May 25, 2011

Truthy Pawlenty

Tim Pawlenty bets on boldness

I’ve long said that no one can elected president telling the truth about how bad things are and what needs to be done. Pawlenty be giving it a shot. Any candidate who only gives us 50% pabulum is worth supporting against a president who gave us 99%.

Excerpt: In announcing his campaign for president in Iowa Monday, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty placed a big bet on boldness. He called for a phasing out — albeit gradual — of federal ethanol subsidies, a move long considered a political death wish in a state with such a large agricultural community.

Again, which is why I have often noted that ethanol will never go away as long as the first contest for President is held in Iowa. This is a huge move, but it might be about as intelligent as Giuliani focusing only on Florida in 2008.

But, Pawlenty didn’t stop there. In his speech he detailed how he will travel this week to Florida — one of the oldest (by age, not Statehood, trolls) states in the country — to call for fundamental reform of Medicare and Social Security, to Washington to take on alleged largess in the federal government and to New York to make clear the era of bailouts of the financial industry is over. “Conventional wisdom says you can’t talk about ethanol in Iowa or Social Security in Florida or financial reform on Wall Street,” Pawlenty said. “But someone has to say it. Someone has to finally stand up and level with the American people.” The “speak truth to power” idea — and Pawlenty used the word “truth” 16 times in his announcement speech — is an interesting one for the former Minnesota governor who has often been described as too vanilla or too boring to excite the GOP electorate.

“I am going to tell you the truth,” Pawlenty said. “The truth is, Washington’s broken.”

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Sure, it's the truth, but when has that ever worked out for a politician?

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