Marathon Pundit: Pawlenty in Iowa: Taking the road less traveled

Thursday, June 02, 2011

Pawlenty in Iowa: Taking the road less traveled

In Iowa, Tim Pawlenty is spreading his message in small-town Iowa.

The New York Times has more:

There was no tour bus idling in the parking lot, no satellite trucks racing down the highway and no time for sightseeing excursions, unless you count driving by the soon-to-open museum here in a city that promotes itself as the Ice Cream Capital of the World.

A world away from the scene unfolding along the Eastern Seaboard, where Sarah Palin and the news media spent days in a game of cat-and-mouse, the unglamorous rigors of running for president were on full display as Republican voters vented frustrations on immigration, the debt and whether the party could actually defeat President Obama.

Few people beyond the northwest corner of Iowa may have noticed, but the candidate fielding those questions was Tim Pawlenty. A former governor of Minnesota, Mr. Pawlenty logged yet another visit to the state whose caucuses early next year could be the first big test of whether the path to the White House has been upended by a frenzied media and celebrity culture.

Mr. Pawlenty is doing it the old-fashioned way, trying to build a campaign organization one voter at a time.