Before his trip to Iowa, Pawlenty had taken heat for endorsing the Conservative Party candidate over the Republican in Tuesday’s U.S. House district in New York. He then called moderate Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine “more liberal than most Republicans would like.”

Pawlenty seemed to be addressing that controversy, saying debate over things like the party platform are good, but once that’s complete Republicans must unite to “start the American comeback.”

Pawlenty then struck a chord for party unity, saying that there should be vigorous primary campaigns, but then everyone should get back on the same team in order to elect Republicans.

“We’re going to have our debates about what the platform will look like,” he said. “We’re going to have our primaries and caucuses. We’re going to go through that process, and it should be hard fought. But when those decisions are made, as a team we have to come around and support each other.”

This marks the second major Republican Party of Iowa fundraiser where a potential 2012 presidential candidate has made it a point to discuss creating an inclusive party. In June, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour told a crowd of GOP activists and elected officials that the only way back into the majority was to resist demands for ideological purity.

For most of his speech, Pawlenty struck a populist tone attacking federal bailouts for Wall Street companies and Detroit automakers. And on the night that U.S. House lawmakers approved health care reform legislation, Pawlenty repeatedly hit the Democratic reform efforts, saying they are proof that Democrats no longer care about working families.

“They have a party now, our competitors, that have embraced big government, big unions and big bailouts,” he said. “And they want to have the people believe that they work for the common person. The working person.”

During his successful presidential campaign, Barack Obama regularly asked if the crowd was “fired up and ready to go,” Pawlenty said

“Are you fired up and ready to fight back?” Pawlenty said. “Are you willing to be involved?”

He said Obama broke his campaign promise to seek bipartisan health care reform, instead deciding to push for a liberal bill, ignore Republican voices and continue the “dangerous leftward tilt” the president has pursued for the country.

“In his victory speech in Iowa after the caucuses, President Obama promised — he used the word promise — he was going to bring Republicans and Democrats together to pass needed health care reform,” Pawlenty said. “Now I ask you, are you sick and tired of Democrats trying to ram down this liberal monstrosity down our throat which is their health care reform plan?”

But the Republican Party can’t simply be critics, Pawlenty said. Republicans must also offer solutions, and he pointed to his record as governor of Minnesota as proof that GOP ideas work. Minnesota is a very liberal state, Pawlenty said, and he was still able to cut spending and taxes.

“If we can do it there, we can do it anywhere,” he said.

The federal government could learn from his experience in Minnesota. Instead of allowing the national deficit to continue to grow, government should begin to live within its means, Pawlenty said.

“The only thing growing faster than the national debt is [MSNBC host] Chris Matthews’ man-crush on Barack Obama,” he said.

This marks Pawlenty’s first trip to Iowa since he campaigned for Arizona Sen. John McCain last year, and many are speculating that the trip is another indication of his interest in seeking the GOP presidential nomination in 2012. He has already said he will not seek a third term as governor and last month he formed a political action committee called Freedom First, a typical first move for presidential aspirants.

Cillizza is a fan and doesn’t break T-Paw’s chops for galavanting around the nation, the way we locals (who unlike Cillizza are the constituents he leaves behind) tend to do:

Give Tpaw credit — he recognized that he had to quickly get moving if he wanted to emerge as a national leader, and he has done just that. Pawlenty has been somewhere close to ever-present on cable chat shows and has generally weighed in on national issues with gravity and smarts. (His decision to suspend any expenditure of state dollars to ACORN backfired a bit when Minnesota’s ACORN representative said the organization didn’t get any state cash.) Pawlenty has a prime speaking spot at the Values Voters Summit tomorrow night; if he does well, expect the buzz factor on him to rise.

But Cillizza’s not the only one with Pawlenty in his sights as the Values Voter Summit gets underway. Minnesota’s governor is the first target of a new Democratic National Committee campaign called “Call ‘Em Out,” taking Pawlenty to task for his statement about health care reform.

The campaign’s name is inspired by the Obama line: “I will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that it’s better politics to kill this plan than improve it … If you misrepresent what’s in the plan, we will call you out.”

That’s the conclusion of Eric Ostermeier, who blogs at Smart Politics for the University of Minnesota’s Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.

Ostermeier counted Bachmann’s appearances on cable shows since she took office in 2007. That first year: zero appearances. Over the past year: 43 appearances.

So by Ostermeier’s reckoning, Bachmann is on national TV every nine days. At that rate, you can set your Tivo for next Thursday and have a good shot at catching the representative from Minnesota’s Sixth Congressional District.

And at that rate, isn’t Bachmann proving she could handle her own weekly show, a la Huckabee?

By the way, Ostermeier confirms what you may suspect: Bachmann is increasingly leaning toward right-leaning networks like Fox. She hasn’t, for example, shown her face on MSNBC since Oct. 17, 2008, the day she told Chris of her suspicions about colleagues in Congress harboring “anti-American” beliefs.

Her latest appearance, as of this writing, was Tuesday, when she told Fox News host Sean Hannity that reforming the nation’s health care system is unconstitutional.

All that airtime is not an accident; it’s by design. Bachmann has mobilized an exceptionally large squadron of public-relations staffers to pursue “an aggressive plan” for more media exposure. Among other benefits, Ostermeier figures that strategy is reaping Bachmann campaign-fundraising rewards.

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.

Video and transcribed excerpts after the jump, including Pawlenty’s concern about perceived “fraud or mischief” in the Senate election, the resolution of which he said “could take well into summer or longer.” 

Mike Barnicle, substituting for “Hardball” host Chris Matthews, asked the governor to respond to people who say, “There’s Pawlenty: He was against the stimulus package but he’s going to take the money. He’s a hypocrite.” Pawlenty defended Minnesota as a net contributor to the federal budget, but first parried on hypocrisy:

Where was that double standard when Democratic governors or liberal governors in the past said, “I’m against military spending but I’m going to take National Guard money” or “I’m against No Child Left Behind but I’m going to take education money” or “I’m against tax cuts but I’m not going to voice objection to my citizens receiving the benefits of those cuts or credits.” So let’s make sure we’re looking at that argument in its full glory.

Barnicle, apparently unaware how long Pawlenty’s been flying on no-tax auto-pilot, tried flattery …

You’re a good guy, you’re a bipartisan guy. I mean you’ve got the automatons in the House of Representatives, they stand up en masse and vote, not one Republican votes for the stimulus package.

… before pressing hard on why — “for the first time in history, from the time people went to war by throwing rocks at on another”  — Republicans under President Bush cut taxes while fighting two wars, running up the national debt. Pawlenty shot back by citing “recent history” that somehow doesn’t include the Clinton era:

It doesn’t matter it seems in recent history for most of the years, whether a Republican’s in the White House or a Democrat, or Republicans are in charge in the Congress or the Democrats, they have forgotten or let go of the goal and the importance of balancing the budget.

The weary world traveler looked more haggard than usual, seen against a wall of books rather than the standard Third Avenue Bridge-by-night Minneapolis backdrop that he and Sen. Amy Klobuchar used in their MSNBC appearances early in the week. (When will the new, blue-lit I-35W bridge make its cable TV news backdrop debut?)

Barnicle asked: “How does affect, if it does, or impact, if it does, the people of Minnesota, having only one United States senator?” Pawlenty’s reply, in part:

Well, it impacts us significantly because right now some of the big issues of our time are being decided in Washington, and having only one senator is a big disadvantage. So it’s very unfortunate, and it puts us at a disadvantage.

And yet he prefaced that by telling the national TV audience that:

We don’t want an outcome where people say there was fraud or mischief or some legal flaw.

How long will it take to make sure “people” don’t “say” such awful things? (My question, not Barnicle’s.)

If one side or the other decides to appeal the outcome to federal court, this could take well into summer or longer. It may be that one side or the other decides not to do that.

The interview ended on the topic of the Republican Party’s future, which some say Pawlenty embodies. He gave a hard supply-and-demand analysis to the party’s standing with the American voters:

In politics, we’re going to be the marketplace party? The marketplace is telling us they prefer the products and services of our competitors. And if we’re going to be a winning, growing, governing party, we need to be about including more people in, not throwing people overboard.

Which could explain his two appearances in one week on reputedly liberal MSNBC.

Here’s the video (MSNBC’s sometimes buggy video embed willing):

When TIME’s Best of 2008 series came out, I was surprised that Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann didn’t make the cut. Her infamous October appearance on Hardball didn’t merit mention in the Top 10 Campaign Video Moments (which, rightfully, saw Sarah Palin’s Katie Couric interview at the top) or Top 10 Campaign Gaffes? Now, as 2008 winds down, we’ll start seeing more of Michele. The first two: Today, the New York Times’ Ginia Bellafante includes Bachmann’s “most embarrassing moment” on Hardball in her list of TV “Moments that Float and Sting.” Meanwhile, Comedy Central’s Indecision 2008 recognizes the 6th district U.S. representative for “channeling Joseph McCarthy” on the MSNBC show. She’s competing against the likes of Joe the Plumber, Rush Limbaugh, PUMAs and Barack Obama (”for being a Muslim, Arab, too-black, not-black-enough, Communist, socialist, Marxist, non-flag-pin-wearing, baby-killing, Hamas-endorsed, appeasement-practicing, elitist, community-organizing, eloquent, big-eared man who pals around with terrorists and can’t bowl”) for Best Campaign Villain of 2008. Readers can cast their vote on that one here. (She’s currently leading the pack, with 34 percent of the vote.)

Bachmann’s conversion earns pride of place because it’s the sharpest and most succinct. Her take on the Democratic president-elect evolved from being “very concerned that he may have anti-American views” on Oct. 17 to “extremely grateful that we have an African-American who has won this year” on Thursday. Only two days after the election, Bachmann was already casting herself in a new role among his cheering throngs: Obama’s victory is “a tremendous signal that we have sent,” she told Politico.

But the political calculation required for a reversal of Bachmann’s verdict on Obama wasn’t in evidence on Election Night, a review of video from the vaults of the Minnesota Independent and The UpTake indicates. The only thing she had to say about Obama came in the first line of her victory speech, about her Democratic challenger’s dashed desire to serve with him:

I just had a phone call with my opponent, Elwyn Tinklenberg, and he graciously wished me well and said he wished he could be in Washington, D.C., working with the president-elect.

Bachmann’s was an opinion that changed, but not immediately on Election Night and not overnight either. (The Times article erroneously date-stamps her Politico statements as being made on Nov. 5.)

There was, however, a clue on Oct. 16, the day before Bachmann’s “anti-American” accusations. Bachmann made this statement to reporters after a candidate debate, when her re-election was still considered a waltz: “If the presidency would somehow go to Barack Obama, I would welcome him to the 6th District as well. As a matter of fact, I would put my hand on his shoulder and give him a kiss if he wanted to.” As if she’s an actor in her own play, Bachmann delivers a line that both foreshadows her post-election conversion to Obama’s side and harkens back to the death-grip smooch she gave President George W. Bush at his State of the Union address in 2007 — when she first made her inimitable presence felt on the national stage.

UPDATE: Commenter Karl below provides a link to Bachmann’s Nov. 5 appearance on conservative radio host Mark Levin’s syndicated program. The audio offers insight into her thinking on the day between Election Night and her Politico interview. Here it is:

Rep. Michele Bachmann (left): Since Hardball, her campaign has been paralyzed.

If God is in the habit of personally steering Michele Bachmann’s  political career, as she has been known to claim, then you have to wonder if His heart is really in it anymore. It’s been almost two weeks since Bachmann dropped the “anti-American” bomb on Hardball that has become the most widely aired gaffe in any US congressional campaign this year, and her campaign’s handling of the matter looks a lot like one protracted act of political malpractice.

First, consider Bachmann’s efforts at damage control. She waited four days to address the matter in national media, thereby effectively ceding the most critical part of the incident’s aftermath to the repeated re-broadcast of her comments and to news of the fundraising groundswell they had created for her opponent, El Tinklenberg, who raised nearly $1.5 million in that time.

And when Bachmann did respond, it was neither to apologize nor to dig in her heels. Instead, she complained that Chris Matthews had put words in her mouth — an appeal that was seriously undercut by the zeal with which Bachmann took up the Hardball host’s suggestion that Obama and other unnamed Democrats were anti-American. She followed this with a 30-second TV spot so soft and so swaddled in euphemism that it sounded like an ad for a mortuary. And again, no apology.

Then again, it’s not entirely clear that Bachmann needed to apologize in order to stem the damage. But she needed to do something to take back control of the conversation. The Campaigns 101 play — and it seemed so not only to me, but to a number of political pros I’ve talked to privately in the past week — appeared to be trying to turn El Tinklenberg’s newfound strength (a national, 11th-hour fundraising base) into a weakness.

The 6th congressional district, after all, is the most conservative in the state, generously stocked with evangelicals and other nativist conservative elements of the sort that might be heartened by sentiments like Bachmann’s, or at least not terribly offended. The situation seemed ripe for a response along pretty obvious tactical lines: Are voters in the 6th going to let national liberal elites tell them what to do?

It never happened. In fact, nothing has really happened in the Bachmann campaign since Hardball. You can excuse Bachmann herself for feeling pole-axed; Michele had never had the chance to be Michele on such a large stage before, and the public reaction seems to have thrown her into an almost clinical state of shock. But what about the so-called political professionals behind her? Has God advised them to sit on their hands, or has Bachmann’s gift for running a chaotically staffed congressional office bled over into her campaign operation as well?

Survey USA cautions that the poll is a snapshot from a volatile race that – with Tinklenberg’s lead within the margin of error — appears to be essentially tied. Indeed, the contest continues to develop as a national story on the news of Bachmann’s Oct. 19 remarks on MSNBC’s “Hardball” show. (On Friday MPR will release results from its own poll of 6th District voters’ current take on the race.) The day before Bachmann told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that U.S. Sen. Barack Obama and possibly others in Congress held “anti-American” views, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released results of a survey taken Oct. 10–12 showing Bachmann with a narrow 42–38 lead.

In the poll released Thursday, women preferred Tinklenberg to Bachmann by a wider margin (53 percent to 41 percent) than men favored Bachmann over Tinklenberg (48–42). Tinklenberg takes 51 percent of independent voters to Bachmann’s 35 percent. And the DFLer gets the support of more Democrats (87 percent) than Bachmann does Republicans (79 percent).

That last figure demonstrates that Republican support for Bachmann has dropped by 9 percentage points from where it stood two years ago, as reported in a poll that Survey USA took for KSTP-TV on Oct. 24–26, 2006, just days before Bachmann won election to her first term in Congress.

Major media are reporting that Survey USA conducted this week’s poll on Monday and Tuesday, but that’s incorrect. It turns out it was actually Tuesday and Wednesday, meaning that some respondents gave pollsters their voting preference when the controversy over Bachmann’s “anti-American” statements and re-statements had had yet another 24-hour news cycle in which to curdle.

The problem: Survey USA’s original report listed two different date ranges (Oct. 20–21 and Oct. 21–22) as the period over which the poll was conducted. Jay Leve, an official at the polling organization, issued this clarification early Friday in response to a Minnesota Independent query:

SurveyUSA apologizes for the confusion. Data collected 10/21/08 + 10/22/08. Poll released 10/23/08. The incorrect reference has been changed.