Wall Street Journal
Is America Ready for President TPaw ?
The TPaw moment has arrived.
By GERALD F. SEIB
MAY 23, 2011
Is America Ready for President TPaw ?
Some excerpts :
For the uninitiated, TPaw is Tim Pawlenty, recently departed governor of Minnesota and one Republican who's neither coy nor reticent about running for president. He formally launched his candidacy with a speech in Iowa Monday.
Some cynics—citing his relative anonymity and his, well, nonelectric personal style—will scoff. They shouldn't.
Few candidates have had as many things break right for them as has Mr. Pawlenty in the last three months. The shape of the Republican field, the departure of some potential rivals, the pace of the campaign and the emerging issue mix all have broken about as well for the 50-year-old Minnesotan as he could have hoped.
That doesn't mean Republicans are enraptured by him, or that he will succeed in taking advantage of this opening. His climb remains uphill. Still, he does have a golden chance to become the chief rival to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
He offers a good narrative for today's Republican party, which is more populist and downscale than your father's GOP.
..............
As governor he fought Democrats in a budget battle that led to a government shutdown, and battled public-employee unions in a long transit strike. As Stanley Kurtz wrote recently on National Review Online, he is "Scott Walker with experience," a reference to the new Wisconsin GOP governor, who recently caused a much bigger ruckus by doing some of the same things Mr. Pawlenty had already done in Minnesota.
As a former Catholic who has become an evangelical Christian, Mr. Pawlenty has bonds with the Christian conservatives so important in the early states of Iowa and South Carolina.
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