CPAC Day 2: Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty Sells His Conservative Creds

After his CPAC Speech, Governor Pawlenty sat down with Ed Morrissey of Hot AIR, who received the well-deserved honor of CPAC's Blogger of the year later in the year.

Tim is a champion of Grass Roots conservatism, back in 2002 Pawlenty first said the GOP needed "to be the party of Sam's Club, not just the country club." And Pawlenty certainly addressed those issues in his speech today

All that will probably be ignored by the mainstream media as they will hyper-focus on his money quote. Pawlenty suggested conservatives could draw inspiration from Elin Nordegren, the wife of the philandering Tiger Woods.

“She said she had enough,” Pawlenty said Friday, the day the famed golfer with a string of infidelity scandals was set to give a public apology in a press conference. “We should take a page out of her play book and get a nine iron and smash the window of big government in this country.”

Expect that Olbermann's eyes will explode as he rants against that one.

Pawlenty talked about the grass-roots conservative movement that was "igniting this nation," and he drew a parallel with Ulysses S. Grant, the scrappy Union general during the Civil War who went on to become president. He fought back against the way the
privileged political class tries to delegitimize the grass roots conservative movement.

“When you listen to the elites and the pundits talk about the tea party movement, when they talk about us conservatives, they may not always say it explicitly, but implicit in their comments is, Maybe they’re not as sophisticated because a lot of them didn’t go to the Ivy league schools, they’re from places like the heartland. They don’t hang out at chablis drinking, brie eating parties in San Francisco. They’re a little rough around the edges. They don’t dress like us. They actually enjoy shopping at Wal-Mart and Target. Sam’s Club Republicans.

“We’re just kind of bumpkins.We’re not up to their standards. Here’s something that I think will give us a great deal of encouragement: history is on our side. The Constitution is on our side. We’re on the side of freedom.”

But Pawlenty warned conservatives not to repeat the mistakes that handed the keys of the country over to a progressive super-majority.

"We may well be given as conservatives the privileges and the responsibility to govern and to lead this nation once again. And when we do, this time, we need to do what we say we're going to do. They need to go to Washington, D.C., and walk the walk."

The Governor laid out four points that will carry Conservatives forward.

• "The first one is this: God is in charge." He spoke of the Declaration of Independence and the Founding Fathers, who wrote: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. "If it good enough for the Founding Fathers, it should be good enough for each and everyone of us."

• "We can't spent what we don't have," He talked about growing up in a family that "didn't have a lot of money" and his mom saying that they had to "live within our means." And then related it to President Obama, "If government spending were an Olympic sport Obama would be a repeat gold medalist."

• "People spend money differently when it is their money." He warned about government wasting money -- our money -- on ways that we wouldn't if we were in control of spending it.

• "Lastly . . . bullies prey on weakness not strength." He spoke directly to Obama. "I have a message for President Obama . . . Mr. President, no more apology tours and no more giving Miranda rights to terrorists."

As the Governor continues to try and convince Republicans that he should be their 2012 Standard Bearer, we will see how well these points were accepted.