Pawlenty Drops Out of Race for GOP Nomination
by PubliusAn Iowa straw broke the campaign’s back. From AFP:
Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty announced on Sunday he is dropping out of the Republican presidential contest, after a distant third place finish in a key test vote.
Pawlenty made the announcement after finishing with 2,293 votes Saturday in Iowa’s Ames Straw Poll — seen as a key indicator of who will fare well in early nominating contests next year — over 2,500 votes behind winner Representative Michele Bachmann and second place finisher Ron Paul.
The Pawlenty campaign, officially launched in May, “didn’t get the kind of traction and lift we had hoped coming out of the straw poll,” he told ABC’s “This Week.”
“I’m announcing on your show that I am ending my campaign for the presidency.”
The low-key Pawlenty — derided by detractors as bland and uncharismatic — is little known outside of his home state. He had hoped to position himself as a fiscal conservative who will shake up Washington.
US media said Pawlenty, who had been considering a presidential run for years, had thanked his supporters in an early-morning call, saying he had decided to leave the 2012 race overnight. He has not indicated whether he might endorse another candidate.
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199 Comments
Well, he gave it his best shot.
The culling of the herd begins.
I would only wish that he take Romney and Paul with him.
Good riddence!!!! Voters hasn't forgotten that he said that Acorn didn't do anything illegal when they were helping Al Frankenstein steal the election from Norm Coleman.
Could somebody please get Ron Pollyanna to follow him?
Now there's room for Sarah…!!!
Tries to knock Michele Bachmann around, gets blanked in the straw poll then gone….. politics is a tough business.
Lets see who Mr Pawlenty gives his support to,that will be very telling,my guess will be Bachmann!
YAWN. He never had a chance.
And Huntsman
who cares,..??????
Perry / Christie 2012
True!
He seems like a nice guy but almost comes across kinda of weak
I want someone with guts and common sense, like Palin, who can take all the media is going to throw at them and not get wishy washy hoping the press will like them. Someone who will take on politics as usual.
I just hope that when Sarah gets in,…….
Michelle will have the good sense to step aside,………
Speaker of House and the legislative architect,…..
at a time when this country gets saved,………
will put Bachmann in the history books,……..
right next to all the other American heroes.
Instead of sniping at Bachmann, he should have spent his time telling us what he would do to change the course of America in the coming years. Sorry, but only the strongest survive! On toward the 2012 election.
We need someone willing to crush the cabal that is statist Washington, Pawlenty was not the one.
I didn't like his attack on Bachmann. It was very mean in it's scope. There were lies in his attack because I know Michele Bachmann has been one of the only voices standing strong. It seemed he was only there to go after her. I didn't like that at all.
That is the very first time I've heard that! Interesting. Well, things have a way of working out, don't they?
The same nonchalant, cavalier attitude that allowed him to say that was responsible for his poor showing in the straw poll too. The results are self evident. You have to love the symmetry of the cause and effect.
Honestly I'm neither here nor there on Pawlenty as I have not had enough time to research his history as governor, but I, for one, am tired of the idea that whoever is sent to the White House has to be exciting and colorful. I would rather have a boring president who quietly does the job right, than one whose every action makes my blood pressure rise. I don't want a rock star for POTUS, just a smart person who understands and obeys the Constitution. Someone who loves liberty and won't try to grow the government so big that it threatens our very freedom. Someone who will reduce the government's power over the citizens. Someone tough enough to either back down America's enemies or crush them when they step out of line. Someone who puts America first.
It'll happen, Missy.
Don't worry. That's one turd that will flush itself. Let's just hope he doesn't suck the GOP down the drain with him when he goes.
Huntsman who?
So T-Paw is toast…next!
Milk toast is not America's favorite breakfast, in these hard economic times. We want a fighter, and Pawlenty
just didn't seem to fit that bill. Having him as our candidate would be like bring a knife to a gun-fight in 2012.
NEXT???
.
And Cain.
More proof that nice guys finish last. And right now, we don't need a nice guy.
He supported McCain in 2008. It will probably be Rommey since he's the closest thing to McCain.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
I had sooo counted on your having something nice to say about a Republican, Bo. Not.
Bachmann fits that bill. Lets remember she 's being torched by the media almost as bad if not worse than Pallin was.
Water Hanson
Minneapois, MN
Pawlenty is now history. Bachmann on the other hand is the lead interview on all the Sunday talking-head shows. And I have to say, she's handling them all VERY well. I'm pretty impressed.
Eww, on Deface the Nation, Bachmann is being followed up by wasserman schultz. What a contrast.
Remember the cry of WMD leading up to Iraq? Now 4500 lives later and a trillion or so dollars later the Republicans have not learned there lesson–Intelligence agencies are run by government bureaucrats. The same bureaucrats that overlooked intel that could have stopped 9/11 got us into a war to stop nonexistent WMDs. Why is it that R's have total faith in big government when it comes to genning up a crises for war?
Just what is it that we should do about Iran? Should we start another war on intel that says they could, maybe, have a bomb in months, years or days. What about the war on drugs, how many trillions of dollars needs to be spent to stop our own citizens from choosing to smoke pot.
What is it about, we cannot afford, that you guys don't understand?
I think the story is wrong. I think it was Rick Perry getting in and suddenly his leap frogging Tim to be the governor to take on Rommey that caused Tim to drop out.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
"…being followed up by wasserman schultz."
Dude, I"m eating breakfast.
Bachman is starting to grate on me. Same line in the sand platitudes. All hat, no cattle.
Sort of like Kloppenberg?
We need a strong guy, someone who is isn't afraid to punch Obama in the mouth!
Darth:
That assumes he was being a nice guy. He couldn't even pick the right person to be mean to while he was running. He's dead in part because he wasn't trying to be different than Rommey.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
@Hoosier-
I understand your point but there is something to be said for a telogenic personality. A president must sell his ideas to a broad public and also work the phones behind the scenes to make the necessary deals happen. I criticize O blah Blah because he comes from an academic background of (socialist) theory! He's wrong for the job on both counts. Reagan could "work" the job.
I'm kinda with ya on that assessment there Mom.
Sorry.
Ohhhhh Jooohhhnnnnyyyyyy
that was low.
And that someone was not Pawlenty, seeing as his first order of business was to attack a fellow Republican and the best of the bunch, not to say what he would do for the country or to attack the actual enemy.
I kind of like "bringing a plastic spork to a knife fight" even better.
Pawlenty:…….
the standing governor of a state that allowed,……..
a clown to steal a senate seat.
Why he even entertained the idea of running for president,……..
speaks volumes for the Republican Party, but,…..
all will be well if it starts out well.
Now let us get rid of Romney.
"All hat, no cattle."
Heh, good one! Do I have permission to use that sometime?
Bachmann proved that pandering to farmers that are hooked on subsidies can win. She abandoned free market principles to get votes in Iowa, who'll she pander to in South Carolina? California, Massachusetts?
Is she saying what you want to hear? Is she pandering to you right now? When push comes to shove who will she throw under the bus? Farmers? Small businessmen? You?
The WMD were flown to Syria by an Iraqi General. Widely know by those who care to educate themselves and not believe the Dominate Liberal Establishment Mass Media's BS. And what is it about we would still need to spend about 3/4 of the money spent in Iraq even if we left do you not understand? Are you proposing we stop paying, feeding and housing out solders?
But what does this have to do with the Iowa Straw Poll? Zero, zilch, nada.
Saddam Hussein for President perhaps?
I couldn't understand his attacks on Bachmann. There he was, running for the nomination to fight Obama, and he's wasting his time attacking Bachmann. What was he thinking? That it was a Minnesota race?
I never thought much of him, but he didn't get me as unhappy as Romney, Huntsman, Paul, and Gingrich. Until he started attacking another candidate in the same race.
Excuse me, but my comment was impartial.
Or the two senators who were recalled.
Dennis Miller's gonna have to make another pick.
Or the two that are gonna lose on Tuesday?
Pawlenty was like the demure frail librarian trying to be a mean girl, just didn't work for him.
Old as the hills, copyright gone long ago.lol
I don't even figure Huntsman into the equation. He is irrelevant.
I hope not.
Could be Perry. Maybe Perry's getting in to the race had something to do with his dropping out.
Palin/Bachmann 2012,now that would cause liberal heads to explode at a record rate.
All that and she claims to read von Mises. Obviously, she doesn't understand him.
it's an old rancher expression.—
"YAWN. He never had a chance" is not impartial.
You are right about that. The canned statements need to go. They may be fine at a rally, but not in the debates! If she says "One Term President" in a debate one more time, I'm going to scream!
She gives a great interview, no canned statements. That's what she needs to do in the debates.
Governor Pawlenty should now challenge Senator Amy Klobacher for her senate seat in the upcoming election. People in MN like Tim, and the climate is such that he could knock that liberal Obamanite Klobacher out of the senate.
You're right that his first action as a candidate seemed to be to attack Bachmann and that does make one wonder just where his priories lay. It could be the instinctive action of a politician which is not what we need. We need someone more focused on fixing what's wrong with this country and that begins by getting Obama out of the White House. If he couldn't see that he should've been centering his attacks on Obama then he probably didn't have what it takes.
<DIV>yes, exactly. And not once have I ever heard her give exact policies other than no to Obamacare, taxes, etc. It's all “no”. She has no executive ability. Raising kids is fine, but running a business and knowing how that works, is really not the same.</DIV> <DIV></DIV> <DIV>—
Don't blame the Libertarians, like Paul, for the woes of the GOP, blame the RINOs like Bush and McSame.
I see. I guess you felt I was attacking his character.
We will see, now won't we. Oh, and by they way, they both easily survived their primary.
That could be,we may see all the GOP candidates work together for the good of the country,now there's a novel idea.
____"Bachmann is being followed up by wasserman schultz. What a contrast."______
Good & Evil
Night & Day
American verses Communist
And my favorite ! Beauty and the Beast !
_______"Now let us get rid of Romney."_______
You sound just like Imam Obama !
/ Hahahahahaha
One wonders why he ever entered. Did he really think that he had a chance to win the GOP nomination? I'm mean, seriously.
You give him too much credit. He's not only irrelevant, he hasn't even reached the status of irrelevance. That would be a step up for Huntsman.
Why haven't we heard anything about why Mitt did so bad in Iowa?
Neither will Obama.
Neither Perry nor Christie.
,,,,,,,,,,and to think that a milquetoast goober like that, was our Ambassador to China.
That's probably what done him in, he tried picking a fight with the wrong person at the wrong time with nothing but a stick. Ended up being smacked with a bat right in the kneecaps. I'm very happy Bachmann put him in his place.
So, howsabout that Libya war, Fox…?
Clean up your backyard before you complain about others…
And, DO try to stick to the subject…or get your ADHD meds increased…
THERE you are, Husky…!
Took you off the suicide watch, I see…maybe they'll let you out the door of the hospital soon…
You sound like a person who would have just absolutely love Calvin Coolidge. And I must say, he ranks very high on my list of favorite presidents.
Hey, those sporks can be mighty dangerous in the hands of a master spork specialist
Personally, I hope our candidate brings JDAM, JSOW, Tac nuke, 5.56, 7.62, M2, 20mm, 40mm, Tomahawk, knives, sharp sticks, rocks, bare hands, etc., etc….
The whole FCSKing inventory…
Very good there TR,…
Politics does indeed have strange bed fellas.
Because the Dems and the MSM,…..
want to keep him in the race.
Only if Romney goes first, keep the wooden moderate vote split, well not quite split, shaved I guess.
Never heard that. Was it only in Minnesota news? Pawlenty was off the vast majority of the country's radar in '09.
Ron Paul would not have had us in Libya either, although I bet Bush would have, McCain dang sure would have, along with Syria… as for the subject see Cowboys remark… apparently you guys can follow WMDs to Syria yet you seem to have trouble following a simple conversation on a big site.
"The whole FCSKing inventory…"
Mee TOO, Mj……… and I want to know WHO in the world told this Pawlenty feller… "Hey man, you
should run for POTUS" ? WTH were they thinkin'? And how smart is he, that he believed them?
Did they understand that that post is voted on in all 57 states? …….Ugh!!!
.
It appears to me that some possible disgruntled Pawlenty fans are here.
No wonder the media loves him.
The media stamp of approval is enough to keep my vote away from them.
"You cannot get the water to clear up until you get the pigs out of the creek." See ya Tim, take Romney with ya.
So, you have a parallel universe where you can see how the future would work out under different cicumstances or are you just plain clairvoyant. I just love people who throw out speculation like it's fact. Tell us, oh wise swami, what's the price of gold going to be in 6 months?
Yep. Some of my favorite quotes belong to Coolidge.
"The nation which forgets its defenders will be itself forgotten."
"Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong."
"Ultimately property rights and personal rights are the same thing."
Not too surprising. I lived in MN when he was governor, hes a stand up guy and would make an excellent POTUS, but he's sort of the unpopular middleground between Romney and Bachman. He's also about as interesting as dry toast. I'm not sure the straw poll really changes much of anything/
Romney is unaffected. Stays in as the establishment, moderate pro-business candidate.
Bachman gains a lot from this and is now the defacto choice as the right wing evangelical tea-party insurgancy ie (anyone who doesn't like Romney).
Paul will stay in for the duration. He'll gain momentum in NH and then loose it in the south. He can't win, but he's an idelist, and won't give in regardless.
Huntsman will drop out soon
Cain and Gaingrich should drop out as well, but these are vanity projects for them so they'll hang on for a while.
Santorum will drop. Everyone knows that he's dead in the general election. Not being able to hold his own senate seat in PA, a vital swing state is the death of his aspirations.
It's going to be Romney, Bachman and Perry after Super Tuesday.
this might be of interest to you, still not completely clear cut.
http://www.redstate.com/california_yankee/2011/08...
Fox, you would have trouble thinking up a plan to escape a rice paper bag with sixteen pages of instructions, a six-foot hole, and a map…yet you berate me about not being able to follow the ranting conversation of an imbecile…
You might do better with a turn-by-turn GPS unit…as long as someone else had to remember the batteries…
Paul has a record, maybe you should look it up before you go on a rant verses the messenger. McCain is a supporter of Libya… and I did say "I bet" that does mean speculation FYI.
He didn't have a chance.
The Republicans are going to go with a Reality Show contestant this time.
The Real Housewife of Wasilla.
Pretty Pretty Perry.
Bachmann Tourette's Overdrive.
Obama win 2012..may as well get used to it and blame no one but yourself.
Denying Paul is a RINO is akin to denying that eagles fly.
The fact that you consider him a (big "L") Libertarian only proves the point. He has no business in the Republican Party. The only reason he's there is to serve his own selfish interests. He's a career politician, a hack and a fruitcake.
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