ANALYSIS: Pawlenty quits presidential race as Perry jumps in
By Ken Falkenstein | Sunday, August 14th, 2011 | Politics
Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty announced today that he is ending his campaign for the Republican nomination for president.
Pawlenty had been on 2008 GOP nominee John McCain’s short list to be his running mate but was ultimately passed over in favor of then-Alaska governor Sarah Palin. Pawlenty used the favorable attention that he had received from that experience to begin preparing a campaign of his own for president almost immediately after McCain lost the 2008 race to Barack Obama.
Pawlenty had amassed a record as a solid conservative as governor of Minnesota, and he was widely expected to be a top-tier candidate in the 2012 race. This expectation widened when Mississippi governor Haley Barbour and Indiana governor Mitch Daniels both decided not to enter the race. However, as a result of Pawlenty’s lackluster campaign and subdued personal style, conservatives who were wary of frontrunner Mitt Romney’s inconsistent record and who were looking for a conservative alternative who could passionately voice and fight for conservative principles declined to embrace Pawlenty’s candidacy.
Pawlenty’s path to victory became much more difficult when fellow Minnesotan Michele Bachmann entered the race. Although Bachmann had never been elected to any office higher than the House of Representatives, in that office she gained national attention as a strong and principled conservative voice. This battle of the Minnesotans came to a head when Pawlenty and Bachmann exchanged barbs at a nationally televised debate a few days ago. Then, yesterday, Bachmann won the Ames, Iowa Straw Poll, while Pawlenty came in a distant third to Ron Paul. Bachmann had succeeded in pushing Pawlenty out of the race.
As Tim Pawlenty exits the race for president, Texas governor Rick Perry entered it yesterday. Perry is a passionate and principled conservative with years of experience as a chief executive as the longest-serving governor in Texas history and the longest-serving governor currently serving in America today. He is also the Chairman of the Republican Governors Association. It will be interesting to see whether those Republicans who have embraced Michele Bachmann will gravitate to Perry as an equally passionate conservative with better credentials and qualifications to take on Barack Obama next year.
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About the author
Ken Falkenstein has been a staffer in the United States Senate and the Virginia House of Delegates. He has managed political campaigns. He was a military intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army in West Germany during the Cold War. He is currently a civil litigation attorney with Poole Mahoney, P.C. in Virginia Beach. But his concern for his kids' future is what most informs his writing.
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9 Responses to "ANALYSIS: Pawlenty quits presidential race as Perry jumps in"
Perry is a great choice. He’s managed to tick off just about everyone. A former Dem, but one who knew which side of political bread the butter is on. A real conservative who is not afraid to stand in the middle of the road. A progressive politician who knows the different uses between taxes and fees. A forward looking visionary with a knack for drawing Texican interstate maps. And an expert in smoke filled rooms and shadowy deals. Yes indeedy, Perry should blow Bachmann out of the water and return sanity to the election process.
All Perry has to do is to keep his mouth shut and Bachmann will take care of the rest.
This is all most interesting. Looking at it from a strictly ” strategical”point of view, Perry vs Bachmann is a no brainer as far the Tea Party/Evangelical wing goes. He will tromp all over her with money, organization and of Course South Carolina. By this time next year in the Iowa Caucuses, she will be toast. The game is now set between Perry and Romney. Unless Mrs. Bachmann tears into Perry like a pair of storm troopers in stilettos (since we are using themes from 1970s rock songs, thought I’d through that one in for good measure.) The ball is now in Romney’s court, and I don’t know how I’d advise him to play it. Let Bachmann rip into Perry and just sit back? One way. Will Perry rip her back? Not unless he has to.
As for the rest of the pack, I don’t see any chance for any of them.
If what I have heard on the news media is any indication, they are rooting for Romney. Lately, we hear from them constantly of three villains: the Tea Party, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Perry. Given their bias and the fact they gave us Barack Obama, we may wish to study the candidates without their help. Can we get someone else to arrange these debates and skip the gotcha questions, particularly the questions designed to pit the candidates against each other.
Unspoken, anywhere: The two candidates who together garnered almost 60% of the straw poll votes share one thing in common: they are 100% opposed to raising the debt ceiling. The republicans need to inject a few more candidates in order to further obscure this fact.
Only a Tea Party outsider could imagine Rick Perry to be attractive to the Tea Party. Perry is the consummate blow-dried golden boy. He can’t help it, and he can’t hide it.
You guys really don’t get it, do you? It’s the economy, stupid. Perry will have to offer a plan to get the economy going again. His plan will be dissected as soon as it is released, and found wanting. Perry will waffle on raising the debt ceiling and that will be the end of it.
Neither Perry nor Romney will be willing to tell the electorate the truth: as soon as we stop deficit stimulus spending, the economy immediately shrinks by 10%. Tax revenues collapse even further, exacerbating the shrinkage. Neither Perry nor Romney will be willing to do what is needed: shred the regulatory state, cut taxes, and re-institute free markets. Taxes and regulations are the sources of politicians’ power. I will not hold my breath waiting for the leopards to change their spots.
P.S. the picture of Perry that the OP chose to include in this post is perfectly symbolic of my point about Perry: attractive, charismatic, blow-dried, overstuffed, plastic storefront mannequin.
One more thing: we don’t want to be “led.” We don’t want a “leader;” we want to be left alone. Why is that so hard to understand?
What is plastic man’s plan to deal with this?
Zerohedge: “The Sun Chairman, What’s Future Is Prologue, And Why The Second French Revolution Is Coming To America”
“It may come as a surprise to some that the very same type of central planning that Bernanke, and his central banking brethren, are trying to inflict (and failing) upon the world, was the same that was attempted on so many occasions in history, most poignantly, and catastrophically in the late stages of the French monarchy. Needless to say the attempts by one man to control a far simpler French economy well over two centuries ago failed, yet ironically, not even then did the economy reach our current level of collapse. Which begs the question: how long until our own “Sun Chairman” finally forces the hundreds of millions of great unwashed out of their hypnotic trance following the realization that their “equity” in the great American experiment, their pensions, lifetime accrued benefits, retirement funds, and of course savings, have been completely wiped out, and another historic ‘storming’, only this time not of the Bastille, but of the Marriner Eccles building, the focal point of all that is broken with not only America but the world, finally ensues. Just as over 200 years ago, the longer the wait, the greater the ultimate loss for the working class… and the bloodier the ultimate outcome for the modern day iteration of the clergy and aristocracy, also known as contemporary politicians and bankers. And to those saying we are getting ahead of ourselves, we borrow a phrase from the lexicon of unconventional wisdom: “this time is never different.”
“The annual deficit [in pre-revolutionary France]…amounted to some 43% of revenue, or 30% of outlays still below the Bernholz accelerating inflation threshold of 66% and 40%, respectively, even if not exactly a testimony of rude fiscal health. Things had been deteriorating for quite some time before this, so that, overall, the grand Bourbon’s debt rose twentyfold in thirty years. By way of comparison, the imperial presidency in Washington has allowed its own count of obligations to climb a not wholly incomparable fifteenfold in a like period of time.
It is of note, then, that the abject financial state to which Louis’ vainglory had reduced his realm compares fairly favourably with that produced by a similar threescore years-and-ten of military welfarism in his successors’ populist republic, where the latest €150bln deficit represents 54% of receipts and 35% of expenditures and the old satyr‘s performance looks even more attractive beside the newly ex-AAA United States’ tally of 60% and 38%.”
Why go back so far? Let us learn from the Depression in 1929. Ben Bernake is a student of that crisis, and he is doing his best to help us out of it. Then, once growth had been stimulated, and the economy had picked up steam, there was the the urge to withdraw the stimulus and get back to normal. What happened? Recession, as the market plunged and there was a steep contraction in the economy. But the crisis did one thing; that is, it stimulated policy makers to act, which they did, and in a short period of time, the markets improved, the economy got back to growth, and employment levels shot up. So there is no doubt that it is always tough to decide when and how to turn off the fiscal stimlus which few doubt we should. But blind meat ax approaches may put us back into recession when that is simply not needed if the super committee follows Simpson-Bowles and deals with cuts, revenue increases, some slight modifications in entitlements, and wise investments in infrastructure and education and research.
Surprised Pawlenty didn’t attract more support. After the past 12 years, you’d think “boring” would be what a lot of people craved in a president.
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