Talk Elections

Apparantly CNN's reporting he's going to abandon his run after the Ames Straw poll.

I'm kinda surprised, he didn't do THAT bad. I was expecting Gingrich or Cain going first.

I just read that on a tweet from politico.  He's the first casualty.  However, his departure is a victory for the American people!

That`s strange. He didn't do too badly after all with a 3rd place. He should have at least waited for the caucuses and New Hampshire. Not that he would have won anything, but the bigger the field, the better.

Thank goodness.  His winy voice was starting to get on my nerves.  If only we could get Gingrinch to follow him....

Pawlenty down at 2% on Intrade. :P

Hmmmm so the wash-up of Iowa is a boost for nutbags and the downfall of one of the more reality-based candidates.

You have to think that the GOP is completely misjudging the American body-politic, these people are not how you win the Middle-ground...

This whole freak-show really helps Romney no-end...

That would be awesome if we could get Newt to bow out! I don't think it will be very long before he's out.  I'm hoping he's gone long before Iowa so he doesn't pollute the results.

He needed a strong showing in Ames to keep money coming in. I thought he might last another week or two at least but I guess he figured why bother.

Between him and Bachmann, he was the one actually using reason in that debate. Her rhetoric won her the day. That's just how it goes.

In Iowa, Pawlenty poled about 10-15% before the straw poll.

Who do you think will get Pawlenty's votes ?

Romney, Paul and Huntsman ?

I think Perry will get a fair share of his votes.

I had thought that the best description of T-Paw was the 2012 GOP version of Mike Dukakis.

That role is apparently over. 

I also think Perry will get a good share of it early, but it might shift later.
T-Paw might have a bright future in making commercials.

I knew this would happen, I just didn't expect it to take this long.

I won't say I expected this. Pawlenty placed a respectable third. I would have expected Gingrich or Cain to have dropped out first. Shame. He was one of the more intelligent candidates in this race.

Good riddance.

No surprise. I think Perry will win the primary.

Any bets on who drops out next?

It's okay, the media still has Huntsman to obsess over.

I don't recall a first drop-out ever being someone considered a frontrunner so recently before.  Until the NH debate two months ago, when Pawlenty wouldn't say it to Romney's face and Bachmann showed she had better syntax than Palin, he was on Romney's heels on intrade and considered by some to be the frontrunner.  

Will Gingrich use the Pawlenty news for cover to bow out too?  Or is he waiting for Palin's announcement?  Her descent into irrelevance for 2012 has been pretty remarkable itself.

Who would have guessed at the beginning of this year that come mid-August, Huckabee, Pawlenty, Barbour, Thune, Daniels, Palin would be a list of people not running for president? And if Gingrich and Johnson are added to list soon, it'd be even more surprising from the perspective of 7-8 months ago.

Well, they ought to do a better job of it! (read: no, they're not)

Unlike, Gingrich, Cain, Johnson, etc., Pawlenty has run an "establishment"-type campaign, in which his goal was to actually win.  Candidates like Gingrich and Cain don't really expect to win.  They're running either to promote their issues or promote themselves.  They'll stay in way past the point at which it's obvious that they're going nowhere.

With Pawlenty, the entire point of his candidacy was that he had a chance of winning, so once it became crystal clear that that was never going to happen, there was no point in continuing.

I see. I could tell what Gingrich is promoting, but Cain?

Should have announced it with a movie-trailer that replaced Miracle on Ice footage with a Minnesota news anchor announcing the North Stars move to Dallas.

The guy in my office will be sad. But I can't fathom his politics beyond that he comes from Minnesota and liked T-Paw's nice guy persona.

As for how Pawlenty's drop out weighs on me mind, I don't really care.

It's a shame. I really liked the guy and have a friend that is...well, I guess "was"...a director for him in one of the early states.

Shame to see him go. He was one of the sane ones.

Seconding what some have already said, while he was one of the blandest Presidential candidates in recent memory, had he won the White House I wouldn't have been worried about him turning into Martin Sheen from The Dead Zone like I would with Perry, Bachmann et al, so that's something.

Beautiful.

Just like him - Yawnable

NOOOOOOOOOOOO

Any bets on if/who he'll endorse? Romney, surely...

I liked Pawlenty initially. He seemed open to new ideas and policies, and it didn''t hurt that he had served as governor of a blue state.
But as he was gearing up to run it appeared like he wanted to repeat all the mistakes from Romneys 2008 campaign. I still remember that interview where he couldn't answer yes or no to whether or not he welcomed moderates like Olympa Snow in the GOP.

Cain's probably promoting Godfather's Pizza, still and using an elaborate stage to do so.

Seriously, though, I don't see what he's promoting.

as I said many times: TPaw always had ZERO chance

And the media thought this guy actually had a chance.

I think we've all said that, friend.......was there any tpaw supporters here?

I have yet to see anyone post in favor of his candidacy

I can't wait to read the City Pages' write-up on this.

more like LOLlenty, amirite

I think Phil was being sarcastic, brtd

Looks like Pawlenty finally understood we knew from the beginning (that he has zero chance), and just used Ames as an excuse to quit.

There was a huge amount of buzz on him as the VP nominee in 2008 (not from me, however).

I will miss the constant lulz we had on his 2's and 1's

Speak for yourself.  I thought he had an excellent chance.  I expected him and Romney to be the last two standing. 

If not for Bachmann and Perry, I imagine he'd still be in the race right now.

Pawlenty made Brownback look like a charismatic and exciting candidate.

That's what you get for trying to out-Romney Romney.

How do you mean?

What a sore loser.

I am surprised he quit.  He did respectably enough and came in first in the straw poll of the "establishment" candidates.  Only thing that makes sense is that some of major fundraisers must have set an Ames threshold for him to exceed to continue bothering and he didn't clear it.

I'd think most of his support goes to Perry for now.  As the new kid on the block, Perry is the candidate that it would make sense for the backstreet fundraisers to be insistent that T-Paw shut hs operation down.

I absolutely wasn't. I've always liked Pawlenty. He was my second choice until Perry got in.

T-paw is gunning to be Perry's veep.

I hope he at least made a deal with Romney to be his VP for dropping out this early lol
If he stuck it out, he might be able to get a talk show or a book deal.  
I guess he just wants to stop wasting donors money even if he didn't have any left

I was right. He was Brownback 2.0, as I predicted!

$$$$.  It dried up, and when that happens, it's over.

I'm not sure why everyone here is surprised by this. He spent everything on this poll and his showing was dreadful. He needed to go. Some of the others should follow suit.

Indeed.  But it's kind of sad.  (Dan) Rather, I think it means just shows how much time has passed already with both this campaign and Obama's rather disappointing Presidency.  I would like to have thought Pawlenty's drop out date would be a different scenario than the Pawthetic joke it ended up being.

What did Pawlenty bring to the table that Santorum didn't? I never understood why Pawlenty was treated as a super-serious candidate and Santorum a complete joke.

Santorum's defeat will always haunt him.

Aren't we smart enough to understand what swing state + moderate opponent with popular father + Republican in 2006 equals?

Akno, you are a hero to sane people everywhere.

No, Akno is not a hero.  Rick Santorum, he's the real hero.

Absolutely, though the loss will be hard to overcome.

Pawlenty won in a swing state in 2006. His opponent also seemed pretty moderate to me although he did lack the popular father.

Well I guess this answers my question. (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=138796.0)

EDIT: Damn it I've been slipping.

Santorum is insane.
Pawlenty was just a tool that shamelessly pandered to the unwashed masses that we call "Republican primary electorate".

     Cool, now we can quit pretending that he was ever a serious contender.

The entirety of Pawlenty's modus operandi consisted of trying to get himself equated with Mr. "Generic Republican" in the eyes of the electorate. There was simply nothing else.

Santorum clearly showed himself to the left of the field of Ames at the debate by acknowledging the possibility that liberals are also human beings and should be negotiated with instead of fed to wolves.

Pawlenty was probably also very liberal on this issue, but was too busy trying kill Bachmann as a hired assassin of the Romney campaign.

Pawlenty also did a lot more straying to the left of Republican orthodoxy back in his day than Santorum ... which one would think would work in Santorum's favor.

     Also Pawlenty was a Governor whereas Santorum was a Senator. Gubernatorial races are as a rule much less partisan than their Senatorial counterparts.

T-Paw isn't anti-gay to a radical degree and doesn't have his last name as a dirty word.

And positions on gay rights have been a major issue in this campaign since when, exactly?

sh**t, I meant to post that myself as my own reply.

Unsurprisingly this is getting a lot of mockery from the local media and on local forums, especially as Pawlenty basically based his last two years in office as just on running for President.

I agree it was an odd decision though, dropping out but not Gingrich? Pawlenty might go somewhere if Perry's campaign ends up landing with a thud and he becomes Fred Thompson 2.0. Not a prediction, but Pawlenty wasn't necessarily in worse shape than McCain four years ago. And his odds of getting the lower half of the ticket certainly were better if he had stayed in.

It hasn't, but Rick's position on them is part of the reason he's concidered a joke.

Look, dude friend, you quote who you want to quote, and I'll continue to quote myself.  Got it?!

;)