Kyle Peterson, a former SFPA intern now working as a reporter in South Carolina, covered last night’s premiere GOP debate for National Review. He framed the evening as a great opportunity for Pawlenty to increase his name recognition:
Of those five, many consider Pawlenty, who graced the cover of National Review in March, to have the most serious shot at the Republican nomination. But residents in the early-primary state of South Carolina have mostly said, “Tim who?”
In a poll of 1,363 people conducted by Winthrop University last month, 66 percent of respondents said they hadn’t heard enough about Pawlenty to form an opinion — the highest figure among the eight candidates polled. (Santorum, the only other participant in tonight’s debate polled, came in a close second with 63 percent.)
For contrast, only 16 percent of respondents hadn’t heard enough about Huckabee or Romney, who finished second and fourth, respectively, in South Carolina’s 2008 primary behind the eventual GOP nominee, John McCain.
This gap in familiarity could help explain why Pawlenty is in Greenville tonight, while other rumored presidential hopefuls are not. Asked about the debate strategy, Alex Conant, a spokesman for Pawlenty, told NRO that the event “is an opportunity to make the case against President Obama in front of a nationwide audience and talk about our records.”
And though Paul/Johnson-loving libertarians griped about Pawlenty being characterized as the only major candidate in the debate, they still had reason to celebrate:
All in all, libertarianism will receive a huge slice of Fox News airtime tonight, because the term can be applied to a full 40 percent of the contenders. Among the five debate participants are Paul and another liberty-lover: soft-spoken, pot-smokin’ Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico who vetoed 750 bills during his eight-year tenure.
Paul and Johnson’s libertarianism was perhaps most prominently displayed last night when the two candidates declared their opposition to enhanced interrogation, an unpopular stance among the GOP. Still, it remains to be seen whether recent developments–like the death of Osama bin Laden–will make the libertarian foreign policy perspective more or less attractive to Republican voters.
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