It’s a fair cop. Her four and a half years in Congress are notably thin on bills passed and committees chaired and thicker than expected on earmarks. There are ways to spin that — “I went to Washington to stop runaway government, not enable it,” etc — but if/when Palin and Perry get into the race, this’ll be their chief line of attack on her too. They’ve governed states. What has Bachmann done except cast marginal dissenting votes and wave the Gadsden flag?
Now, show of hands. How many people expected three months ago that Michele Bachmann, not Mitt Romney, would be Pawlenty’s prime target weeks before the Ames straw poll? Yeesh.
Asked about Bachmann, who in last month’s Des Moines Register Iowa Poll was sitting at 22 percent in Iowa among likely Republican caucusgoers versus his own 6 percent, Pawlenty said: “Each candidate brings some different strengths to the table, and mine include having been an executive of a large public enterprise in a difficult environment and actually getting things proposed and results to conclusion. I’m not sure what she would say in that regard. … She’s been in the legislative arena, as to specific results that have been achieved, I’m not sure what they would be.”
Pawlenty said he’s confident his poll numbers will rise.
Said one commenter in this morning’s Headlines thread, remembering T-Paw’s debate whiff on RomneyCare, “Will he say that when she’s present?” Damn. What’s interesting about this criticism is that, while Palin and Perry can also use it, Romney really can’t. If he starts needling Bachmann about how thin her record is, we all know what the response will be. And it won’t be good. So Pawlenty, of necessity, is inadvertently doing Mitt a favor by weakening Romney’s chief rival for the nomination in a way that’s unavailable to Romney himself.
