After weeks of avoiding direct confrontation with fellow Minnesotan Michele Bachmann, Tim Pawlenty is calling her out for her thin record in Congress.
“Her record in Congress, as I mentioned before, is, you know – again, great remarks, and great speeches, but in terms of results and accomplishments – nonexistent,” he said Monday on Fox and Friends.
“It’s not a stretch to say that we need somebody in the Oval Office – who’s going to be President of the United States and Commander in Chief – who has executive experience leading a large enterprise in a public setting,” he added. “With all due respect, she just doesn’t have that kind of experience.”
He offered a similar argument to NBC’s Meet The Press just the day before.
Pawlenty has little choice but to confront Bachmann early and often: his presidential hopes rest squarely on winning the Iowa caucus, where the Tea Party Congresswoman holds a lead in the polls and is monopolizing headlines. Pawlenty and his top staff bluntly acknowledged her frontrunner status in recent days while simultaneously downplaying the caucus’s importance to the campaign. The ex-governor’s latest attacks, however, make clear that the path to the nomination still goes through Iowa and Bachmann.
Bachmann’s reputation as an unproductive legislator has been a sore spot in the campaign and she responded to Pawlenty in a statement on Sunday defending her record. She also referenced the governor’s past support for climate change legislation and his early praise for a health care mandate, two positions he has since repudiated.
“I have fought the cap-and-trade agenda, rather than implement it, and I will work to end cap-and-trade as President of the United States,” she said. “I stood up against President Obama’s support of the $700 billion bailout rather than defend it. I was a leading voice, fighting against Obamacare and the unconstitutional individual mandates; I did not lift my voice in praise of it. My message brought tens of thousands of Americans to Washington D.C. to oppose Obamacare. As President I will not rest until Obamacare is repealed. And I will not vote to raise the debt ceiling.”
