Much like our Alma Mata's football team in recent years, a Minnesota Gopher's aspiration to move on to something bigger and better ended after a long Saturday afternoon in Iowa. Not including the very notable exception of last year's incredible upset victory, the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers football team had won only one other time in its last ten tries in its annual match up for the bronze pig trophy known as Floyd of Rosedale. It must not count for much consolation to Pawlenty supporters that although Floyd is back in Minnesota, T-Paw leaves his scalp behind in Ames.
Watching my old law school classmate announce on ABC's This Week that he was abandoning the path to the presidency brought on mixed emotions for me. From a pragmatic perspective, Pawlenty's decision made a lot of sense. The people, as inbred and stupid as the base of the Republican party in Iowa is, and although the straw poll does not mean that the voters have made up their minds, they have decided one thing, it sure ain't Pawlenty. Although I have given my old classmate from 1L Civil Procedure class his share of grief over the years for various knuckle head decisions, perhaps the biggest being single handedly reviving the most corrupt organization in the state's history, the Metro Gang Strike Force, there were times that Pawlenty rose to the occasion as Governor and showed sparks that he could ignite national, perhaps presidential potential. The 35W bridge collapse
aftermath and his leadership in creating a state web site to facilitate state residents purchasing prescription drugs from Canada, over the Bush administration's objections, immediately come to mind. But alas for Pawlenty, it was not to be.
What is most surreal is the way or should I say by whom he was done in by. It obviously must burn Pawlenty to the core that his chance to grasp at the brass ring that is the presidency was moved out of reach by a most unlikely, even comical, character in the form of Minnesota 6th District Congresswoman, Michele Bachmann. To all Minnesotans, except the brain dead constituents of places like Hugo (Minnesota's version of Bug Tussle) Bachmann is one big scary joke. Scary because the rest of the nation cannot see through her thinly veiled megalomania and utter lack of credibility.
Even the slightest scratch at Bachmann's surface and the whole facade starts crumbling into a heap of rubble. Bachmann touts that she is a lawyer and tax attorney. While technically this may be true, she did get her degree from the no longer existent Oral Roberts Law School, which went bankrupt after the founder's unsuccessful attempt at extorting donations by ascending the school's giant folded hands prayer tower and threatening not to come down until his demands were met. Kinda reminiscent of the Tea Baggers breath holding in Congress over the debt ceiling. Boy that really worked for old Oral and for the U.S. credit rating now didn't it.
At least Oral Roberts Law School could salvage something by holding a fire sale of the school's law library, a framed pictograph of the Ten Commandments stolen from the wall of the local Oklahoma county courthouse, to none other than Pat Robertson's start up joke of a law school, Regents University in Virgina Beach, VA. A review of state and federal court records turned up no more than two references to any matter Bachmann was associated with. Her own biography acknowledges she gave up the practice of law after just two years to raise a family, paid for of course by the state and federal government in the form of medicaid/medicare benefits paid to her husband's christian "counseling" service.
Although perceived by Iowans as something of a sore loser and/or as having sharp elbows after last weeks debate, Pawlenty's "too little, too late" critique of his fellow Minnesotan was just that, but also right on target. Pawlenty has at least laid the groundwork for his fellow GOP presidential hopefuls to make short work of the right wing fluff and no substance that is Michele Bachman. And for that, Timmy, we thank you.
