Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty could position himself as the front-runner for the Republican nomination and be a serious contender in the general election — if he can make the right enemies. Pawlenty got off on the right foot this week by traveling to Iowa to call for the end of ethanol subsidies. On Thursday, he was scheduled to attack bailouts, speaking at Wall Street, of all places. He sees that there’s a political opening for a conservative Republican willing to fight against the malefactors of great wealth who profit off big government — the corporate welfare queens.
Obama has spent two years pretending to battle special interests, all while institutionalizing bank bailouts, letting drug companies write health care “reform,” handing out trillions in subsidies to tech and green energy companies, supporting ethanol favors, giving tax dollars to failed automakers, granting special breaks to politically connected labor unions, and setting off a feeding frenzy on K Street. Americans see that the politically connected are thriving at everyone else’s expense while politicians call for common sacrifice.
For Pawlenty’s schtick of “bold truth-telling” to carry weight, he must go after the subsidy sucklers and bailout bandits. If big banks, energy companies, and K Street lobbyists start complaining about Pawlenty, we’ll know he’s doing it right.
Pawlenty recently has shown a limited-government, populist streak. On the way out of the governor’s mansion, he picked a fight with his state’s business lobby by announcing he would reject some Obamacare aid that came with strings attached. The Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, the Minnesota Hospital Association, the Minnesota Council of Health Plans, and the Minnesota Medical Association all chastised Pawlenty for denying them the subsidy dollars.
In January, Pawlenty attacked the Wall Street and Detroit bailouts, leaning on populist rhetoric: “There’s a bunch of people running the country all these years from Harvard and Yale and Wall Street,” Pawlenty said. “You know, they screwed it up.”
In February, he thanked the activists at a Tea Party Patriots Summit for “standing up to the ruling class,” and fighting against “the royal triangle of greed: big government, big unions, and big bailed-out businesses.” In April, Pawlenty went after corporate welfare and policies providing “special deals for some.” And this week, he attacked ethanol in Iowa.
All of this is refreshing. The tough talk against the special interests taps into the populist current that runs through the Tea Parties, and the champion-of-the-people mantel has yet to be claimed by leading GOP candidates. But it’s also hard not to see Pawlenty’s anti-corporatism streak as simple opportunism, especially considering his record in Minnesota, where he did not exactly wage war against the politically powerful.
He consistently backed big-government programs benefiting big business. He supported ethanol subsidies, and in 2008 gave his “reluctant” approval to the bailout.
Pawlenty’s 2003 “JOBZ” program was a gift basket of targeted tax breaks to subsidize favored industries and markets. As a legislator, he voted to borrow $60 million for a business-backed light rail. A white paper by the pro-free market Club for Growth describes repeated Pawlenty flip-flops subsidizing a new stadium for the Minnesota Twins — he derided these subsidies in 1997, voted for them in 2001, against then in 2002, and then signing a subsidy bill in 2006.
Like Mitt Romney, Pawlenty took the Big Business-Big Government side on “green energy” and expansion of health-insurance subsidies for children.
Unlike Romney, Pawlenty has apologized for some of his Big Business-Big Government dalliances. But it’s sure reminiscent of Barack Obama. In Illinois, Obama was in bed with developers and special interests. As a presidential candidate, he posed as the scourge of the special interests. As president, he returned to playing ball with lobbyists and taking care of the powerful.
But with Obama, there was an early tip-off: He shattered records in raising funds from Wall Street, Big Pharma, and tech companies like Google and Microsoft. Obama’s $1 million haul from Goldman Sachs in 2008 was more than any politician had raised from a single company since the era of soft money ended.
This is why Pawlenty needs not only to verbally assail the spoiled clientele of the corporate welfare state, but to actually fight them. If he decries the fat cats by day and takes their money at night, he’ll be no different from what we have today. If, on the other hand, Pawlenty actually drives the lobbyists and bankers away — first to Romney, and then Obama — then voters will have a real choice.
It’s not a very Minnesota sentiment, but a man can do himself great credit by earning the right enemies.
Timothy P.Carney, The Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Monday and Thursday, and his stories and blog posts appear on ExaminerPolitics.com.
