the fix

To paraphrase one of our governor’s favorite gags, the only thing rising faster than Tim Pawlenty on The Fix’s list of most influential Republicans is Chris Cillizza’s man-crush on Pawlenty. (Hey, it’s super-funny the way T-Paw tells it, about another Chris, MSNBC’s Matthews, and his fondness for Obama.) Pawlenty rockets up from the number 6 [...]

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.

After declaring a state of emergency there on Friday, Gov. Tim Pawlenty headed to Moorhead today for an early-afternoon briefing with local officials about the looming flood in western Minnesota. Pawlenty and local officials will meet with media representatives after the briefing. It’s a chance for T-Paw to re-start the national PR offensive that The [...]

Minnesota’s U.S. Representative-elect for the Third District, Republican Erik Paulsen, ran one of the best five House campaigns in the country, according to the Washington Post blog The Fix. Paulsen “beat back the anti-Republican trend,” writes Chris Cillizza, “by focusing on his own accomplishments in the state legislature.” The Fix tracked the Third District contest closely throughout the campaign season as one of the nation’s most competitive congressional contests. But in several ways Cillizza’s summary this morning doesn’t exactly square with how home-state observers might recall the race.

The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza places Minnesota’s two hottest congressional contests back to back in his list of the 26th–50th U.S. House seats most likely to swap parties — a category consisting of 24 seats currently occupied by Republicans and exactly one held by a Democrat. The Top 25 he released last week had only [...]