With writing all over the wall, Pawlenty drops out of GOP presidential race

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It wasn't so long ago that Tim "T-Paw" Pawlenty was the darling of conservative and generally David Broderesque pundits on the inside, heralded as the sort of appealing "bridge" candidate with executive experience who could unite the GOP's corporatist establishment and Tea Party / theocratic extreme. He looked the part, presidential but also populist, and George Will et al. just couldn't get enough of him -- sufficiently conservative, unlike Mitt Romney, but not crazy, unlike Michele Bachmann. (In this way, he was presented and promoted, with the same punditocratic swooning, just as Mitch Daniels was, it's just that Daniels never jumped in.)

Well, the shine faded pretty quickly as Pawlenty proved to be a terrible candidate -- not charismatic, not arousing of the base -- and, while doing terribly in the polls, proved to be a desperate one as well, trying everything he could to catch on, passing himself off, despite a fairly technocratic record in Minnesota (where he was anything but an ideologue), as both a devout social conservative (anti-gay, anti-abortion, etc.) and a hardline fiscal one (anti-tax, anti-spending, etc.).

Quickly, the punditocracy jumped ship, with even Will beginning to say nice things about Bachmann. And, really, it was only a matter of time before the inevitable dropping out. Even his wife was saying implicitly disparaging things about his chances.

Basically, if he couldn't do well in the Ames Straw Poll -- that is, in Iowa, close to home, where once upon a time (pre-Bachmann) it looked like he had a shot -- that was it. The writing was going to be on the wall for everyone to see.

And he didn't, finishing third behind Bachmann and Ron Paul in a contest that didn't feature Romney and Rick Perry (or at least for which they didn't actively campaign). Which isn't all that bad, perhaps, but he needed to do a lot better, particularly after sinking so much energy into it.

But it wasn't just Ames. Pawlenty never once caught fire, never once looked like a serious contender. And while there may still be room for a "bridge" candidate to emerge between Romney and Bachmann/Perry, it was clear that he wasn't going to be it.

And why? Who knows? Maybe he didn't want it enough. Maybe there isn't much of a constituency for someone like him in today's Republican Party. Maybe he's just too small for the national stage. Maybe he never really found himself, hence his desperate struggle for attention. Whatever the case, he seemed to wither and shrivel up as the campaign went along, hanging on at the very bottom of a weak and embarrassing field with the likes of Rick Santorum. That's sad company, to be sure.

And now it's over. We won't have T-Paw to kick around anymore. Not that anyone was paying much attention anyway.

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