<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" In early November 2009, in a hotel ballroom in St. Paul, then-Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty and a few hundred of his friends, supporters, and financiers met to celebrate the launch of his Freedom First PAC, which signified Pawlenty&amp;#039;s initial step toward running for president of the United States. The big room was filled with angry people, as a sense of great purpose and foreboding hung over the occasion. Since January the country had been in the hands of a Democratic Hegemon, and in that short time had taken a perilous turn toward tyranny, or Stalinism, or dictatorship, or Sharia law \u2014 take your pick of the poisonous rhetoric being served up in the room. The point being that this was no casual affair that evening in St. Paul.  Rights were being wantonly abridged, the Constitution was a shell of its former self, and these devastations of American values were not just the result of misguided policies, they were willful and pernicious. Of course, none of those things was true, exactly, and outside this hotel America proceeded along much as it always had during slow economic times. But never mind that, in this room was the feeling of life under occupation, a meeting of the brave few to figure out how to throw off the yoke of a tyrant. To complete the atmosphere, the actor Jon Voight inveighed from the podium about how the rise of the Nazis was the thing most comparable to this moment in the life of America.  And when it seemed all was lost, Tim Pawlenty ambled onto the stage. Judging from his sunny demeanor, it truly felt as if he had come to welcome the Rotary convention. And even though they were there for him, to be rallied by him, Pawlenty just doesn&amp;#039;t have easy command of that Nazi stuff. Try as he might to be otherwise, he&amp;#039;s physically loose and he&amp;#039;s got a thin voice and his eyes seem to smile regardless of what he&amp;#039;s saying. And sure enough, all the tension the other speakers had worked so hard to build up just leaked out of the room when Pawlenty started in with his Midwestern cornpone. There they were, all ready to be whipped into a lather, and Ph-ph-ph-ph-ph-ph-ph-ph-ph-ph-ph\u2026 And so as much as the Republicans now idolize Ronald Reagan, and as much as Reagan&amp;#039;s stunning success was built around his cockeyed optimism and sunny disposition, this time around \u2014 in a time when success for a Republican standard bearer will depend at least in part on how effective he or she is in persuading the country that Obama = American apocalypse, Tim Pawlenty has a problem: He&amp;#039;s just too nice. He doesn&amp;#039;t have the facility for erudite demagoguery of a Gingrich, the chameleon ability to be someone he&amp;#039;s not of a Romney, is not stone-cold crazy like a Bachmann, nor does he have the Christian cred of a Huckabee. And so lest he fall victim to this cycle&amp;#039;s version of the wimp factor (see George HW Bush, 1988), Pawlenty is at this moment in the middle of a dramatic makeover.  First, a couple weeks ago came this, in which Pawlenty pilots a nuclear device and blows up the Death Star. And on Friday at CPAC, we saw a new, growly Pawlenty, trying with some success to find some dimension in a voice that has until now seemed disconsonant with the party he&amp;#039;s trying to lead \u2014 simply too lackluster for these panicked times. This is not your 2009&amp;#039;s Tim Pawlenty:      There were signs fifteen months ago, when I interviewed him in St. Paul, that he was aware that his bearing and demeanor might be a liability. It is Pawlenty&amp;#039;s dilemma: What to do when you are a smart, traditional conservative and are competent to govern and are essentially reasonable in a time when that collection of attributes is somewhat undervalued in your party? Well, you do your best to hide it.    BEST OF CPAC: 25 Quotes from the Floor&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a9420/tim-pawlenty-cpac-5235532/>