Pawlenty’s remark about GOPers’ ‘range of behavior’ draws quick critique on MSNBC

MSNBC commentators jumped on a remark by Gov. Pawlenty this morning about minimum requirements for being a Republican candidate: ”There’s a range of behavior and issue positions you can take. You just can’t be so far out of the mainstream that it becomes a joke.”

Ariana Huffington, for one, saw T-Paw’s comment on the “Morning Joe” show as a return to party-limiting “litmus tests” based on the “language of deviation.”

Pawlenty’s remark came at the 4:00 mark in this “Morning Joe” video clip:

Immediate criticism came from “Morning Joe” commenters:

Pawlenty, who has been on MSNBC before (notably “The Rachel Maddow Show”), didn’t commit a blunder on the scale of U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s comments about Barack Obama and others in Congress harboring “anti-American views.”

But in the course of the discussion, Pawlenty was moved off his initial line — “Within the Republican Party, there is a range of issue positions and philosophies we can all hold, but you gotta stay generally within the guardrails” — to the phrase that caused the commotion: “range of behavior.”