Tag Archives: Tim Pawlenty

Random Thoughts

By MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

 Item One:  Unsavory Nature of Political Campaigns

 What I saw of the Iowa Republican Presidential primary debate, and it wasn’t much, brought to mind two unsavory aspects of American political campaigns that politicians, the press and the public ought to try to temper before we go full throttle into the 2012 races.

The first was incivility. The media carnival barkers and fire-breathing partisans were anxious for the candidates to brutalize one another, particularly fellow Minnesotans Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty.  From news reports of the debate—again, I missed some of the exchanges, they got some of what they wanted, but not much.  I am told the two Minnesotans went at it, dropping the Minnesota nice persona—isn’t that special—but they really did not beat the bejesus out of each other.

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Pawlenty is Prologue

 BY RICH GALEN

Rerprinted from mullings.com

NOTE: This is the second MULLINGS coming out of the Iowa Straw Poll yesterday. It was written partially in Ames, Iowa; in Detroit, Michigan;and, finally finished at home in Alexandria, Virginia.

How can this happen? How can a successful Governor hire a group of really smart people, spend more than a year, and who-knows-how-many millions of dollars, meeting with potential and actual supporters, and elite members of the media in places like New York City, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC only to come to a grinding halt in a place called Ames, Iowa?

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AAA Arcane August Story

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from mullings.com

I woke up early yesterday morning to follow the story of the continuing drop in the markets following the S&P downgrade of U.S. sovereign debt from AAA to AA+. It occurred to me that, as we enter the second week of August, this may be the most arcane “August Story” in my experience.

Anthony Weiner is the typical August story: Public official, sex, denials, resignation. That it happened in June was just one more reason to not have any sympathy for Weiner.

Last year, every visit to that new office Keurig coffee machine included a discussion about the state of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, brought to you by BP. “Junk Shots” and “Top Kills” sustained us throughout the summer before a relief well was finally completed in September.

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The Age of Digital Campaigns

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from mullings.com

 We’re probably within a week of the first Republican candidate to file papers opening an exploratory committee to “test the waters” in the 2012 Presidential campaign.

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