSNBC) has for President Obama.

Pawlenty has been telling that subtle confection of media bias, homophobia and presidential belittlement at least since his speech to College Republicans last month (where the cultural references got bawdier), and he repeated it again yesterday for Fox News yesterday (video).

But Pawlenty has seemed to have missed his moment before and his star continues to rise — though perhaps not as fast as the man-crushes that are helping propel him.