Fade Out, Fade In

Tim Pawlenty is out and Rick Perry is in. Pawlenty ended his presidential candidacy based on his poor showing in the Iowa straw poll that his fellow Minnesota Twin Michele Bachmann shockingly won on Saturday. Which begs the obvious question: Why do they have have a Republican caucus in Iowa, if they're going to have a straw poll? Another question? Why do they have a straw poll?

This is no way to pick a President. I'm still trying to imagine the Leader of the Opposition in the Canadian Parliament stepping down because he lost a straw poll at the Buffalo Days Exhibition, the provincial fair of Saskatchewan.

No sooner had Bachmann finished scarfing down a corn dog to celebrate her victory in the straw poll at the Iowa state fair when Texas governor Rick Perry entered the 2012 Republican presidential campaign. Perry hopes his record at creating jobs will make him a threat against President Obama, even though most of the jobs created in Texas are minimum-wage jobs, the few good jobs created are connected to either the oil industry boom or military contracts, and the slashing of many public services to balance the state budget has left many Texas residents at the end of their ropes.

But Obama - whose approval rating now stands at 39 percent in a Gallup poll despite another poll that shows Democrats favored to win back the House in 2012 - would probably lose to Perry, even though the Texas governor believes in the power of prayer to solve our nation's problems (as evidenced by the prayer jamboree he held in Houston in early August) and misinterpreted a law that allows Texas to divide itself into six states; he thinks it allows the state to regain its independence.

Meanwhile, Michele Bachmann thinks John Quincy Adams was a Founding Father who ended slavery. Rick Santorum equates homosexuality with bestiality. Herman Cain refuses to appoint Muslims to any office if elected President. Mitt Romney thinks corporations are people. It looks increasingly likely that President Obama will lose handily to a Republican presidential candidate who flunked recess in school. Most of them apparently did.

Tiny Tim

I don't know which comment made at the Republican debate in New Hampshire was the worst. They, like the candidates, were all pretty terrible.

I guess the worst comment would have to have been from former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty. T-Paw, as he's called, was insulted - nay, outraged - by the idea that we're more or less in the same economic situation as any other country and that we can't sustain continued growth.

"We're not the same as Portugal, we're not the same as Argentina," Pawlenty said. "This idea that we can't have 5 percent growth in America is hogwash. It's a defeatist attitude."

Aside from offending two countries he might have to deal with as President, Pawlenty disregarded top economists with his comment, even though they were the ones who found his 5 percent projection based on even lower tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans to be flawed.

And even though he planned to go after Mitt Romney on the health care issue, he ended up demurring and failed to follow through. In short, Tim acted like a Democrat.

When voters take a look at the budget mess Pawlenty left Mark Dayton, his Democratic successor as governor of Minnesota, he's going to look even more minuscule in this race.