Pawlenty Touts Palin-Like Foreign Policy Experience

Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

It’s time for an amusing peek at a potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate: Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty.

Check out what Pawlenty said to Minnesota Public Radio, firing back at a Democratic gubernatorial candidate who criticized him for traveling to the Munich Security Conference:

And when you’re the commander in chief of the Minnesota National Guard, and you’re going to deploy soldiers — like we are tomorrow night at the St. Paul civic center, a thousand soldiers going off to Iran (Editor Note: Pawlenty said Iran on the air. His spokesman said he misspoke and corrected himself on the air later) and a month from now another thousand going to the middle east to fight in the war — it helps to have an understanding of those issues, the dynamics, the security issues.

There are two things to consider here. First, Pawlenty apparently has a Palin-style belief that a governor’s official role as head of the state National Guard has some importance in foreign policy. And while explaining this concept, he managed to get wrong which country his state’s troops are actually being sent to.

Latest DC
Comments
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: