What's Driving Pawlenty's Fundraising Surge?
Is Tim Pawlenty’s budget amendment crusade reaping dividends? Pawlenty has recently made a slew of appearances on Fox News, and written several op-eds (including yesterday in Politico) touting his new idea. The painfully obvious shortcomings of this idea have been discussed at length here, and have slowly picked up more criticism – yesterday from Bruce Bartlett at Capital Gains and Games, and seconding Bruce, Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic.
Yet, whether he is ready for primetime or not, he is making some serious moves in the fundraising arena. Pawlenty raised $1.28 million in just the last three months of 2009, compared to Romney’s $1.6 million and Palin’s $1.4 million in the last six months of last year – that’s about double the pace. This impressive showing prompted RedState to pronounce him “hands down, the frontrunner” in the cash game leading up to the nomination.
This respectable trend begs the question, is it the budget amendment crusade that is driving all of this? There are several scenarios to consider:
1. Pawlenty, of all the 2012 hopefuls, has by far focused most heavily on the budget. By doing this he has tapped into growing conservative and independent disdain for a big-spending, big-deficit progressive agenda that has not been able to wrestle down unemployment, or spur serious economic growth. Pawlenty was most recently vindicated on this point when Obama buckled to budget trepidations in his SOTU. In this scenario it is simply the diagnosis of the disease that has garnered him support, and not the medicine.
2. Pawlenty’s focus on amending the constitution has inspired his recent surge in support. In this scenario it is belief in the medicine that is pushing things along.
3. Pawlenty’s support has little to do with his current stumping. It is instead grounded in his clean and respectable record as governor of a left-of-center state, and the perception that he could bridge the gap between conservatives and independents and lead the GOP back into the White House.
Probably there are elements of all three in Pawlenty’s recent surge, but he could be in trouble if there is genuine support for his amendment proposal, or if it develops down the road. If supporters are touting his new medicine it is only a matter of time before they read the warning labels and realize it will never pass muster. The more cemented Pawlenty becomes to this sort of proposal the higher his risks in the future. Even if a dramatic proposal such as this gains him populist credibility and helps his coffers in the short term, he must preserve the ability to be versatile in the future and talk real sense to the nation as a whole.