Third Time's Not The Charm For Governor Pawlenty

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has said he's not running for a third term in 2010. What he didn't say was whether he'd run for President on the Republican ticket in 2012. He'll leave that stuff to the talk show pundits.

Which is just as well. By not running, Pawlenty is depriving the people he's helped screw over with his "no new taxes" agenda of the pleasure of voting him out of office. That strategy makes him look good in the eyes of the GOP, especially when he starts kissing up to the de facto leader of the party, which would be Rush Limbaugh.

So far as his constituents are concerned, Pawlenty has turned Minnesota from a state that is one of the most livable in the nation into a broken-down backwater people want to get away from if they could.

Now that he doesn't have to care what happens to his state, the Governor can turn his attention to fixing the budget mess all by himself, using a device called "unallotment" to cut billions from programs he considers unnecessary money-eaters. Things like, you know, public safety and health care. Don't need those. And he's not taking advice from the DFL-controlled Legislature, who tried to pass funding bill after funding bill before bowing to the Almighty Pawlenty's veto pen.

While Pawlenty tilts at the windmills against the Huckabees, Romneys and Palins of the world, someone else will be filling his chair beginning in 2011. Speculation has centered on DFL legislators such as John Marty and Margaret Anderson Kelliher, mayors R.T. Rybak of Minneapolis and Chris Coleman of St. Paul. For the Republicans, Norm Coleman could be the man if he loses his legal battle to keep his Senate seat and bows out gracefully. Then again, any one of them could be upstaged by a novelty act who captures the voters' fancy. Another Jesse Ventura, anyone?

Whoever that person is, the next Governor is bound to be an improvement over the current one, keeping his/her national political ambitions in check while making the state livable once again.