Sunday, August 14, 2011

The End Of The Minnesota Meh

That's what Jonathan calls Tim Pawlenty, who just dropped out of the race.

At this point, the top three news links on TPM are all the other candidates being nice to Pawlenty. This is what you'd expect when a candidate drops out of a primary -- everybody else tries to be nice to him to win over his supporters. I guess it's more important when they actually have a large number of fervent supporters who identify with the candidate, but it can't hurt even in this case.

I'm pretty sure Pawlenty would've soldiered on a bit longer if it hadn't been for Perry's entry into the race. So far we have two clearly defined options -- unprincipled but competent centrist Mitt Romney, and crazy Michelle Bachman. Pawlenty was the candidate for people who for some reason were turned off by both, perhaps movement conservatives who seriously think about winning a general election. Now Perry emerges as the more exciting option for that constituency.

4 comments:

CreidS said...

Just a guess: Perry-Pawlenty 2012.

Perry is going to have to say all sorts of things to the red-meat base that will make him look kooky to moderate voters, but T-Paw is moderate like your aunt's overcooked mash potatoes.

Neil Sinhababu said...

I don't know if moderate voters will get drawn in by a moderate VP. If the top-ticket guy is scary, he'll scare away the moderates, because he actually becomes president, and you only get the moderate in the White House if he dies or something. I don't think Perry-Lieberman would attract moderates if Perry was constantly serving up the red meat.

Of course, I'd be happy to see them try it.

CreidS said...

I agree. But people, for some reason, put a lot of stock in e VP pick to "balance the ticket". I'm not sure that it has ever worked that way.

Neil Sinhababu said...

Yeah. Certainly if that's what McCain in 2008 was trying to do, he unbalanced the heck out of the ticket.