He would probably have been better as President than he was as a candidate. Just the opposite of the guy currently occupying the office.

Tim is a solid Republican and a solid Conservative who deserves our respect and support, and his future in politics is far from over.

But.

This campaign is going to take a candidate and a campaign staff that is willing to throw hard balls at the other side. It’s going to take someone willing to get in 0bama’s face and tell him to quit urinating on our shoes and telling us that it’s raining. I’m not sure that Gov. Pawlenty is that candidate.

The liberals are going to dig up every molecule of dirt they can on any candidate that we run, and they are going to be throwing [expletive] balls at our candidate that make what they threw at GW Bush look like cotton candy. We need a Babe Ruth batter that can lob them back in spades.

The primary advantage that we have in this election is that the other side is going to have to defend a failed administration and 9%+ unemployment while throwing trillions of dollars into the wind. And we need someone who will be unambiguous in pointing out those failings and the over-regulation and overspending that they resulted from.

Pawlenty’s time in the sun will come, but this is not it.

Ever since the CNN debate, when he refused to throw a punch at Mitt, I have had the feeling Pawlenty was jockeying for a VP slot. His willingness to go after Bachmann and his social conservative cred would have certainly won him brownie points with Camp Romney.

T-Paw endorsing Romney wouldn’t make him even slightly more appealing to me. Meh….maybe in the general election….

Pawlenty would probably make a fine cabinet secretary.

I was a T-Paw backer. Good man. Classy man. Great husband and father. Thanks for your service and efforts, Governor.

The Minnesota GOP Chair is going to approach Pawlenty and try to persuade him to run for Amy Klobuchar’s Senate seat.

because the reason he was in the race was to get elected.

Others are in the race possibly to sell books, but more likely to sell a message. Pawlenty’s message was just that he was the best one to do the job, which may have been quite true.

It appears it was primarily about needing campaign cash. A win at Ames could have provided an influx of new funds. It’s not like a win at Ames would have made Pawlenty the frontrunner. If Pawlenty was a billionaire, he’d still be in the race.

Us conservatives are not immune from the cult of celebrity and wanting an ‘exciting’ candidate (a la Barack Obama). Thus we ignore the candidates with the best records and proven fidelity to conservatism like Pawlenty.

Bachmann is an ideologue. I’m not saying I don’t like much of what she fights fights fights for, but she hasn’t proven herself competent to lead our nation. I think of Obama who had no proven ability to bring people together, but talked like he did. Bachmann has no proven ability to bring people together and talks like she can’t.

While conservative might love a candidate who treats “compromise” as a dirty word, the American people as a whole will reject that kind of ‘leadership.’ And then all conservatives lose.

I have no idea how Bachmann would truly lead our nation. Obviously the game now is to convince conservatives, not all Americans. But I see little way for Bachmann to convince all Americans in a general election given her record and rhetoric.

Perry has a Texas-sized personality, talks the talk, and has had luck with job creation in his state. Why this is enough for many to love him, I have no idea. I’m tired of the ego in candidates like Perry. And I don’t trust that he has any regard for the more libertarian concerns for privacy, especially versus security. I don’t want a personality president. I don’t want a snake oil salesman like Romney.

I want a competent proven leader who has stuck by his principles because he wanted to and was able to turn principles into policy. Pawlenty was the only guy who fit that description. “Conservatives” who groused about things like the cigarette tax (really, people) don’t deserve him.

Chris Christie would satisfy the substantive factors I identify and meet the approval of the personality lovers out there. Sadly, he is not running. So I guess an ideologue, Texas’s Rick Perry, or a snake oil salesman will be my choice.

p.s. Tim Pawlenty, your campaign slogan should have been, “Nice guys finish last.”

To “compromise”! Sounds like you’d be happy with Boehner or McC in the white house. Their compromises worked out so well, didn’t they. No real spending cuts, no real decisions, more immediate debt and lower credit ratings.

How about the Gipper’s attitude: “We win, they lose!”

Erick noted Pawlenty seemed uncomfortable throwing punches on the trail. That was certainly evident at the CNN debate in June.

This point raises the main reason I thought Palwenty was never a serious candidate. If he was uncomfortable challenging Romney on healthcare, why was there any reason to believe he would be aggressive against Obama?

Pawlenty exemplified the problems many conservatives and Republicans had and still have with the 2012 field. He was never a candidate who matched the opportunities that exist in 2012.

In a race with names like Jeb, Christie, Rubio, and even Daniels, Pawlenty would have been a Santorum.

Pawlenty seems like a nice guy, but he never personified presidential timber. I do hope he runs for Senate though.

Pawlenty being able to serve the country and the cause best, now that he’s out?

Cabinet secretary, sure, but which one?

I ask because I hope that if our win in 2012 is big enough, we can actually start chopping departments and dismantling the Beast. So no way I’d want Pawlenty as HUD Secretary, for example.

-TS

I still can’t figure out the media’s obsession with T-Paw. Really makes me wonder if they actually get out of their bubble & talk with ordinary Americans. Nice guy…sure. President…..LOL! Probably the most boring and bland of all the candidates. True conservative….no way…but nor could you be & get elected in MN. I never understood why he even entered the race. He should just stick to appearing on Fox as he does a good job there.

There’s quite a few “carnival barkers” that have absolutely no chance against Obama that were given WAY more air time than they deserve compared to Pawlenty. Here was an effective, two-term Governor of a blue state that had a stellar conservative record, and yet candidates like Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain were consistently outpolling him.

I get why he didn’t win, he simply did not “fill the room”, and I also found him to be very vanilla, but I’ll take vanilla over dingbat candidates any day.

I’m hoping his life in politics is not over, and he should be on the short list of any eventual GOP nominee.

I think he would have been the best president out of all the candidates that are out there, but unfortunately you have to win American idol to become the CEO of the United States of America. This isnt sour grapes as much as it is a shot at the process itself as it currently sits. The best of the best wont make it through the process.

based not only on his conservative creds and executive experience, but on the fact that he is unabashedly pro-life. This was something that used to aggravate me to no end about Bush Jr; that he would never take an unapologetic, unequivocal stand in favor of the pro-life movement in general, or the unborn in particular.
America has missed out on one of her best chances for a statesman- president. Theres more to pesidential material than personal magnetism, though it does help. I also hope that Gov. Pawlenty will still have a role to play in the recovery of our country.

Steve Hayes said he thought the Pawlenty campaign misread the general polling that suggests GOP voters highly value “electability” so his entire message focus was on his “proven record of results”. No doubt that was an obvious strength of his resume, so it is a reasonable line of strategy.

However the energy in the party at large is still significantly around conservative values and principles. When you walk out of a Pawlenty event and you think “it wouldn’t be so bad if he were President” it isn’t exactly a message that inspires that support and energy required several months away from the first ballots being cast. The other candidates were more effective at tapping that energy than Pawlenty.