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As Paul noted last night, Democrats (and some Republicans) turned John McCain’s funeral into an orgy of Trump-bashing. Evidently they thought it made political sense. It reminds me of another politicized funeral, 16 years ago. In the fall of 2002, Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone was running for re-election against Norm Coleman. Tim Pawlenty was running his first race for Governor. And, of course, it was the first midterm election of George W. Bush’s presidency. In the last days of the campaign, Wellstone’s campaign airplane crashed in northern Minnesota, killing Wellstone and a number of others. Former Vice-President Walter Mondale was...

The ranks of forgotten Republicans are growing. Some were forced out, such as Tim Pawlenty, a former two-term Minnesota governor who lost this week's bid for a political comeback. Some, such as the retiring Republican Sen. Bob Corker, chose to leave on their own. Others still serve, but with a muted voice. Whether members of Congress, governors or state party leaders, they are struggling to fit into President Donald Trump's Republican Party. The expanding list of marginalized GOP leaders underscores how thoroughly Mr. Trump has dominated — and changed — the Republican Party in the nearly two years since he...

Primaries in four states Tuesday — Minnesota, Connecticut, Wisconsin and Vermont — set up competitive governor’s, Senate and House races across the country this November. But even before then, these primaries identified some clear winners and losers that reinforced trends we’ve been seeing all year. Here they are: Winners Trump: At least in Republican primary politics, Tuesday once again proved he’s the king. Republican politicians on the ballot Tuesday who dissed him in 2016 raced to undo that, and those who didn’t do it convincingly enough lost their primaries. In Minnesota’s competitive governor’s race, Republican voters nominated a relative outsider,...

Tim Pawlenty -- who briefly ran for president in 2012 and had derided President Trump as "unhinged" -- was denied in his effort to stage a political comeback and become Minnesota’s governor again in the race to replace Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton. County Commissioner Jeff Johnson won in Tuesday's Minnesota GOP gubernatorial primary despite Pawlenty's enormous fundraising and name recognition advantages. He also won despite his own history as the party's losing candidate for governor four years ago. Pawlenty joins several other prominent Republicans -- including Reps. Martha Roby and Mark Sanford, as well as Sens. Jeff Flake and Bob...

Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty announced he is running for governor Thursday, attempting a restoration after eight years out of office that saw his DFL successor move the state in a more progressive direction at odds with Pawlenty’s tenure. Pawlenty, a longtime Eagan resident, served two four-year terms beginning in 2003. The South St. Paul native built an image of a hockey-playing “Sam’s Club Republican” who could win suburban, middle-class voters in a Democratic-leaning state. “My campaign for governor will focus on charting a better way forward for Minnesota families who see health care premiums skyrocketing, paychecks not increasing very fast,...

Sen. Al Franken’s (D-Minn.) possible resignation on Thursday could set off a scramble among potential candidates to fill his seat while putting both Senate seats in the state up for reelection in 2018. Franken’s Democratic colleagues rapidly pulled support from him on Wednesday, as more than half of the Senate Democratic Conference — led by a stream of successive statements seemingly coordinated by half a dozen female senators — called on Franken to resign in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations. Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Thomas Perez joined that chorus, upping speculation that Franken will step aside on Thursday,...

1. Tom Cotton. 2. Bob Corker. 3. Chris Christie. 4. Joni Ernst. 5. Newt Gingrich. 6. Jeff Sessions. 7. Michael Flynn (retired Lt. General). 8. Condoleezza Rice. 9. Rick Scott. 10. Rick Perry. 11. Stanley McChrystal. 12. Mike Pence. 13. Martha McSally. 14. Marco Rubio. 15. Jim Webb. 16. Scott Walker. 17. Marsha Blackburn. 18. John Katich. 19. Rudy Giuliani 20. Scott Brown

"......Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who ran for president in 2012, said Friday that Walker and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush are the leading candidates for the Republican nomination. "Scott is from a Midwestern state, but he has a national profile and a national fundraising capability," Pawlenty said. "The non-Jeb money is increasingly flowing to him, and he's used to communicating red messages in blue places." In the past week, aides working for other Republicans expected to run in 2016 have circulated materials that highlight Walker's change in position on immigration, ethanol mandates, Common Core education standards, abortion and right-to-work...

With the three establishment-favored Governors(Jeb, Christie, Romney)having already all but declared, the time has come for other contenders to telegraph their intentions or face being left behind in the fundraising/operations cycle. One of my two favorite candidates for 2016 has always been Scott Walker, but the looming question has always been whether Walker would run at all given that a campaign would interfere fairly severely with the remainder of his second term. However,in a recent speech to the RNC, Walker seems to be attempting to remove the doubts about whether he will run:........Walker’s deficits at this point are well known....

WATERTOWN, N.Y.— Elise Stefanik, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, has never held elected office, but her résumé looks more like that of a Beltway insider than a political newcomer. By the time she won her seat representing a swath of upstate New York in the November election, she had served as a domestic policy aide for former President George W. Bush , a policy director for former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty ’s 2012 presidential campaign and head of debate preparation for vice-presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan .

DES MOINES — Gov. Terry Branstad says he would support a statewide Republican fundraising event in Ames next summer where GOP presidential hopefuls are invited to speak as long as no vote is taken as had been the practice during past straw polls that have been the focus of controversy. Branstad added that he did not want to see Iowa face possible sanctions that could cost delegates to the 2016 Republican national convention for conducting a poll in advance of the state’s first-in-the-nation caucuses that could run afoul of new party rules. “I’m willing to agree to a statewide meeting...

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said Wednesday he believes former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush can win the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, dismissing the notion that conservatives wouldn’t elect an “establishment” candidate by pointing to the party’s standard bearer the past two presidential cycles. “See John McCain; see Mitt Romney,” Mr. Pawlenty, who ended his 2012 presidential campaign in the summer of 2011, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “In McCain’s case, a very compelling personal story and a gritty performance; in Mitt Romney’s case, obviously a man of great talent but also someone with a tremendous amount of campaign resources...

I can see liberals' blood boiling over this one, after all he was a U.S. Senator and Illinois State Senator before becoming president....and? 

 

CARY, NC -- Fresh from lunch at Chick-Fil-A, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said that officials' public objections to the Christian-owned fast food chain are "chilling." "Now you have the police power of government intimidating and threatening people, being used to intimidate and threaten people, based on their free speech rights and their religious views," Pawlenty said Saturday of city officials' objections to president Dan Cathy's public disavowal of gay marriage. "I mean it’s chilling. I mean it’s stunning, it is jaw-dropping. And so I think strong people who see this need to stand up and say no we don’t...

Tim Pawlenty has jumped to the top of the vice presidential shortlist of several Mitt Romney advisers after emerging as the most effective — and well-liked — surrogate for the GOP nominee-to-be, according to several Republicans familiar with campaign deliberations. The former Minnesota governor has impressed top Romney officials with his winning onstage presence at a grueling roster of Republican events throughout the country and with his low-maintenance personal style that has made him a favorite with the campaign’s tight-knit inner circle at the Boston headquarters. Pawlenty is strong where Romney is weak — with the regular-guy, working-man connection with...

The exit of Rick Santorum from the Republican presidential primary essentially clears the path Mitt Romney is traveling to become the party's nominee against U.S. President Obama in November but Romney still has to win the hearts of GOP voters as well as the party's nomination. Romney had 573 delegates per the Republican National Committee's count to Santorum's 202 delegates when the former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania withdrew last week. But he has yet to stir a fire in the belly of the party's evangelical and conservative wings as he moves closer to the 1,144 delegates needed to claim the...

Well, that’s awkward. News that Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann is considering a presidential bid has not only sparked a mini media frenzy, but it’s rained on the parade of her home state colleague, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. On the eve of the release of Pawlenty’s memoir, “Courage to Stand” — the subject of an upcoming media blitz that has the all but announced a White House candidate booked on a number of national shows including “Good Morning America,” “The View” and “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”— the Bachmann trial balloon has the GOP governor and his backers gamely...

Tim Pawlenty implied Tuesday that there are some less-than-serious presidential hopefuls eyeing the race, with a quip that seemed to lump Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and Donald Trump together with wrestling icon Hulk Hogan. "You're going to have, you know, Mitt Romney who will start out as the front-runner with the most name-ID and money..." Pawlenty told CNN’s Piers Morgan in handicapping the race. "And on the other end of the continuum, you'll have perhaps Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Donald Trump, or I don't know, maybe Hulk Hogan will get in the race too. Who knows? But I think in...

As the team on Gov. Pawlenty’s now concluded presidential campaign works to recoup a campaign debt of some half-million dollars, their fingers have begun pointing toward the campaign’s manager, Nick Ayers, as the person to blame for the decisions that put the campaign into debt — and, by many accounts, as simply an unpleasant human being to work with. “I would blame him 100 percent for racking up the debt,” said one senior staff member of the Pawlenty campaign. Ayers declined to weigh in on that statement, or any of the others made in this story. “I believe a campaign...