Pawlenty could get 2012 nod by being ‘least offensive’ GOPer

“Rather depressingly, Tim Pawlenty could win the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 simply by being the least offensive candidate,” writes The Daily Beast’s Reihan Salam. Pawlenty’s “appeal is clear,” Salam writes, “on paper.”  He’s even-tempered and has a “compelling personal story”; he’s got that commonsense “Sam’s Club conservative” demeanor; and he’s campaigning on getting Minnesota’s fiscal house in order. But of concern to Salam is how closely Pawlenty’s been “keeping an eye on his right flank” — a la Mitt Romney in 2008.

That criticism — that Pawlenty’s rightward veer could alienate him from moderates, as happened to Romney — has been leveled before, including two weeks ago by The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder, who applied the term “Romney-esque” to T-Paw, and early this month by the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza.

On Friday, Cillizza released his latest round of rankings of GOP leaders, and Pawlenty has dropped from second to fourth. Accounting in part for the drop is Pawlenty’s involvement in New York’s special election in the 23rd congressional district, where Minnesota’s governor endorsed the candidate favored by Tea Party activists instead of the one the GOP officially backed. Cillizza writes, “[T]he governor must be careful to stay true to who he is rather than get caught up in the attempt to out-conservative the rest of the field.”

Via Secrets of the City.