Rewarding (Conservative) Failure

At the National Review Online they're reporting the results of their reader poll on who should be John McCain's running mate [1]:

Governors Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and Haley Barbour of Mississippi tie for second place, though Pawlenty is edging ahead even as I write.

Pawlenty supporters are convinced that he has a big future. One reader wrote, “He’s young, energetic, has a good grasp of policy, and won re-election in a blue state in 2006.” Another: “He appeals to the vast majority of the conservative grassroots while bringing in moderates, and he’d shore up support in important Midwest swing states like Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.” “He won’t alienate the media. He has co-chaired McCain’s campaign since the beginning and remained loyal in the dark days of autumn.” Furthermore, unlike McCain, Pawlenty is sound on immigration; and “his wife, an articulate former judge, is a Baptist and he attends her church.” (A professionally accomplished wife is a big plus in my book.) And “Pawlenty has held the line on fiscal conservatism and kept his ‘no new taxes’ pledge, vetoing more than 50 bills sent to him by a tax-and-spend Democratic legislature.”

As it happens, the current conventional wisdom among strategists is that Pawlenty is the man. To win this year, the GOP will need to hold all the states that Bush won — unlikely — or to bring over some that he narrowly lost. Minnesota tops that list. His downside is that he has no national presence....

That's funny. Around here [2] we consider his downside the fact that he put on a pageant for Grover Norquist style conservatives by holding up a giant prop "VETO" stamped as he canceled an extra $300 million a year for the Minnesota Department of Transportation because it involved a small tax increase. Then said to the public-spirited Minnesota legislators who dared suggested that Minnesota's roads and bridges needed work: "How dumb can they be?"

Two years later, thirteen Minnesotans died in a bridge collapse... [3]

To conservatives, he "has a big future."