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.

Presumably Pawlenty knows this (since he recommends Google to reporters), but “Freedom First” is also a suburban Washington, D.C. credit union with dibs on the web address “freedomfirst.com.”

“Freedom First” is also the name of a political group in Colorado that believes “the most powerful and ruthless Conspiracy in the history of mankind has a grip on world affairs and is seeking rapidly to eliminate the last bastions of potential resistance to its world hegemony.”

And “Freedom First” has already been taken as the name of a political committee in Florida, where one Republican state senator used it to help a colleague named “John Thrasher” thrash his opponents in a special election on Tuesday — the same day news of Pawlenty’s PAC went public.

UPDATE: MnIndy reader blueJ (see comments, below) adds that the National Rifle Association is another organization that got to “Freedom First” first.

Other less politically hospitable associations include a political ad titled “Freedom First” by Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester of Montana (about his opposition on privacy grounds to the Patriot Act), and a group called “First Freedom First” that fights to maintain a separation between church and state.

For some, “Freedom First” brings to mind the presidential campaign slogan of U.S. Sen. John McCain: “Country First.” Pawlenty was a big part of that campaign, right up until he wasn’t, so the slogan may have bored its way into his subconscious then.

(Pawlenty’s PAC name sent MnIndy commenter Minnesota Central down memory lane: “Ah, I remember the days of ‘Country First’ … but now it’s States Rights … it must mean that individual freedoms are more important than our collective good.”)

Politics in Minnesota had a field day with “Freedom First,” starting with Sarah Janacek mostly lauding the name as a welcome departure from the identity politics of Huck PAC and Sarah PAC (committees for GOP presidential rivals Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin, respectively).

Then Bill Clements noted that 39 PACs already include the word “freedom” in their names, making it such a favorite that, he wrote, “I’m not sure using ‘freedom’ in a PAC name means anything at all, really. Except maybe, as songwriter Kris Kristofferson puts it, ‘freedom’ really is just another word for nothin’ left to lose.”

There are even more PACs with “first” in their names: by OpenSecret.com’s count, 132. They’re mostly banks (including the unfortunately named “Bankers First Federal Savings and Loan”), but there are also PACs named “America First,” “Texas First” and “South Dakota First.”

Huh: “Minnesota First.” Now that would have been a really terrible name for Pawlenty’s new PAC.

Police face off with an RNC demonstrator. Photo: Paul Demko, Minnesota Independent

The Republican National Convention opened in St. Paul at the Xcel Energy Center exactly a year ago. Repercussions from the gathering — and, more significantly, the corresponding protests in the streets — continue to be felt today.

The St. Paul Police Department initially vowed that the city would present a welcoming face to Republican delegates and protesters alike. But on the opening day of the convention the streets of downtown St. Paul were lined with hundreds of cops clad head to toe in riot gear. The first day witnessed the most violent clashes of the gathering — with protesters shattering downtown windows and slashing tires, and the cops responding with the liberal use of pepper spray and flash-bang grenades — but the confrontations and arrests would continue throughout the four-day gathering.

By the time John McCain accepted the Republican nomination for president more than 800 people had been arrested, the vast majority of them in mass sweeps. So how many of these people were actually engaged in prosecutable criminal activities? A year later the answer is clear: not many.

Ultimately 676 of these cases were referred to the St. Paul City Attorney’s office for possible misdemeanor charges. But almost immediately the cases began collapsing. It was initially announced that 39 journalists who had been detained would not face criminal charges. Then in February St. Paul City Attorney John Choi let it be known that more than 300 people swept up in a mass arrest on the final night of the RNC would not be prosecuted. Ultimately more than 80 percent of the cases handled by the St. Paul City Attorney’s office didn’t result in charges.

“The overwhelming majority of arrests clearly didn’t have any basis,” says Jordan Kushner, a defense attorney who is handling several RNC-related cases.

Chuck Samuelson, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, argues that the heavy-handed police tactics and large-scale arrests were simply designed to quell dissent. He notes that in 2004, when the RNC was held in New York, there were roughly 500,000 protesters and 1,600 arrests. By contrast, in St. Paul there were an estimated 10,000 protesters and nearly 800 arrests — a strikingly higher ratio.

“The First Amendment is messy, because it allows people to speak their mind,” Samuelson says. “You need to be prepared for messy.”

But Choi maintains that the low rate of successful prosecutions isn’t necessarily indicative of wrongful arrests. He notes that the standards for making arrests and prosecuting charges are very different.

“What we’re looking at is whether we could actually obtain a conviction at trial, prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt,” Choi says. “That’s a really high bar. When you have situations involving First Amendment issues, mass arrest situations and a confusing fact pattern, it’s really difficult to get to believing that we would have a likelihood of success at trial.”

While the misdemeanor charges handled by Choi’s office have largely evaporated, many of the more serious criminal cases continue to work their way through the courts. On Monday, for instance, the trial of two defendants — Christina Vana and Karen Meissner — began in Ramsey County District Court on charges of aiding and abetting second-degree assault. The pair are accused of throwing a metal sign off the Marion Street bridge onto Interstate 94.

Other high-profile felony cases have resulted in guilty pleas. Bradley Crowder and David McKay, activists from Austin, Texas, eventually pleaded guilty to federal charges related to manufacturing molotov cocktails. In May, Crowder was sentenced to 24 months in prison. That same month McKay, whose initial trial resulted in a hung jury, received a 48-month sentence.

But the most conspicuous criminal charges, those involving the so-called RNC Eight, look to still be a long ways from trial. The eight defendants are charged with an elaborate, nationwide criminal conspiracy to disrupt — and ultimately bring to a halt –  the convention. In a series of raids during the days leading up to the convention, Ramsey County Sheriff’s deputies seized seized smoke bombs, sling shots, bottles of vinegar, buckets of nails and other purported evidence of this conspiracy.

The eight activists alleged to be behind the criminal plot — Erik Oseland, Eryn Trimmer, Garrett Fitzgerald, Luce Guillen-Givens, Max Specktor, Monica Bicking, Rob Czernik and Nathanael Secor — were initially charged with felony counts of conspiracy to commit riot in the second degree in furtherance of terrorism. In March, however, the more incendiary terrorism aspect of the charges was dropped by the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office.

But attorney Larry Leventhal, who is representing Specktor, argues that the terrorism designation has already damaged the reputations of the defendants. “Everybody’s against terrorism,” he notes. “You use words like that for inflammatory purposes.”

The cases were slated for a hearing last month, but it got postponed owing to a scheduling conflict. Two thorny issues must be settled before they can proceed to trial: whether all the defendants will be tried together and exactly what evidence will be deemed admissable. No trial date has been set. The defendants have stated repeatedly that they intend to fight the charges.

“I am not going to take a plea bargain,” says Rob Czernik. “I want to fight this. I want to see it through to the end. If I get found guilty I get found gulty. I’m not going to go down without a fight.”

Czernik and others largely blame the prosecutions on the strong-arm tactics of the Ramsey County Sherrif’s Department, which conducted the undercover investigations that led to the RNC Eight arrests. In particular, they believe Sheriff Bob Fletcher was guilty of fear-mongering with regards to the aims of anti-RNC activists.

“I totally think this is a creation of Bob Fletcher’s mind,” Czernik says of the investgation.

But Fletcher says the strength of the evidence will ultimately be weighed by a jury. “That’s why we have a court system,” he says. “The facts will speak for themselves at trial.”

Even less settled than criminal matters is the civil litigation resulting from RNC activities. Many cases are just now entering the court system. In February, for example, seven cases were filed in U.S. District Court by plaintiffs charging that their civil rights were violated.

On Tuesday a class-action lawsuit is expected to be filed on behalf of individuals who were arrested during a mass sweep on the first day of the RNC. According to Robert Kolstad, one of three attorneys handling the  case, there will initially be two dozen plaintiffs attached to the case, but the list of litigants could grow to as many as 200 individuals.

The City of St. Paul (or any other government entity involved in RNC security) won’t likely be on the hook for a dime from such lawsuits. That’s in part because the city negotiated with the Minneapolis-St. Paul 1008 Host Committee — the nonprofit group charged with organizing the event — to purchase a $10 million insurance policy to cover any legal liabilities. Some have argued that this allowed officers to behave with impunity when facing off with protesters.

“It was carte blanche for the police to do whatever they wanted,” says defense attorney Kushner. “They didn’t have any financial liability to face so they had no disincentive for violating people’s rights.”

But Choi states that this theory is “fatally flawed.” He points out that the city is always covered by an insurance policy for police actions. The only difference in this instance was that the RNC host committee picked up the tab for the plan. “No matter what we would have had insurance,” he says.

How much will ultimately be paid out in lawsuits likely won’t be known for years. But the damage to the credibility of the cops is likely irreparable in the minds of many activists.

In part that’s because the expectation created by the St. Paul Police Department of a relatively benign security presence during the RNC hardly gelled with reality. This was among the criticisms voiced by former U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger and former federal prosecutor Andy Luger in an 82-page report on RNC policing that was released in January. It’s a viewpoint that’s also shared by Fletcher.

“It was a flawed attempt to keep everyone happy,” he says. “What was needed was more honesty about the type of enforcement that was gong to occur.”

The Minnesota chapter of the ACLU is currently suing Fletcher’s office over the seizure of literature in the days leading up to the RNC. But Samuelson agrees that Minnesotans were misled about what to expect during the RNC and weren’t prepared for the heavy presence of law enforcement.

“The people of this state believed what they were told by law enforcement,” he says. “I think maybe a lot more skepticism might be in order the next time we entertain one of these events.”

Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

ST. PAUL: Pawlenty’s talent agent returns to state payroll. The governor made former deputy chief of staff Bob Schroeder, who took a year off to book T-Paw for speeches and TV shows, his chief of staff. [Associated Press]

MINNEAPOLIS: Council quashing of park referendum imminent. The fight over a charter amendment granting the park board taxing authority will move to the courts. [Star Tribune]

RAMSEY COUNTY: Susan Gaertner “flabbergasted.” The county attorney and candidate for governor has seen it all, but the idea of moving her department to the crummy Metro Square building takes the cake. [St. Paul Pioneer Press]

HUTCHINSON: Like sister, like butter. With Elizabeth Olson’s ascension, one family is on its second Princess Kay of the Milky Way, and third finalist in the Minnesota State Fair contest. [West Central Tribune]

FRIDLEY: Seven mayors set to stay up on roof overnight. In a weeklong stunt next month the mayors of Blaine, Fridley, Ham Lake, Columbia Heights, Coon Rapids and Andover will raise money for local mental-health care that’s lacking due to budget cuts. [Blaine-Spring Lake Park Life]

STATE FAIR: Birth certificates are big. Obama’s is done in seed art, and man returns to his place of birth — the fair — with the certificate to prove it. [Molly Priesmeyer via Twitpic; KARE 11]

Photo: ESPN

One-time University of Minnesota football coach Lou Holtz now says he’s not mulling a run for Congress in Florida, as reported. If so, he’d be keeping a promise made in 1983 to the late Rudy Perpich, then governor of Minnesota, on WCCO-AM: “I assure you, I will have nothing to do with politics.”

Holtz had just taken the coaching job at the U of M at the time, and he was trying to live down appearances he had made in campaign ads for Sen. Jesse Helms, whose latest exploits then included filibustering a national holiday for Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In two seasons, Holtz led the Golden Gophers to a 10-12 record, en route to more illustrious coaching gigs, including the University of Notre Dame.

Lending credence to the idea that he at least was interested in challenging first-term Democrat U.S. Rep. Suzanne Kosmas are meetings he had on the topic with Republican leaders in Washington, D.C., last week — not to mention his three donations of $500 each to the National Republican Congressional Committee in June.

Indeed, Holtz’s campaign donation history indicates that he strongly favors the right side of the political field — although his donations last year included $2,300 to Hillary Clinton in March. Holtz also gave then-fellow-71-year-old Sen. John McCain $1,000 in May.

Something he said as a TV sports commentator last fall in praise of Adolf Hitler as a leader was impolitic enough for him to later clarify that in his view, Hitler was bad — and that was good enough for ESPN.

The Battle for America 2008: The Story of an Extraordinary Election

Today’s piece focuses on John McCain’s search for a vice presidential candidate to shake up the campaign. It offers further proof of how close Gov. Tim Pawlenty came to making the cut. According to Balz and Haynes, at the end it was down to Sarah Palin or Pawlenty. If the Alaska governor had failed to impress McCain, T-Paw would have gotten the call.

Here’s their description of Pawlenty:

Pawlenty was young and vigorous, a conservative who had grown up in a blue-collar family — his father was a truck driver — and he was anti-abortion. He had won reelection in the Democratic year of 2006 and was seen as a future leader of the GOP, an advocate of modernizing the party without abandoning its conservative principles. Though not particularly flashy, he was seen as a more than credible choice, a running mate who might keep the Upper Midwest competitive. He was the safe choice if Palin faltered.

President Obama’s numbers have slipped as well, although he remains broadly popular in Minnesota. More than half of those surveyed (54 percent) approve of the job he’s doing, while 39 percent expressed disapproval. That’s down from a 60-30 spread in April.

In a theoretical 2012 presidential match-up with Pawlenty, Obama wins by a 51-40 percent margin. In 2008, John McCain lost Minnesota by 10 percentage points.

Even more unpopular with Minnesotans than Pawlenty? Sarah Palin.

The Public Policy Polling survey found that just 39 percent of residents view her favorably, while 53 percent hold the converse view. In a head-to-head matchup with Obama, she loses by a 56-35 percent margin. She continues, however, to garner favor with conservatives: 73 percent of those who identified themselves as such have a favorable opinion of the (soon-to-be-former) Alaska Governor.

Seemingly the most popular politician in the state: U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar. More than half of those surveyed (56 percent) view her favorably, while just 30 percent have an unfavorable opinion of the first-term senator.

Public Policy Polling conducted the survey of 1,491 registered voters on July 7 and 8. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 2.5 percent. Of those surveyed, 34 percent identified themselves as Democrats, 27 percent as Republicans and 39 percent as independents or third-party supporters.

Photo: The UpTake

Gov. Tim Pawlenty was at odds with his own communications office on a couple points at his press conference yesterday — including the topic of his talk.

Here’s how Pawlenty’s communications director, Brian McClung, billed the event:

Governor Pawlenty will hold a press conference today regarding his future plans.

Never mind that the phrase “future plans” is a notorious redundancy deserving of its own line-item veto. Pawlenty played off all questions on the topic like a rock star who refuses to perform the hit that the promoter promised:

I don’t know what my plans are. I don’t have any plan …

I do not know what my future plans are. I really don’t. …

I’ll just reiterate: I. Don’t. Know. What. My. Future. Plans. Are.

Then there was the answer that the governor’s office had to scramble to take back. Two hours after Pawlenty’s press conference ended, McClung issued this statement:

At today’s press conference, Governor Pawlenty misspoke when he said that our administration considers unallotments as permanent cuts to programs.  The Governor thought he was addressing a question regarding the impacts of line-item vetoes rather than unallotments.  While line-item vetoes are counted as permanent funding reductions, an unallotment only impacts funding for that specific biennium.  The reduction does not carry forward into future years.

Politics in Minnesota’s Steve Perry, who asked the question, wonders whether Pawlenty really thought he was talking about line-item vetoes. Here’s Perry’s transcription:

PIM: Regarding the question of unallotments, I know your administration has studied closely the House Research paper on unallotments, and it points to ambiguities in the law–one of which is that it’s not clear whether unalloting a sector of the budget reduces the base budget going forward. In your view, does it reduce the base budget, or is it a temporary reduction?

Pawlenty: You’re talking about in terms of the forecast beyond the current biennium? Well, I think it’s our position and the Department of Finance’s position that that’s a permanent reduction. But I’ll defer that to the Department of Finance.

Maybe Pawlenty did mix up line-item vetoes with unallotment, lost in the emotion of a moment that some media labeled his retirement from politics (though that seems a mislabeling, and the event was, as Pawlenty reminded reporters, “not a wake”).

But this is a man who ordinarily watches his words. He rarely, for example, flings “Democrat” as a partisan pejorative in place of the more proper adjective “Democratic.” So it was surprising to hear him at the press conference deliver this line in his fed-up, scolding tone:

We need leaders and visionaries and change-agents, not whiners and defenders of the status quo.

You’d think Pawlenty would have excised the word “whiner” from his vocab list last summer, after the man he nearly joined on the national Republican ticket, Sen. John McCain, dispatched former Sen. Phil Gramm from a campaign post for making comments about a “nation of whiners.”

Photo: MPR Polinaut

Gov. Tim Pawlenty is no longer swimming at the deep end with the Republican Party’s top 10 ‘influencers,” says The Fix. But he had another visit from the person in the fish suit during his radio show today — a sure sign it’s time to declare a winner in last week’s caption contest.

The Washington Post blog The Fix posts a monthly ranking of top Republicans, but Minnesota’s governor — a fixture on the list — wasn’t named this month.

Pawlenty and Rush Limbaugh fell off the chart in favor of Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele and Utah Gov. John Huntsman.

Pawlenty may have hurt his chances by not following The Fix blogger Chris Cillizza’s instructions last month to hurry up and decide whether he’s running for re-election or president. 

Maybe the sauciness of his quips to the media tomorrow during his 3 a.m. fishing expedition on White Bear Lake will give some indication of his plans.

At last year’s fishing opener, his bawdy wisecrack about not having sex with his wife caused ripples of speculation about how such talk would affect his chances to become Sen. John McCain’s vice presidential pick.  

And speaking of White Bear Lake and fish and making decisions, here’s a winner in last week’s caption contest. (The photo was from Pawlenty’s appearance at the White Bear Lake Chamber of Commerce.)  

Photo: Tom Scheck, MPR Polinaut

While philosophically opposed to the Obama Administration’s TARP bailout, Gov. Pawlenty could not say no to the recently announced CARP stimulus package.

A box of MnIndy-brand fish sticks goes out to reader Bob Moffitt for that one. Thanks to all who submitted captions – they were funny.

Photo: Conservapedia

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar gets more plaudits in today’s New York Times for soldiering on as Minnesota’s sole senator. And she’s staying popular as she stays busy — though that isn’t quite good enough for one University of Minnesota political-science blog.

Klobuchar, on a trip to Vietnam with Sen. John McCain, made time to talk to national reporters by phone on Tuesday about how her office is coping with constituent-service demands normally shouldered by two Senate offices.

Roll Call highlighted the fact that four more months of delay in seating a second senator from Minnesota would make Klobuchar the record-holder for longest solo service in the Senate’s modern era. (It’s possible: Gov. Tim Pawlenty says the Al Franken/Norm Coleman contest could yet take “months,” and his is one of two signatures that must appear on the election certificate.)

In the Times story, Klobuchar commented that Minnesota now has common cause with the District of Columbia, which isn’t provided with a voting member of Congress in the U.S. Constitution. “We have the same issue of taxation without representation at this point,” she said.

With that quote Klobuchar sets another kind of record. She’s the second woman from Minnesota’s congressional delegation to make use of the famous “taxation without representation” slogan from the Boston Tea Party over the last six weeks — and the first to do so coherently.

Yet another Klobuchar claim to fame: Her job-approval rating (59 percent) is fourth highest among those of the 27 senators whose constituents are regularly polled by Survey USA. And her approval rating has fluctuated the least over the last 15 months, by only five from 58 to 63 percentage points.

But Eric Ostermeier, the data-digger who unearthed these gems at the University of Minnesota’s Smart Politics blog, also dispenses this chunk of coal for Klobuchar:

Klobuchar’s numbers are so flat they suggest the state’s lone U.S. Senator is both succeeding at sustaining the support of those Minnesotans who voted her into office in 2006, and failing to convert any of those who did not.

Really? The numbers that Smart Politics cites — Klobuchar’s 58.1 percent of the vote in 2006 and her 59 percent approval in last month’s survey — do “suggest“ that conclusion. But what does Survey USA’s data actually say about who has been providing Klobuchar’s relatively steady level of support?

It turns out that beneath the tranquil surface of Klobuchar’s “flat” numbers you find hidden turbulence. Voters of various party affiliations and ideologies have moved in waves of support for and disaffection with Klobuchar throughout her time in office.

For example, the proportion of self-identified Republicans who said they approved of Klobuchar’s job performance fell 20 percentage points (from 45 percent to 25 percent) between January and March this year. But her overall approval stayed steady as Democrats’ approval increased by 10 percentage points (from 76 to 86) and independents’ by 8 (from 54 to 62).

And that’s what you might expect of a politician who, as Ostermeier puts it, strives to seem “comparatively non-political in contrast to her past and (probable) future Gopher State colleagues, Norm Coleman and Al Franken.” The more political elements of her constituency are bound to be disappointed in a less political approach.

Klobuchar’s recent running with Senate “blue dog” Democrats, bound to disappoint her more progressive constituents, came since Survey USA completed its latest poll. It will be interesting to see whether the makeup of her overall steady support continues to shift.