His announcement registered with broadcast and print media across the country in headline roundups and news digests, but most analysis of note came via cable TV news networks and major newspapers’ Web sites. Their focus fell on his future as a national political figure, with some sidelong glances at his role in the Al Franken-Norm Coleman struggle for Minnesota’s second U.S. Senate seat.

On MSNBC, commentator Lawrence O’Donnell called Pawlenty ” the best player [Republicans] have,” to which Pat Buchanan (himself a former candidate for the Republican presidential nomination) replied that while he’s “an attractive fellow” who is “doing the right thing” by not running for re-election, “[Alaska Gov. Sarah] Palin will wipe the floor with him” in 2012.

On CNN, anchors Wolf Blitzer and Jack Cafferty recalled Pawlenty as the 2008 VP also-ran who might have made the GOP ticket more competitive.

The Boston Globe’s Political Intelligence blog writes that a new CNN/Opinion Research poll shows T-Paw trailing badly in the early running for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination to a man who’s already a former governor: Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. Indeed, Romney’s out-of-office success as a candidate has caught Pawlenty’s eye as an example, the New York Times’ The Caucus notes.

If he takes it, Pawlenty’s road to the White House would pass through Iowa, where the Des Moines Register’s Iowa Politics Insider says he has well-placed friends and admirers from several road trips he made on behalf of Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign.

Pawlenty’s banquet-patter about building the party with Sam’s Club Republicans may get stale by 2012, warns the National Journal’s Hotline. He’ll have a chance to start refreshing his rhetoric this weekend in Washington, D.C. There, he’ll address not only the College Republicans‘ national convention, as he mentioned Tuesday, but also a gathering sponsored by the Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA), according to Politico,

(RNLA fundraising for Norm Coleman’s post-election efforts to regain his Senate seat prompted a DFL Party complaint to the Federal Election Commission early this year. An RNLA “Stop Al Franken from Stealing the Election” Web page, with headline altered to “Stop ACORN,” still solicits donations of $5,000 — an amount exceeding legal limits, the DFL charged in its yet-unresolved complaint.)

The Washington Post’s The Fix pushed the Franken-Coleman angle the hardest, seeing Pawlenty’s “retirement” as a potential game-changer. The theory goes that with no worries about wooing Minnesota voters hungry for a second senator, Pawlenty might actually withhold an election certificate from Franken even after the Minnesota Supreme Court rules:

So, if Coleman decides he wants to take the case to the federal level if he were to lose at the state court level, there’s now a significantly higher likelihood that Pawlenty would be receptive to such a move.

Left to right: Dick Morris, Norm Coleman, Brian Melendez

The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party charged former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman and a GOP lawyers’ group with violating Federal Election Campaign laws by raiseingmoney for a post-recount lawsuit challenging the results of the Senate recount.

The Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA) is soliciting donations for a legal contest of election results certified by the state Canvassing Board. The results show Al Franken defeated Coleman by 225 votes. But the DFL Party’s complaint says the RNLA has failed to register with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) and is breaking the law by taking sums in excess of legal limits and from corporations that aren’t allowed to donate.

The DFL complaint also names Coleman for having failed to report contributions to his campaign from the RNLA.

Federal law allows a new contribution limit separate from the pre-Election Day campaign in the case of a recount, the DFL complaint acknowledges, but so-called “soft money” is not allowed. The RNLA is an unregistered 527 organization under Internal Revenue Service code, Democrats contend, and cannot steer cash to Coleman’s campaign, his recount committee or the state GOP’s federal account. Yet that’s what appears to be happening at a NewsMax Media Web page, where check boxes indicate donations for as much as $5,000 are being accepted — far more than the $2,300 maximum allowed by law.

What if the RNLA isn’t really giving Coleman money?

“The Coleman campaign should publicly declare that it has received and expects to receive no contributions whatsoever from the Republican National Lawyers Association,” DFL Chair Brian Melendez said in a statement, adding that such a declaration “would then expose the RNLA as a group that is simply defrauding Republican contributors.”

Another link to the RNLA fundraising Web page is via a Newsmax article by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann, or a separate appeal from the mysterious GOPUSA also signed by Morris.