Pawlenty dropped out of the Republican race extremely early. Would he have been a viable not-Mitt, at least for a little while, or would he be languishing still like Santorum and Huntsman?
I know there’s no way to know this for certain, but what is your gut feeling?
And did various potential Republican candidates make a mistake in not joining this race? Palin? Guiliani? Christie? Ryan? Daniels? Bush?
IMO Tim P would have had his turn as the Un-Mitt, and would have looked better at it than half the other aspirants, but it’s hard to tell if he could have sustained, he himself said he bowed out for lack of financial resources – conversely, having strong financial backing is what keeps Perry still out there even after taking all those lumps.
As to the other candidates in the OP, Rudy probably knows he missed his train in '08; Palin realized her true calling (and profit center) is as a Person Who Must Be Listened To rather than as an actual competitor; Jeb knows it’s too soon for yet another Bush; Christie sensibly said to himself hey, I just got to THIS job the other day, I need to run on a record, not just on an image. The others probably realized even earlier than Pawlenty that there was not that much uncommitted financial support out there to run large at least as far as Nevada or South Carolina.
Tim Pawlenty was out of his league. He wasn’t very popular in Minnesota and he certainly wasn’t very good at running the state. No way was he getting anywhere on the larger stage.
Plus he has even less charisma than Romney.
So I came in here to give my opinion, only to discover that I’m pretty sure I agree with every single word in the first response. Which hardly ever happens in this forum. The only thing I would add to that is that even had Pawlenty sustained his not-Romney persona, I don’t think he ever would have beaten Romney, so to answer the question in the title, no, I don’t think Pawlenty made a mistake.
I have been thinking this too. Pawlenty was getting no traction when he dropped out but neither was Newt. He is definitely more conservative than Romney, a better debater than Perry and better organized than Newt. If he had stayed, he could very well have become the not-Romney after Cain imploded.
I also think Huntsman made a big mistake in terms of positioning. He staked out his space to the left of Romney where there are very few primary voters. He had the record to position himself somewhat to the right of Romney while still being the sane Republican. He could have gotten a lot of interest from mainstream commentators (like George Will who has been pumping him up anyway) as well the GOP establishment types while still being a reasonably attractive alternative to Romney for conservatives.
Basically this primary was a huge opportunity for a competent, experienced politician who ran somewhat but not hugely to the right of Romney. You would have thought there would be at least one person in the GOP who could do that but instead it’s been a parade of incompetents and flakes of which Newt is the latest. He still has a chance of making a race of it if he wins Iowa but now that the debates are over he is running into a massive ad barrage against which he can do little.
Daniels would have been embarrassed by national attention on his selling of transportation corridors to private investors. I assume that’s why he didn’t run.
Pawlenty is an anti-tax extremist. Like, more so than the usual. Hard to say how well he would have done.
Ryan is happy pretending to be some Wunderkind in the House instead of having to put his name in the Presidential race and lose to some Mormon.
Giuliani and the Bushes are kind of on the outs with the party. Palin and Christie seem happy in their present jobs.
You can say that again! We’re still suffering from the mess he left.
Pawlenty does not meet this criteria at all.
I think one of T-Paw’s (har) problems was that he was pretty unpopular in his home state and the surrounding region and probably wasn’t going to be able to pick up any funding from his former [del]subjects[/del] constituents. To make things worse, he also has so little to recommend him that he wasn’t likely to get any money from national sources, so he was virtually guaranteed to go into personal debt if he wanted to stay in the race. I guess he thought it would be less taxing (heh) to ride in Romney’s back pocket and see if he could collect a little reflected glory, and I think he made the right choice. With Pawlenty standing next to him, Romney virtually glows.
On the campaign trail, yes. On Colbert the week after he dropped out, he was engaging and funny. Remember, elections are decided by old people. Old people like soft, bland food and soft, bland politicians.
They are?
Just like Dole, then. I remember after the 1996 election, Bob Dole went on Letterman and I thought to myself, “If this were the Dole I was seeing during the campaign, I might actually have voted for him.” This was just two years after the “Gingrich Revolution” and the GOP hadn’t really started jumping off the cliff yet. There were still Republican moderates. And I was, at the time, more middle-of-the-road politically than I am now.
Gore had a bunch of TV appearances after his drawn out loss in 2000 where he was pretty funny and laid back as well. And there were those videos of Bush during his debates for the position of TX governor where he sounded, if not brilliant, at least not aggressively dumb.
I think a lot of people just don’t deal with the pressure of running for Prez very well. Even experienced politicians who have run for many other high level positions (Dole, Gore), seem to default to a sort of stilted mannerism when put on the Prez campaign trail.
I imagine it comes from having a bunch of advisers telling you all day that you need to do and say exactly this when your in front of the cameras, and if you don’t the other guy will win and destroy the country and it will be all your fault. Hearing that day in and day out would leave most people kind of shell shocked.
I didn’t want to have to say this out loud with so many [del]old people[/del] dear friends probably reading this thread, but 45+ is old.
Did you look at the link. Obama received overwhelming support from the 18-29 bracket and the majority of the votes from the 30-44 group. These wins pushed him over the top, winning him the election.
Any Republican running has to ask himself, can I do that? If the answer is no, getting out of the race (or losing in November) is the only thing to do.