Pawlenty sounds like a candidate for 2012

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By Ralph Z. Hallow

UPDATED:

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty threatened to invoke states' rights over President Obama's health care plan and quipped that the "main benefit" of what he called the market-distorting, taxpayer-financed "Cash for Clunkers" program was that it "got a lot of cars with Obama stickers off the road."

The two-term governor, in an interview with The Washington Times, sounded most of the right base notes as a Republican who is clearly eyeing the 2012 presidential nomination. He said that the Federal Reserve chairman and the Treasury secretaries in the Bush and Obama administrations were "misguided" at best in declaring certain financial and manufacturing organizations too big to be allowed to fail.

As to whether abortion is murder, as many pro-life advocates maintain, he said, "Life begins at conception, so abortion ends that life, but I don't think we should criminalize abortion for women."

In a phone conversation, the 48-year-old, hockey-playing Republican repeated the standard early denials of a presidential aspirant. "I haven't decided and am not even thinking of that now," he said, while acknowledging that on Thursday he officially established a multi-candidate political action committee to raise and spend money to help other Republican candidates in the 2010 congressional and gubernatorial elections. One dividend of such beneficence is IOUs from politicians across the country, should he decide on a 2012 nomination bid. He has already said he won't seek a third term as governor next year.

Mr. Pawlenty had some surprisingly generous words for President Obama's trip last week to Copenhagen to make what turned out to be a failed pitch to have the Olympics site-selection committee choose Chicago to host the 2016 summer games. The committee chose Rio de Janeiro instead.

Asked whether his fellow Republicans struck a false note in jumping all over the Democratic president for making the pitch in person, along with the first lady, Mr. Pawlenty said, "It's fine for a governor or president to advocate for his or state or nation. People ought to lighten up about it."

Once criticized by friends for giving deadly serious, truly earnest but largely soporific speeches, Mr. Pawlenty has been injecting passion and humor into his rhetoric, earning applause and cheers from Republican-inclined audiences.

Last month at a Values Voters Summit of nearly 2,000 social and religious conservatives, Mr. Pawlenty, virtually unknown outside his state, placed third behind better known political figures such as former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

As for Mr. Obama's stimulus measures, Mr. Pawlenty noted, with irony, that "the federal government borrowed money from China to give Americans money to buy new cars from companies the government had already bailed out. Americans would have bought those cars a little later on their own. Meanwhile, Cash for Clunkers hurt the used-car lots, the salvage industry, the used-parts industry and charity.