Blue Spot

G.O.P. Needs to Change, Pawlenty Tells Governors - NYTimes.com

MIAMI — Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who was nearly Senator John McCain’s running mate this year, was addressing a subdued, post-election conference of the Republican Governors Association here Wednesday when he told a story about a revelation he had while looking into the bathroom mirror at his home in Minnesota.

Mr. Pawlenty said that he had been road-weary from the campaign trail when he looked at himself and complained about what he saw to his wife, Mary. “I said, ‘Mary, look at me,’ ” he said. “I mean, my hairline’s receding, these crow’s feet and wrinkles are multiplying on my face by the day, I’ve been on the road eating junk food, I’m getting flabby, these love handles are flopping over the side of my belt.”

“I said, ‘Is there anything you can tell me that would give me some hope, some optimism, some encouragement?’ ” he said. “And she looked at me and she said, ‘Well, there’s nothing wrong with your eyesight.’ ”

As his fellow governor’s laughed, he came to the moral of the story: “If we are going to successfully travel the road to improvement, as Republicans, we need to see clearly, and we need to speak to each other candidly about the state of our party.”

The long, sometimes painful post-mortem of the election — in which Republicans were widely repudiated, losing the White House as well as at least 6 seats in the Senate and 20 in the House — began in earnest here among Republican governors, who have historically been wellsprings of ideas and talent for the party.

In addition to Mr. Pawlenty, an array of governors positioning themselves as leaders of the party or future presidential candidates, planned to attend the conference, including Sarah Palin of Alaska, Charlie Crist of Florida, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Haley Barbour of Mississippi and Mark Sanford of South Carolina.

Ms. Palin, whose bid for the vice presidency ended in defeat last Tuesday, is scheduled on Thursday to deliver remarks here on ”Looking Toward the Future,” to hold a news conference and to grant several national interviews.

Mr. Pawlenty kicked off the conference with a somewhat gloomy appraisal of where things stood for the party.

“We cannot be a majority governing party when we essentially cannot compete in the Northeast, we are losing our ability to compete in Great Lakes states, we cannot compete on the West Coast, we are increasingly in danger of competing in the mid-Atlantic states, and the Democrats are now winning some of the western states,” he said. “That is not a formula for being a majority governing party in this nation.”

“And similarly,” he went on, “we cannot compete, and prevail, as a majority governing party if we have a significant deficit, as we do, with women, where we have a large deficit with Hispanics, where we have a large deficit with African-American voters, where we have a large deficit with people of modest incomes and modest financial circumstances. Those are not factors that make up a formula for success going forward.”

All this talk of soul searching sounds like what you heard coming from Democrats just 4 years ago after Kerry lost. Dems should learn from this and remember how quickly their fortunes can change if they become complacent and do not look out for the middle-class.

Labels: GOP, Gov. Jindal, Gov. Pawlenty