Washington Post:
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On Wednesday, Pawlenty made a direct appeal to a gathering of conservatives in downtown Washington, pledging to place a temporary freeze on public employee salaries and to cut one in two federal jobs through attrition.
The venue, the libertarian Cato Institute, was rich with the symbolism of what Pawlenty was hoping to do: fill the free-enterprise space that many Republicans had hoped Daniels or Christie would step into — and demonstrate that he was up to the task.
“We can’t have federal employees getting a better deal than the people paying the bill — and that’s the taxpayer,” Pawlenty said at the third stop of a week-long swing across the country that began Monday with the official kickoff of his presidential campaign.
It has been a week of symbolic backdrops. In Iowa,where the ethanol lobby has held an iron grip on political discourse, Pawlenty promised to end ethanol subsidies. In Florida, where politicians historically have courted an older population by promising to protect entitlement programs, he pledged to stem the runaway costs of Social Security and Medicare by tightening benefits. And in New York on Friday, he will take aim at the bailouts of big businesses and Wall Street, which he said helped run up the nation’s debt in recent years.
“That’s the kind of spirit we’re going to have, which is to speak truth to what the real problem is and not have any sacred cows,” Pawlenty said. “And those are some of the examples.”
The Cato Institute was an appropriate setting for Pawlenty to emphasize not only how he hopes to rein in government spending but to talk up his fiscal accomplishments during eight years as governor of Minnesota.
“I think he probably views Cato as a symbolic venue for making it clear he’s serious about spending reductions,” said Edward Crane, the institute’s founder and president. “He was one of four governors last year to get an ‘A’ grade from our fiscal report card. And he earned it. He did a good job there against a legislature that was very much against him.”
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Pawlenty is off to a good start with me, but I am not sure how he is doing with voters. Are Iowa voters going to agree with him on ethanol. That maybe too much to hope for, but I think he is right to phase out the subsidies. He may get the profiles in courage award for this campaign, but can he get the votes. I think voters should give him a chance.
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