The Republican I voted for takes on Pawlenty

In 1990, the Minnesota Governor's race was between incumbent Democrat Rudy Perpich and Republican Arne Carlson. Perpich had been behaving pretty erratically and Carlson was a sane moderate Republican. It was the only time I can remember ever going into a voting booth not knowing who to vote for. In the end, as I stood there trying to decide, I thought about the fact that Perpich was pro-life and Carlson was pro-choice. Because the MN legislature had a pro-life majority, I pulled the lever for Carlson. He won and wound up serving two terms. There were times I disagreed with what he did, but what he's done in his retirement from elected office confirms for me that I made the right choice.

As the Republican Party began its decent to the right, Carlson has been a voice of reason and found himself increasingly alienated. In 2008, he endorsed Barack Obama for President saying "Obama represented the best hope for an America facing an economic crisis and criticizing Republicans for waging a mean-spirited campaign that has 'been going down all these side roads.'" Then in 2010, he endorsed a third party candidate for MN Governor instead of the Tea Party candidate and was banished from the party.

I provide all of that background because recently, Carlson has gotten some attention for calling out the failures of Tim Pawlenty as governor. As a Minnesotan, I have to laugh at the people who so often call Pawlenty a "serious candidate" or want to pretend he is somehow a "moderate" choice. What I've noticed since he was first elected is that he has a way of talking that makes him sound moderate. But behind all of the fancy language is someone who is steely in his adherence to the ideological extremes of the Republican Party.

As a true fiscal conservative, Carlson focuses his critique in that arena and calls Pawlenty out for policies that increased property taxes in this state by 250%. But then he goes on:

Further evidence of this can be seen in the fact that from 2003 to today, Minnesota has been rolling from deficit to deficit and in spite of warnings from Moody’s concerning the folly of short-term fixes, Governor Pawlenty continued to achieve budget balance by employing the following:

➢ Borrowing over $1 billion from the tobacco settlement – money designated for health care.
➢ Taking over $2 billion from the federal stimulus funds.
➢ Borrowing over $1.4 billion from K-12 education funding.
➢ Borrowing over $400 million from the Healthcare Access Fund for low-income families.
➢ Accelerating tax payments.
➢ Delaying bill payments.
➢ Engaging in accounting shifts.

In the process, Moody’s lowered Minnesota’s bond rating.

And, much of this activity preceded the recession of 2007 and no borrowed monies have been paid back thereby leaving Minnesota with a $5.1 billion deficit – the 7th most severe in the United States.

We Minnesotan's are going to be paying the price for Pawlenty's time as governor for years to come. Today, with a Democratic Governor (Mark Dayton) and Republican legislature, we're facing a government shut-down in a couple of weeks because the parties can't agree about how to fix this mess.

It comes as no surprise to any of us that Pawlenty is proposing a chimerical economic plan to give the richest a $11.6 trillion tax cut - all while using google to find alternatives to government programs.

If Republicans are as deeply concerned about the 13.9 million out-of-work people as they claim to be, they might have offered ideas of their own that have some possibility of creating jobs. Instead, they have been chanting the same tired and discredited mantras the party has offered since the 1980s: huge tax cuts, huge cuts in safety-net spending, the clear-cutting of regulations, and the inevitable balanced-budget amendment.

The latest example is the chimerical economic plan put forward on Tuesday by Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor, who at least until this speech was considered one of the more reasonable of the suitors for the Republican presidential nomination. Mr. Pawlenty went much further right in proposing to slash government than even the House Republicans or most of the other candidates. The danger is that the race becomes a Bunyan-esque contest between tax cutters, with the public lulled by the false belief that the current tax rates (already low) are somehow inhibiting hiring...

The shallowness of his ideas is best illustrated by a proposal to cut government services by finding similar private enterprises on Google. Private security firms advertise on the Internet, so can we shutter the Pentagon? That would save a lot of money right there.

So the New York Times editorial board has finally woken up to the idea that there's not that much daylight between the lunacies of a candidate like Pawlenty and Bachmann. If they'd asked a few of us here in Minnesota - like Arne Carlson - who actually know his record, we could have told them that a long time ago.

If you're ready to dismiss all of this and tell me that Pawlenty is down in the polls and therefore not a real contender, I'd suggest you take a look at what BooMan said yesterday.

Speaking of the next election, it is looking increasingly likely to me that Tim Pawlenty will emerge as the only possible alternative to Mitt Romney. And, since the Republican base in almost infinitely less likely to accept Romney as their ordained front-runner than the Democratic base was willing to accept Hillary Clinton in that role, it looks to me like Pawlenty is close to a lock to win the nomination.