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Pawlenty the Pro-Retrenchment Candidate

The Ames straw poll tomorrow will start winnowing the 2012 field as it is supposed to do. Tim Pawlenty is throwing everything he has at the straw poll in an all-out push, but he seems to be bracing for a disappointing result: Tim Pawlenty acknowledged Friday that he “may not have any choice” but to […]

The Ames straw poll tomorrow will start winnowing the 2012 field as it is supposed to do. Tim Pawlenty is throwing everything he has at the straw poll in an all-out push, but he seems to be bracing for a disappointing result:

Tim Pawlenty acknowledged Friday that he “may not have any choice” but to dramatically scale back the size of his campaign organization if he falls flat at the Iowa straw poll this weekend.

The general consensus from last night’s debate seems to be that Pawlenty did not do nearly enough to overcome persistent doubts about his candidacy. His feuding with Bachmann doesn’t seem to have done him much good. Ed Kilgore describes their exchanges:

Tim Pawlenty got off some good prefab lines at the expense of Barack Obama (and, to some extent, Romney), but his attacks on his main straw poll rival, Michelle Bachmann, were shrill and complicated, and the general impression is that Bachmann—who otherwise did not dazzle as she did in the last big debate in New Hampshire—got the better of their exchanges.

Perhaps the worst thing for Pawlenty is that he confirmed the impression that it doesn’t matter how well he does at Ames, because he keeps establishing that he isn’t a very good national candidate. Steve Kornacki contrasted Bachmann and Pawlenty on the delivery of their lines:

Her words were strong, but so was her delivery — she spoke each word firmly and clearly, communicating just enough contempt to get her message across. Pawlenty’s delivery, on the other hand, called to mind a hostage tape, a man saying words that he knows he has to say, but doesn’t really want to or know how to.

This is similar to what I have been saying about Pawlenty’s policy statements. They are all conventional and match the party line in their content, but they always feel forced. Sean Scallon’s judgment in his TAC profile of Pawlenty has been proved absolutely right:

Pawlenty, like the proverbial five-star recruit, has a great deal of potential as a national politician, but there’s a reason his polling numbers are dismal—an explanation beyond simple lack of name recognition. In a new era where the search for authenticity dominates our political discourse, Pawlenty’s lack of it makes him a has-been before he ever was.

Kornacki noted that attacking Bachmann directly was a badly misguided move for someone trying to win over conservative voters currently leaning towards Bachmann:

They may have doubts about her electability, but by blatantly trying to stoke those doubts, Pawlenty only makes it easier for them to view him as a calculating sellout Republican politician.

Of course, one might point out that this is exactly what Pawlenty is, but leave that aside for the moment. Bachmann supporters not only see her as one of them, as Kornacki correctly observes, but I suspect they find her refusal to compromise a refreshing change from most would-be national leaders they have seen in the past. Romney represents the type of leadership they are rejecting, but when Pawlenty spends most of his time attacking Bachmann he appears to be siding with Romney and other Republicans like him against someone with whom they strongly identify. Pawlenty isn’t peeling away any Romney voters in the process, and he is giving Bachmann voters another reason to despise him. Perry may come in and take away a lot of her support, but Pawlenty has been doing everything he can to shore up her support among conservative voters.

Kornacki described Pawlenty’s performance as “bafflingly bad,” but Pawlenty’s poor performances really shouldn’t baffle anyone at this point.

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