Marathon Pundit: T-Paw in National Review

Pawlenty at CPAC 2011

When I came home from work Friday night, the latest edition of National Review was waiting for me. On the cover is former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty--wearing a modified version of the Minnesota Wild hockey sweater.

An online version of Ramesh Ponnuru's article is available on NRO--here's snippet:

Pawlenty guided Minnesota's political culture firmly and sharply to the right. From 1960 to 2003, when Pawlenty took over, the state budget grew, on average, by 21 percent every two years. Under Pawlenty that average fell to 4 percent. Some fees rose, and so did cigarette taxes, but Pawlenty managed to resist all income-tax increases. He is one of four governors to get an A on the Cato Institute's most recent "fiscal-policy report card." Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana is widely lauded in Republican circles as a budget-cutter. But in each year they were both governor, Cato ranked Pawlenty ahead of Daniels.

Larry Jacobs, who studies politics at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School, comments, "In Minnesota, Pawlenty was always seen as the state's most charismatic and politically talented politician. Here's a guy who was a conservative fending off often large Democratic majorities and [he] consistently had over 50 percent approval and dominated public debate. He had a remarkable knack for appealing to people on non-political grounds. . . . Mostly it was the way he talked about public policy and politics. People who fundamentally disagreed with him on public policy found him appealing."