Tim Pawlenty was the first major Republican to enter the 2012 race. He may well be the first to quit. If so, it may take a while to notice.
Jeff Zeleny, NYT (“Will Republican Race’s First In Be the First Out?“):
Tim Pawlenty was first in line to enter the Republican presidential race. He is now fighting to avoid becoming the earliest major candidate to be shown the door.
No contender for the Republican nomination has followed the conventional playbook more than Mr. Pawlenty, a former governor of Minnesota who began introducing himself two years ago during a prospecting trip to Iowa. Yet his path has been complicated by fresher faces, an unruly nominating contest and a handful of missteps that swallowed his summer momentum.
The voting will not open for at least six months, but Mr. Pawlenty knows that his performance at the Iowa Straw Poll on Aug. 13 — fair or not — will help determine whether his candidacy accelerates or lands in the annals of Republican presidential hopefuls like Elizabeth Dole, Lamar Alexander and Dan Quayle whose campaigns were extinguished here.
[…]
Few candidates make it to the White House without weathering a difficult period — as President Obama could testify. But Mr. Pawlenty has an extra set of challenges: he is building the best ground-level organization of any campaign around, but has struggled to tap into the new grass-roots energy coursing through the Republican Party and finding it difficult to secure early commitments because the field is still developing.
An alternative explanation is that Pawlenty was never really a major candidate to begin with. He was positioned as a major vice presidential contender in the 2008 cycle for, well, no apparent reason. He continues to be touted as a first tier candidate for the 2012 nomination despite never having been above the low single digits in the polls.
Dole and Alexander were major national brands whose candidacies just never caught on. Quayle was, well, a former one-term vice president who was well liked by the base but generally considered a joke. Pawlenty is . . . some guy few people have ever heard of who is considered a major contender because the press has inexplicably touted him as one.
It’s not at all clear what his claim to fame is supposed to be. He wasn’t a particularly noteworthy governor and left office after two terms with lukewarm approval ratings. Indeed, he was probably best known for a mullet, which has thankfully been retired. He’s not charismatic. His positions on the issues are boilerplate, indistinguishable from the serious contenders ahead of him. His dropping out of the race would go largely unnoticed.
