Gov. Tim Pawlenty has gone the full teabagger.
Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.) warned Olympia Snowe today that she's risking her position in the GOP by considering a vote for healthcare reform.
"She's somebody who has gotten into the middle of the healthcare debate in a way that makes Republicans mad," Pawlenty said on Morning Joe. "They make accept that, but they're not going to accept her deviating on many other things."
Asked whether he was glad Snowe was a Republican, Pawlenty hedged.
"There is a process in her state that is broad based that endorses her, and the Republicans in that state say 'we want her to be our candidate,'" Pawlenty said.
Pawlenty thinks he has a shot in 2012, so he's trying to out-Palin Palin. But he's apparently too stupid to realize that Snowe is the GOP's best chance at killing the public option given the Obama administration's fetish with "bipartisanship".
And in the process, he's eagerly adopting the teabagger's tactic of choice -- the purge.
How confident is Snowe that she can survive the coming purge? Because it's coming. It's inevitable, and she's going to suffer the same indignities inflicted on Dede Scozzafava in NY-23.
When we set out to bring the Democratic Party back from the dead in 2002, we didn't try to push the Democratic Party anywhere new. Instead, we tried to bring them back to the principles they once fought for -- Paul Wellstone's "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party". We argued -- using polling as empirical evidence -- that the public would respond to true progressivism, and 2006 and 2008 vindicated us. Even Connecticut polling today makes clear that nutmegers have buyer's remorse on that whole Lieberman thing.
I'm not sure where the teabaggers are taking the GOP, but it isn't anywhere that is empirically popular in the polling, nor historically successful. Even St. Ronnie signed an immigration amnesty and raised taxes to close a ballooning budget deficit. He'd be quickly purged out of today's GOP.
Only question is, why is Snowe putting up with it?