In particular, Balz criticizes T-Paw for his awkward refusal to embrace Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe as a member in good standing of the GOP during a recent television appearance. He also dings Pawlenty for eagerly wading into the recent congressional contest in upstate New York and for criticizing President Obama’s address to students on the first day of school. The awkward attempt to reposition himself for a Republican primary reminds Balz of Mitt Romney’s (doomed) 2008 presidential campaign.

The real risk for Pawlenty, as Romney learned in his unsuccessful 2008 campaign, is losing his true voice and his authenticity. Romney spent so much time trying to reposition himself and picking narrow tactical fights with his rivals that the qualities that might have made him a more attractive candidate were lost in the smoke. But once a candidate starts down that road, it can be hard to pull back.

This year, Romney has generally kept a lower profile. The view among strategists is that Romney has been shrewd in staying out of these flare-ups and wise to try to focus on big-picture issues of national security and the economy when he raises his profile. Pawlenty, being less known nationally and looking to attract attention to himself, has been reluctant to stay quiet.

Last week, another Washington Post political reporter, Chris Cillizza, made similar criticisms of Pawlenty.

Pawlenty’s figures lagged well behind those of other potential GOP contenders. Mike Huckabee was deemed worthy of serious consideration by 71 percent of Republicans, while Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney were judged credible contenders by 65 percent of GOP respondents. Among all of those surveyed, just 25 percent deemed Pawlenty qualified to be president, while twice as many held the opposite view.

The Gallup survey polled 1,021 adults across the country. It had a sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. It’s the third recent poll to indicate that Pawlenty has considerable work to do if he intends to make a credible bid for the GOP nomination in 2012.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is the top choice of roughly one third of Republicans for the presidential nomination in 2012, according to a new CNN poll. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was the second most popular choice, with support from 25 percent of Republican voters, while former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney drew backing from 21 percent of respondents. Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty trailed well behind with support from just five percent of likely Republican voters.

The CNN results echo those of a poll conducted earlier this month by Rassmussen Reports, which found Pawlenty with support from four percent of those surveyed. Pawlenty has been criss-crossing the country and making frequent cable talk-show appearances while testing the waters for a potential 2012 presidential bid.

The CNN poll had a sampling error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points for questions asked only of Republicans.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty

Should Gov. Tim Pawlenty skip the Iowa caucuses? Yes, it’s ridiculously early to be contemplating such questions about the 2012 presidential campaign. But The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder raises that question in a post today. He notes that only candidates with strong Christian conservative bona fides will have a chance in the caucuses, meaning that Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee are the prohibitive favorites (and Mitt the Mormon doesn’t have a chance in hell).

Ambinder essentially lumps Pawlenty in with Romney in weighing whether he should skip the caucuses and head straight to New Hampshire:

Pawlenty’s main strategic challenge would be New Hampshire — figuring out how to defeat the Romney machine there. It might not be hard; since there won’t be a Democratic primary, as many as 60,000 independents could decide to vote Republican. Appealing to these independents on economic issues — and comforting them on social issues — is the test.

But Ambinder might be underestimating Pawlenty’s appeal to Christian conservatives in Iowa. As noted in this piece by Andy Birkey, Pawlenty is an evangelical Christian and attends Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie. The pastor of Wooddale is Leith Anderson, who just happens to be the president of the National Association of Evangelicals. That organization represents 45,000 churches and roughly 30 million evangelical Christians across the country. Those ties, along with the fact that Pawlenty has served two terms as governor of a neighboring state, might make him a formidable opponent in the Iowa caucuses.

While polls this early in the election cycle are likely gauges of name recognition more than solid support, it suggests that Pawlenty has considerable work to do if he’s going to become a household name in national GOP circles. Which might explain why he called into his own radio show this morning from California, where he’s attending the Western Conservative Political Action Conference.

The Rasmussen Reports poll surveyed 750 likely GOP voters across the country and had a sampling error of +/- four percentage points.

A crowd of nurses who visited the governor’s office yesterday could have helped him craft his blog post.

But not with the politics part: Pawlenty knows his way around the the subtle exploitation of the italics function on his computer keyboard. He used it to great effect, and only once, in his post, giving emphasis to another jab at his leading rival for the GOP presidential nomination, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and that state’s health plan. It was in the lead-in to the excerpt quoted above:

Otherwise costs will continue to grow in an unsustainable way, and, as we’ve seen in other states, government mandates will only shift the burden of exploding costs onto the shoulders of taxpayers and ordinary Americans unable to cover them.

No, instead the nurses gathered in his anteroom could have reminded Pawlenty that local hospitals and taxpayers will be left to pick up higher emergency-room tabs for health care to the indigent after his cuts to the regular care provided under GAMC take effect.

But, as is so often the case these days, the governor wasn’t in.

Here’s Pawlenty at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 18 (three years before the 2012 election):

I’m here to tell you as the governor of, to put it charitably, a left-leaning state [laughter] …

Here’s Romney in South Carolina, as quoted in a Washington Post article titled “Massachusetts Governor Makes His State the Butt of His Jokes,” from Sept. 26, 2005 (three years before the 2008 election):

Being a conservative Republican in Massachusetts is a bit like being a cattle rancher at a vegetarian convention. … There are more Republicans in this room tonight than I have in my state!

Pawlenty also sounds a lot like Rep. Michele Bachmann, who has brought up the topic of the presidency herself. In Colorado earlier this month, she made a similar gag: “Hey, I got elected in Franken country!” Like Pawlenty at the Value Voters Summit, she followed it up by namechecking Minnesota liberals Eugene McCarthy, Walter Mondale, Hubert Humphrey and Paul Wellstone.

With his membership in their Former Governors Club still pending, Pawlenty placed respectably behind Mike Huckabee and nearly even with Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin at the Values Voters Summit straw poll last weekend.

It was a fair showing for a guy who is still building name recognition in his own party, but the Values Voters remain behind the curve on foreseeing his eventual ascendency.

Minnesota voters are also of two minds about Pawlenty’s out-of-state travel to build his national profile. Another (and presumably different) 50 percent of respondents say they’re concerned — either “very” or “somewhat” — about it.

Pawlenty’s job-approval ratings stay stable in the new poll, with 56 percent saying they approve (”strongly” or “somewhat”) of his work as governor.

But it’s unclear whether Rasmussen’s results were affected by the confusion about Pawlenty’s gender in the question the pollster posed:

How would you rate the job Tim Pawlenty has been doing as Governor… do you strongly approve, somewhat approve, somewhat disapprove, or strongly disapprove of the job she’s [sic] been doing?

Whatever his gender-identification, Pawlenty is likely to run for president. That’s the opinion of a solid 62 percent in the poll.

Meanwhile, Rasmussen has U.S. Sen. Al Franken still mired in job-approval ratings no better than the low 40s he polled on Election Day last year. By contrast, 56 percent say Sen. Amy Klobuchar is doing an “excellent” or “good” job.

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.”

POLITICO: Since [Sarah Palin] is one of the potential 2012 candidates, are you any closer to making a decision on that?

PAWLENTY: No. I’m going to finish up my term as governor both in Minnesota and around the country.

Chris Good at the Atlantic’s Politics blog finds something to admire in the passive-aggresssive, Minnesota Nice bomblets that Pawlenty tosses in the direction of potential GOP political rivals Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney. Pawlenty’s appreciation for a good arm seems to extend to his own as well as Brett Favre’s:

POLITICO: Do you think that Sarah Palin is driving the conversation on health care?

PAWLENTY: Well I think she was focused on one aspect of it, I think that the debate is much broader than that. But I think that the concern that she raised got a lot of attention, and of course people responded to it.

POLITICO: A lot of the national Republicans, whether it’s her or Gingrich or a lot of the guys in Congress are throwing bombs every day.

PAWLENTY: Well, I’ve been throwing my share of bombs also. (laughter)

The interview, Politico’s Andy Barr tells the Minnesota Independent, took place last Friday, Aug. 14, in Chicago, where Pawlenty gave a speech to GOPAC.