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Tim Pawlenty calls Barack Obama a doofus.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  May 31st, 2011 at 12:00 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

It’s amusing how casually this was tossed out. Tim Pawlenty, in an ABC interview – and in the process of restraining himself from rolling his eyes at Christine Amanpour’s bipartisan* fetish:

I think that any doofus can go to Washington, DC and maintain the status quo or incrementally change things…

[snip]

‘Doofus’ would mean someone who was relatively low-performing.

It’s also amusing that there’s a thoroughly cross-spectrum consensus out there that Pawlenty was specifically calling President Obama a doofus, there. Then again, the average Lefty blogger would – public protestations to the contrary – privately admit (after three or four drinks*, and a quick check for uncontrolled recording equipment) that to call the President ‘relatively low-performing’ would be an example of ‘Minnesota Nice‘…

Full video after the fold. Including a definite smack at the President over school choice.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Waste of good booze, of course.

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COMMENTS

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  • http://nerds4cain.com brookhaven

    President Doofus

    Pretty much sums up the Obama presidency.

  • http://nerds4cain.com brookhaven

    President Doofus

    Pretty much sums up the Obama presidency.

  • sundaycombo

    of why Pawlenty is not ready for the big leagues. The “doofus” remark (which also referred to Congress) is sophomoric at best and stupid at worst.

    I am beginning to wonder about his strategy. Go to Iowa and tell the farmers he is against ethanol subsidies. Accept an invite to speak to the Cato folks and then diss them.

    In the meantime, Minnesota still is trying to dig out of the 5 billion dollar deficit he left behind when he left office. We can do better in 2012 than this.

  • bobojake

    This is what we need in the election, call a spade a spade and not a ——- shovel. Thank You Tim for not being afraid to speak out about the doofus that LIED his way into the Whitehouse through his Trojan pony.
    We need all candidates to come out for Truth not the pony puckee we got from Axlerod, Gibbs and obama from 2007 on.
    God Bless America

  • earlgrey

    At least the word doofus has not yet been targeted by the lib speech control crowd.

  • http://theheartlander.wordpress.com/ heartlander

    …there is now coffee spluttered all over my screen.

  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    Note that the question is being asked by a site moderator who has just reviewed your account and had about two alarm bells go off. A substantive answer is required – in your next comment here – to prevent the third and final one from triggering.

    Moe Lane

    PS: Avoid a smart mouth when replying, by the way.

  • acat
  • redtillimdead

    I take it that you like politics as usual where politicians just tell the crowds what they want to hear and need to say to get elected, rather than what needs to be done and what they truly believe?

  • sundaycombo

    I have been consistent in not advocating for any particular candidate but have expressed two positions.

    One-that I view the field as presently composed as fairly weak (a not uncommon view here I believe) and would be open to a late entrant

    Two-that the first and foremost quality for the GOP candidate is electability. Since there is a real chance we can take the Senate in 2012, we need to remove the threat of the veto pen.

    It still galls me that we should have control of the Senate today but for an unfortunate slate of candidates that were unelectable. My main concern is we don’t lose sight of that missed opportunity when it comes to Obama in 2012.

    If it’s a sin to be a pragmatic conservative here then I would have to plead guilty. As far as your question, at this point I favor Romney BUT would be open to Bachmann as I am impressed at how she has recently seemed to re-evaluate her flame thrower image and strive for more “gravitas” if you will.

  • rowdydfw

    I had convinced myself that Pawlenty was kind of ho hum and lacking the charisma to inspire people to believe him and vote. In this interview, however, that ‘fire in his belly’ and his sincerenity really wants me to take a second look. And I loved what he said about speaking from the heart instead of trying to impress people with your credentials. I can look up his credentials myself. And I liked his taking Ryan’s plan and supporting it, but tweaking it with some ideas of his own. We don’t need a rubber stamp in DC, we need solutions to real problems from our leader.

    Doofus, frankly is a good word to me, and it’s polite. I would’ve said any failure can go to DC and maintain the status quo just by sitting there in the chair and rubber stamping what his comrades are doing in congress. Harsh, I know, but it comes from my heart. And I expect my candidate to get harsh when it is required. We are in a really harsh reality and fainthearted will get us nowhere.

    He seemed to handle Amanpour fairly well, and didn’t let her ride roughshod over him. I’ll have to take another look to make sure she wasn’t just soft on him, but maybe his responses were firm enough to back her off.

    Thanks for sharing this interview. It’s opened my mind a little bit to make me go rat around in his record a little deeper. But I know I would like that ‘fire in his belly’ regarding the goodness of this country and it’s people to be a little more pronounced. He seems to be a quiet thoughtful sortof person instead of a rah rah type.

    We all know that whoever comes out of this primary process, no matter what, we are going to throw a vote down for them. It will certainly be more helpful if we watch them closer so that when the time comes, we can support them with enthusiasm for the successes that are truthful, because this is going to be one tough fight. Ohamas is going to fight very dirty, and WE are the ones that are going to have to run the traps for our candidate, because the MSM will be controlled directly from home base in Chicago.

  • rogershru2

    Isn’t it sad? I think what he said is fine and true – one of my first thoughts though was I wonder what the origins of the word are, and whether the PC left (not that you have to be PC if you ARE left) will use some prior meaning of it to attack Pawlenty as hating some group of people.

  • ss396

    I have never heard it used to indicate “relatively low-performing” before.

  • cwilson

    A friend of mine posited this scenario, concerning the 2010 Senate elections. Whether intentional or not (I lean towards ‘not’), the candidates who took the most fire, and lost, served to protect those who won from having the full weight of the MSM and Dem (BIRM) slime machine fall on them.

    E.g. the MSM spent so much time destroying The Witch(tm), Sharon Angle, etc, that they weren’t able to keep Kirk, Toomey, and Johnson out. (I omit Boozman, Coats, and Hoeven because those were blowouts).

    Similarly, all the focus on those high profile Senate candidates probably helped “protect” some of our squeaker wins in the House, as well.

    In a counterfactual universe, with more “moderate” candidates in those races, the MSM fire may have been more easily — and more effectively — trained on the Toomey or Johnson race: and there’s STILL no guarantee a squish would have won in NV, DE, etc.

  • earlgrey

    it is a little joke between us. One of those silly things married people do.

  • runner12

    referring to Obama when he said the word “doofus”, it would not be far off of the mark if he had.

    Anyone who watched Obama’s “toast” to Her Majesty the Queen of England knows that the term fits like a glove. When I saw that video, my first reaction was to laugh followed by extreme embarassment that this man was representing the United States.

    It wouldn’t be the first time.

  • etpietro

    …..until Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson, Ed Schultz, Larry O’Donnell, Bill Maher, you know, take your pick, come out and say that the word doofu is “code speech” for something else?

    You know they will. Because that’s all they’ve got.

  • http://slcliberty.blogivists.com randy streu

    I disagree on both counts (your best and worse).

    T-Paw’s entire campaign, as he says in the video, is about telling the truth — and here he’s not wrong. He could have said “jackass” or “idiot” and been correct as well. The fact is, it needed to be said, and he said it about as nicely as possible.

    The not-ready-for-prime-time meme is as shallow as it is mistaken.

  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    :thumbing safety on: We’ll take that as a provisional ‘pass.’

  • Ann_W

    Minnesota nice, yet he was very fired up about school choice.

    I liked the interview very much.

  • Ann_W

    I loved seeing Pawlenty’s passion about this issue!! It is the most important opportunity and social justice issue in this country.

    I like Cain, but hearing this from Pawlenty was very attractive (politically speaking) to me.

  • sarg01

    That is both pragmatism and principle. Political capital with independents is a rare asset. It must be spent to be valuable, but it needs to be spent on the most important matters – reducing spending, overturning Obamacare, sound judicial appointments. In general, it needs to be used to stop the slow creep of goverment and preferably claw back some of its expansion over the last decade. Well, that and the war.

    However, I’d certainly suggest that Pawlenty’s use of the word “doofus” doesn’t cost any significant political capital. What I thought was significant is that he called the Dems out on their 2008 platform of “change”, calling it the “status quo” instead. I thought that was a pretty decent, and welcome, shot across the bow.

    I think there’s some mileage to be had in calling the Obama Presidency a wimpier version of Bush III.

  • mine

    It seems the IQ in the White House has dried up since Bush left. I thought Bush had lost his marbles when he said he had to abandon the free market to save the free market. But he looks a serious intellectual in comparison to the clown in there today.

  • YnotNOW

    see wsj.com/opinion

    (by the way, my understanding of the word “Doofus” is a little stronger than “relatively low-performing”.. ;)

  • YnotNOW

    see wsj.com/opinion

    (by the way, my understanding of the word “Doofus” is a little stronger than “relatively low-performing”.. ;)

  • YnotNOW

    because the term may well apply to them each. ;)

  • YnotNOW

    because the term may well apply to them each. ;)

  • rightwingmom52

    it says “doofuses” or “liberals.” Many of the synonyms are just as appropriate.

    Synonyms: berk [British], booby, charlie (also charley) [British], cuckoo, ding-a-ling, dingbat, ding-dong, dipstick, fool [slang], featherhead, git [British], goose, half-wit, jackass, lunatic, mooncalf, nincompoop, ninny, ninnyhammer, nit [chiefly British], nitwit, nut, nutcase, simp, simpleton, turkey, yo-yo