T-Paw first to go

I suppose third wasn’t good enough and the impact of Rick Perry entering the race was too much for Tim Pawlenty to overcome. Today he announced he was ending his Presidential bid.

Like Tommy Thompson four years ago, the former governor of a state adjacent to Iowa didn’t carry the day as he thought he would. While Tim received nearly 2,300 votes of the 16,800 or so cast, he lost the battle to his fellow Minnesotan Michele Bachmann by a better than 2:1 margin. That’s likely what sealed his fate.

It’s likely that Pawlenty’s support may drift mostly in two directions, since he didn’t endorse a candidate in his announcement. I think the portion that already wasn’t leaning toward Rick Perry will just go ahead and embrace the Perry campaign, while others may help Jon Huntsman keep his flailing bid alive.

Meanwhile, despite his puny 35-vote performance, bottom-feeder Thad McCotter is going to continue his long-shot bid. His campaign had its predictable spin on the results:

“For this campaign, the Straw Poll was not about votes, it was about introducing our candidate to the public in our first large forum,” said Christopher Rants, McCotter senior adviser. “For a campaign that has only just begun, it was important that we show the people of Iowa – and the rest of the country – that this was a serious candidate ready to address serious issues for our country. By any measure, we did that this weekend.”

I’m sorry, Christopher, but getting 35 votes is lousy. Rick Perry’s campaign has just begun as well and he got over 700 – as a write-in who didn’t even campaign in Iowa this week. Try again.

So we still have the same net number of hopefuls we did last week as the one who entered was countered by an early exit.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.