Team Pawlenty: Short on Cash?

The New Republic 1">reports:

At the same time, Pawlenty is banking on victory in the Iowa caucuses, but he is polling in single digits in the state. Make no mistake: Caucus-goers are late deciders and we still are at the stage in the campaign when only activists are following the initial jousting. But what this means is that Pawlenty will need to make repeated visits to places like Keokuk and Sac City to sell his still ill-defined political persona to curious Iowa Republicans.

That is Pawlenty’s real time bind–the voters who matter and the donors who can write $2,500 checks are hundreds of air miles apart. Every day, Pawlenty’s schedulers will have to wrestle with brutal choices: the Rotary Club lunch in Davenport, Iowa, or a noon fund-raiser in a Houston law firm? A prayer breakfast in Spartanburg, South Carolina, or making a pitch to a group of uncommitted Republican bundlers in Atlanta? A day of debate prep or three Wall Street fund-raisers?

At the end of the day, with the Republicans hard pressed to come up with a Final Four of serious candidates, it seems likely that Pawlenty can raise the money to buy a Buick. But at what cost in terms of time—the most precious resource any presidential candidate possesses? Romney—with his willingness to partially self-fund and his well-oiled financial network—will get an extra day or two more a week than Pawlenty to campaign in the early states. Pawlenty, for his part, will be constantly bedeviled by the old Superman-Clark Kent problem: the inability to be in two places at once, even with a borrowed corporate jet.