Not promoted from the diaries by anybody because we’ve promoted Aaron to the front page. Yes, yes, I know “My God, what hath thou wrought?” I’m asking myself the same thing. — Erick

Come, sit by the campfire while I tell you a story.

September 2000 I left the U.S. Army confident that Al Gore would be the next President of the United States of America. The next year passed quickly as I scrambled to find my place in civilian life. On Sept. 11th I was driving to work and heard the news. Thus began a fixation on current events that I have yet to shake.

The next spring I quit my job and took a contract in Kosovo as a Systems Administrator. I spent roughly two years living and working in Kosovo. In between trouble tickets, I diligently clicked refresh on Drudgereport, which I had only recently discovered. Once I returned to U.S. soil I began to notice that the country had changed while I was away. Drudge, despite his best efforts, had failed to clue me in to the degree of animosity that was bubbling up from the fairly new fever swamps we are now all so familiar with.

I was a foreigner in my own land.

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Today a number of Red State contributors took the opportunity to participate in a conference call with Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty. A number of other bloggers did too, and if you’re interested in the assessments of other smart people, I encourage you to read Brad Jackson, Jim Geraghty, Ed Morrissey, Jim Antle, Marc Ambinder, and Chip Hanlon.

I’ll salute Pawlenty for one thing: we at Red State have done our best to hammer home the point that prospective 2012 candidates had better engage in 2010, and Pawlenty seems to get it. His new Freedom First PAC is clearly and explicitly focused on the elections before 2012. I’m glad to see that Pawlenty’s first real step onto the national scene is set on the right goal - even if there is legitimate question about the effectiveness of these PACs generally.

Pawlenty makes clear that his PAC is all about promoting freedom - first and foremost economic freedom. He spoke about promoting choice in medical care and education, and advocating for limited government. The word ‘freedom’ came up a lot.

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Tim Pawlenty is on the phone with me now. A few of us were asked to get up early and be on a conference call this morning. We did not know what it was about.

Now we know. He is starting a new leadership PAC as he heads out the door of political office.

His PAC is going to be called the Freedom First PAC. The particular focus will be “on re-elevating the principles of freedom and liberty first . . . in the political discussion.”

This sounds very much like the first step toward a run for the White House in 2012. Everyone sets up a leadership PAC to fund other campaigns and, in effect, buy support.

He says he wants to do outreach to younger voters and also to demographic areas that haven’t really gotten the conservative message.

“Overburdensome taxes and regulations” will be one focus of the PAC as those issues hurt freedom and deprive people of economic liberty.

He also talks about school choice and families “locked into school systems that are failing them.”

The excitement this morning on Twitter seems all about Mike Huckabee. There has been no doubt in my mind that he never stopped running for President after conceding the nomination to John McCain last year. He just changed which Presidential election he was running in.

Which is why it was such a huge (but very silly, given the timing) argument late last year over who “came in second” in the primary race, and by proxy who the early 2012 “frontrunner” was going to be. Mitt Romney had a dedicated core of supporters fighting for him, and so did Huckabee. Some of them on each side just wouldn’t give up, while the rest of us just got back to work.

It appears that Mike Huckabee himself got back to work as well. Gone is the religious demagoguery from the campaign, as are the left-wing economic ideas he was pushing. Instead we have a man who’s fighting the embattled Barack Obama on his reckless spending and disastrous foreign policy, and the Democrats apparently are scared by it. In 2008 the Democrats loved him, but in 2009 they hate him. That in itself is a change that speaks well of Huckabee’s future hopes.

Republicans are creatures of habit. We tend to like seeing the same batches of people in one primary after another, and eventually the stable, persistent men get their shot. Even John McCain got his. But if Mike Huckabee wants to try for his, there is one more thing he needs to do: Help us take back the House.

As of a month ago, his PAC raised over $300,000. That money needs to get out to Repubican challengers nationwide, with less of a Southern bias than he now shows. Democrats took the House by challenging everywhere, and so will we. Reports are that Huckabee plans to back 50 candidates with his PAC. I hope he does, and I hope he funnels substantial amounts of money to each both through the PAC, and through direct (and free) fundraising stops.

If Mike Huckabee can be a rainmaker for Republicans who take back the House, then yes, Huckabee becomes a leading man in the Republican party and will be excellently positioned to run again in 2012. By proving he could raise money and be a genuine party leader, he will have earned it.

That is the missing piece for Mike Huckabee, and I truly hope he fits it into place.

Well, Nicolle Wallace, Andrew Sullivan, and the left can claim a scalp today.

Sarah Palin has been the subject of vicious, vile attacks. Her family and key staff have all been driven to the verge of financial ruin by relentless legal attacks that are routinely thrown out, but still must be offended.

Her children are routinely attacked and turned into the butt of late night jokes by left wing comedians.

I’d want the target off my back and my kids’ backs too.

Sarah Palin will not be President in 2012. She will not run for President. She will not run for any elected office ever again.

The political pundits who are saying she couldn’t take the heat, so she got out of the kitchen, may have found a winning cliche to apply, but then no one has faced the heat Sarah Palin has been subjected to, largely at the hands of the political pundits now dragging out that cliche.

Of course, now she’ll be a great position to be a voice for the GOP, but with no further political ambitions, she’ll largely be able to mitigate attacks from opponents within the GOP.

UPDATE: To get a few people off the ledge and avoid some suicides around here, let me point out that this is my opinion of the situation given what we know.

I’m sure Sarah Palin is not done with politics, but I am equally sure she is done with elected politics. By removing all doubt that she is done with elected politics, she can be much more effective at helping other Republicans get into politics without overly ambitious potential 2012 rivals seeking to hurt her, her family, and those politicians she helps.

To pull out a favorite line of yesteryear, suck it up.

Hey, I’m honest enough to admit when I’m wrong about something - and although I could weasel out of this, I won’t: it is clear from context here that my expectations were that the Democratic party would redesign their Presidential primary system (to prevent someone doing unto the President as he did unto Clinton) at some point in 2010. Well, that was flat-out wrong of me, and I’m sorry that I called it so badly. It wasn’t going to start within a year at all.

It was actually going to start within three days.

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Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour will headline a Republican Party of Iowa fundraiser in late June, fueling speculation the wildly-popular two-term governor may indeed have ambitions for higher officer.

Barbour, 61, will be ineligible to seek another term as governor in 2012, but refuses to speak to his political future, saying only that “You can look for me not to run for re-election.”

He will undoubtedly dismiss the candidate-type activity as inconsequential, as spreading the Republican Gospel, but no politician finds themselves in Iowa — the launch pad of every dark horse candidacy — by pure coincidence.

Considered a highly effective organizer and strategist, Barbour was a key architect of the 1994 Republican revolution as chairman of the Republican National Committee.

In the wake of two consecutive Republican losses, GOP power broker Fred Malek hopes Barbour may yet have some ideas how to recapture the Contract with American spirit. “Extremely sound on policies, clear thinking and the best political strategist” the GOP can boast, Malek wrote on his blog, ranking the governor as the third most likely individual to secure the party nod.

A Barbour candidacy isn’t without its challenges, of course.

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In a brief ceremony at the White House today, President Barack Obama tapped Utah Governor John Huntsman to serve as United States Ambassador to China — his chief envoy to the world’s most populous country.

Reelected in 2008 by a record margin as a moderate Republican in an exceedingly conservative state, party elites and strategists were quick to point to the rising star as a potential challenger to the president.  But given today’s interesting political calculus, the prospect of Huntsman now staging a challenge to Obama is exceptionally low.

Having carved out a reputation as a would-be-modernizer and pragmatic conservative on divisive social issues, Huntsman was right to test the waters. It seems he waded a little too deep for Obama’s comfort, however.

No less than the chief architect of Obama’s campaign David Plouffe has expressed concern over Huntsman’s budding portfolio. While he admits no potential candidate makes him “shake in his shoes,” he concedes the potential of a Huntsman bid leaves him a “wee bit queasy.”

By all accounts, Huntsman stood a good chance at securing the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, if only for the fact that he is the conservative antithesis of Obama: He’s a moderate, young, and attractive politician.  Those are the grounds on which Obama won, and those are the grounds on which they fear he’ll lose it in 2012.

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If the GOP is going to renew itself, Republican governors will need to play a major role. Fortunately, we have some good ones. Several of us from RedState participated in a blogger call with one of the best, South Carolina’s Mark Sanford.

Gov. Sanford, best known as a critic of excessive government spending, is leaving office in 2010 due to term limits, and there is plenty of speculation that the two-term Governor and former three-term Congressman will run for the presidency in 2012. Like all potential candidates, he’s been coy about the speculation. For now, he has his hands full governing; all eyes are on a budget battle that will come to a head with a vote in the legislature next week on his plan to use federal stimulus funds to pay down state debt (Newsweek has a look at Sanford’s view of this battle here).

My summary of the call, along with the views of other RS participants, below the fold.

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