Pawlenty's dilemma

Barring a judicial miracle, we're a month away from a resolution to the Minnesota race. At some point, it's likely that Pawlenty will be forced to do what all politicians dread: take a stand and make a decision, knowing some of his current supporters (either on the right or in the center) will walk away in disgust.

Tim Pawlenty is important because the Republicans are looking for a particular winning formula: one that soothes their hard-core base while also reaching out to all those independents and centrists who stampeded to Obama in the 2008 election. So far, Pawlenty is articulating that message best. Pawlenty told other party leaders “Ronald Reagan was president a long time ago. A lot has happened since then. So the challenge for us is how do you take the principles from the late ’70s and ’80s and apply them to the circumstances and issues and opportunities of our time.”

So Pawlenty tiptoes to the left: he wants the GOP to put forward their own ideas on renewable energy, college tuition and so forth. Strategically he wants to attack across the board, in every area where the GOP has been sagging: the northeast, the Pacific states, women, blacks, Hispanics.

But then Pawlenty lurches to the right: he is anti-abortion and appointed an anti-abortion guy to the bench; he wants the Pledge of Allegiance required in schools; he wants to drill in ANWR; he wants to leave health care up to the market; he wants to make Bush’s tax cuts permanent. In other words, he says he wants to reach out to the blue states and the centrists, but he just wants their votes – he’s still out on the right wing, for all his pragmatic rhetoric. We can fantasize about Pawlenty switching parties like Specter, but his actual policies are pretty out there to the right.

Something to watch: in the next year, who joins him on his crusade to win back centrists? If there is a trend in that direction, Pawlenty can afford to be a little more brave.

I think his performance in the Franken situation will be a perfect barometer to measure just how far to the left or right he will go. If he folds and certifies Franken quickly, then he’s apealing to the center. If he stonewalls, then he’s sticking with the rightwing party base.

I think that in the end, he sticks with the conservatives. Pawlenty is only 48 and he’s already governor: either he takes the next step, national office, or he spends the next 30 years as a talking head on Fox. And remember that he has never run for national office before: Romney, Huckabee and Palin have already pitched in The Show -- it does make a difference. Can he establish national credibility before people forget who he is? That issue mitigates in favour of his staying in the governor’s job.To do that, he would need help from the national party: he only won the governor’s job by one percent last time, his approval is at an all-time low, and the Democrats could easily field a strong opponent, particularly if he angers the center and the left with his handling of the Franken issue. Also, right now the GOP is domnated by extremists who are hell-bent on expelling apostate “traitors”, so tacking to the center is dangerous not only for him but for any other Republican who thinks like him (look what they just did to Huntsman!). And again, Pawlenty’s record is pretty far to the right anyway, particularly for Minnesota.

Which takes us back to the original question: how does a Republican satisfy both the center and the right? Pawlenty's dilemma is the GOP's dilemma -- how to satisfy the base and the center both. Reagan figured it out, and so did Obama: can the Republicans break the code?