I just got back from a breakfast event held at Villa Banca, Nashua. This event was one of a series of strong endorsements for John Stephen, by significant and influential players in the Republican party.
Last week, Mississippi Governor, Haley Barbour, chair of the National Republican Governors Association, came in to speak on behalf of Stephen. In the coming weeks, US Senator Scott Brown is coming, and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is rumored to be on the list as well. Today, it was Minnesota Governor, and rumored 2012 Presidential candidate, Tim Pawlenty, who is affectionately known as "Minnesota’s Ronald Reagan".
I had never heard Pawlenty speak, so I was looking forward to hearing him, and I wasn’t disappointed. His 10-minute speech was a mix of conservative common sense, folksy metaphors, and rising passions. He was easy to listen to, and I liked his message.
Pawlenty proclaimed that as a Republican, Minnesota is a difficult state to govern. Coincidentally, he argued that it was the one state that Ronald Reagan did not carry in either of his two elections (it was the only state Reagan didn’t carry in 1984), and that it has a Democrat-controlled legislature (actually, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party).
He then declared that as MN Governor, he has been able to balance 8 budgets in a row, without raising taxes, and that he holds the record for the most vetoes in MN history. In his first year in office, he erased a $4.3B deficit, and he erased a $2.7B deficit in his second term. He explained that the biggest culprit of government spending today is Health and Human Services (HHS). He argued that John Stephen, as governor, with his significant HHS expertise and conservative approach, could accomplish the same level of fiscal sanity and success here at home.
In his closing remarks, Pawlenty made a memorable metaphor about spending when he said, "All you need to know about government reform is this: People behave very differently at a cash bar than at an open bar, when it’s someone else’s money – and today’s government is an open bar." I love metaphors, and this was a good one.
We’ll be seeing more of Tim Pawlenty in the coming years, I guarantee. And it tells you a lot about John Stephen, when someone of his caliber and conservative credentials, comes to speak for him.