When I look over the list of potential Vice Presidential picks being looked at by Senator McCain, I always see the name of Minnesota Governor Jim Pawlenty, who is said to be quite close to McCain personally. To be honest with you, until last Fall, when Pawlenty (along with Governor’s Crist, Huntsman, Perry and Schwarzenegger) spoke at the semi-annual California Republican Party State Convention. Right off the bat, I was concerned because a large part of Pawlenty’s remarks were praiseful of Governor Schwarzenegger’s battle against man-made carbon emissions which amounts to a mountain of new government regulations. I had an opportunity to chat with Pawlenty a bit at that convention, and he is a personable, and smart fellow. But after that weekend, and since, I have done some poking around concerning Pawlenty, and pretty much figured out that McCain and Pawlenty are not just friends, but in many ways are ideological comrades.
If McCain reaches out and taps Governor Pawlenty to be his running mate, it will be because he wanted an already-vetted "safe" Republican pick, with whom he has a close relationship, but a Pawlenty pick would do nothing to energize conservatives. In fact, speaking for myself, I would be pretty disappointed, as Pawlenty’s record when it comes to fighting for individual freedom, liberty and responsibility is pretty rocky.
First and foremost, the fact that Governor Pawlenty enthusiastically embraces the global warming alarmism agenda championed by Al Gore is deplorable. If mankind’s impact on the Earth’s temperate through carbon emissions were not in doubt (the scientific community is not in agreement on this point), there is no doubt that the proposals supported by Gore and Pawlenty would disproportionately penalize Americans for what would (if proven) be a world-wide problem. There are huge costs in terms of individual freedom and liberty when you support as Pawlenty has, requiring utilities to produce 25% of their electricity from renewable resources by 2025, and setting targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050. He also supports the terrible idea of "cap and trade" where the government creates, through mandate, a scarcity in the energy marketplace which will make it very costly for consumers.
Pawlenty has also been a big advocate of going after smokers — in 2006 signing a massive cigarette tax increase (which he says wasn’t a tax but a fee) — and then he signed into law a huge statewide ban on smoking.
When the core economic issue of mandating wages on employers came up in Minnesota last year, Pawlenty signed a law hiking the "minimum wage" by a dollar (as a potential Veep pick, he vetoed another increase this year).
The Governor of Minnesota has also been signing legislation to increase the role of state government in healthcare, which can only be bad news for the folks in his state — and it is a bad harbinger of policies he would advocate on a national level. We’ve already seem push for more government healthcare spending at the federal level with his support for expansion of the State Children’s Health Care Program (SCHIP), which conservatives and the President opposed.
I think that possibly the biggest indicator that Pawlenty will not appeal to conservatives was his support of the Farm Bill. Yes the same farm bill that is not only filled with massive amounts of pork-barrel spending, but that is filled with redistributive wealth policies that center on the idea that the federal government takes money from all taxpayers, and then uses it to subsidize other Americans — such as providing cash payments to farming businesses (which in many cases are quite large, and in other cases are being paid not to grow certain products).
Jason Lewis is a popular conservative radio talk show host in the St. Paul-Minneapolis area. Much of what I have articulated above, and then some, is spelled out by him in this column featured in the Wall Street Journal.
My observations above need to be balanced with some positive comments about his first budget as Governor, where there was a huge deficit and he resisted all efforts to raise taxes. He also gets credit for vetoing the latest government-growth budget in Minnesota, though it says little about his clout as a party leader that his veto was over-ridden with the aide of a half-dozen Republican state legislators, and he needed only to convince two of them to hold back to see his veto upheld. Like McCain, Pawlenty is solidly pro-life, which is a plus. Pawlenty is also opposed to the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill would would ultimately provide amnesty for millions of criminal aliens in America.
But as you can tell from his record, Pawlenty is part of the modern-day Rockefeller wing of the GOP. I believe that the highest and best use of a Vice Presidential pick for John McCain, politically speaking, is to tap someone who has solid conservative credentials and can help motivate the base Republican vote (which needs positive encouragement) to work hard for the Senator’s victory this November. Another pragmatic reason for a pick would be to help pick up a swing state, but it’s entirely possible that a McCain/Pawlenty ticket would be able to win in Minnesota. So whether you are looking for a conservative to motivate the party faithful, or someone to win a big swing state, Pawlenty does not fit the bill.
The election of John McCain this November is critical. We should all encourage McCain to look elsewhere for a running-mate. Being a nice guy just isn’t enough. McCain needs to balance his ticket with a conservative. Not only for the good of our party, but to afford the best chance to win the White House this November.
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