Is Pawlenty conservative enough for Iowa?

The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder recently suggested that Tim Pawlenty might want to consider skipping the Iowa caucuses in 2012 given the sway that Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee will likely hold with Republican caucus-goers in the Hawkeye State. Today he follows up with a post elaborating on why he believes Pawlenty will struggle to win over Christian conservatives in Iowa.

Ambinder notes that the Republican base has grown more stridently conservative since 2000, and that rightward drift will only continue leading up to the 2012 primaries, given that there’s a liberal Democrat in the White House. While Pawlenty’s conservative bona fides are pretty solid — anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, anti-taxes, etc. — he may not be sufficiently strident to appease the GOP ground troops. T-Paw, Ambinder notes, used to support climate-change legislation — a position anathema to many of the party faithful:

The point is that Pawlenty is going to have to make some adjustments. It’s not enough that he checks most of the boxes; he’s going to have to check more than most. His instinct is not to demagogue pro-choicers, or gays, or even liberals, but that instinct will be tested as he faces pressure to prove himself acceptable to the guardians of GOP orthodoxy in Iowa.

The standard strategy for Republican presidential candidates is this: Run to the right in the primaries, but not too far to the right; run to the center in the general election. This strategy assumes that general election voters don’t pay attention to the primaries. In today’s technological and political environment, that’s no longer true. The moment Pawlenty sets himself down in Iowa is the moment that the national default opinion of him will begin to be formed. If he stretches too far to the right, he won’t be able to stretch back to the center. There is little give. There is too much tension.

But if Ambinder’s analysis is correct, it would seem to beg a question: Can Pawlenty compete anywhere?