March 3 (Bloomberg) -- Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has a message for his fellow Republicans: Get over Ronald Reagan. Like most Republicans, Pawlenty pays homage to the Reagan legacy. At the same time, he is urging his party to get beyond its Reaganite past. Pawlenty, 48, presented his vision of Reagan 2.0 at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington last weekend.
The old Republican orthodoxy of limited government, lower taxes and conservative social policies needs an update if the party hopes to challenge Democrats on issues such as health care, energy and education, he said.
“We need to develop new Ronald Reagans and new reference points,” Pawlenty said in an interview after addressing CPAC. “It would be as if Barack Obama was going around and constantly talking about Truman or LBJ. It’s just become a reference point that isn’t as relevant for young people.”
The CPAC gathering is regarded as an open audition for Republicans with ambitions of national office and a prominent venue for candidates to raise their profiles. With Democrats ascendant in Washington, many Republicans are searching for a message and messenger to lead them back to power.
In a presidential preference straw poll taken before his speech, Pawlenty finished behind former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, among others.
Challenge to Obama
His message and his appeal, though, have attracted notice. Pawlenty, who was on the short list to be John McCain’s running mate in 2008, may be a fresh face for a party in need of new leadership to challenge Barack Obama’s youth and popularity.
As a Midwestern governor with a working-class upbringing, Pawlenty offers himself as a source of new ideas for a party whose electoral victories were largely confined to the South and rural areas in 2008.
John Weaver, a former adviser to McCain during his 2000 campaign, said Pawlenty’s admonition to move beyond Reagan is critical to the future of the party.
“I put a lot of credibility in someone who’s been elected and re-elected in a blue state,” Weaver said. “We’re headed for status as a minority party for decades if we don’t start making significant inroads with Hispanics, blue-collar voters and young people. That’s how Tim has gotten himself elected and re- elected.”
‘Honor and Respect’
At the same time, Pawlenty is careful to stress the need to “continue to honor and respect and remember Ronald Reagan.” His point, he said, is that “if you’re under 40, people didn’t live through the Reagan era.”
The former president’s principles are “alive and well,” though they must be brought up to date for a new era, Pawlenty said.
David Keene, chairman of the Alexandria, Virginia-based American Conservative Union, which hosted the conference, said Pawlenty’s message may resonate.
“It doesn’t mean that you change your values,” Keene said. “It means that you talk to people in today’s language about today’s problems.”
Pawlenty was one of the few speakers who challenged his party to speak directly about the needs of what he calls “Sam’s Club voters,” and to meet Democrats on their home turf on issues such as health care.
‘Bread-and-Butter Issues’
In his speech, Pawlenty said his two brothers, who were union members, told him, “‘the conservatives or the Republicans, they’re not for the working person.’ You ever heard that before?”
He said “the face and voice and tone of the Republican Party and the conservative movement needs to be more about bread- and-butter issues for everyday people.”
The focus on working-class issues may be a gamble with his party’s leadership. Saul Anuzis, the former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party who touted his background as a member of the Teamster’s union, recently lost his race to lead the national party.
Still, Weaver said many of the politicians who show up at national Republican conferences don’t represent mainstream Republican voters, and the winners of straw polls rarely emerge as the ultimate party nominee. Romney, 61, has won three years in a row.
Limbaugh’s Comments
One measure of the Republican leadership void is that the Democrats are defining the debate. Last week, Democrats began a campaign to nominate talk show host Rush Limbaugh as the Republican Party’s unofficial leader. An ad running this week on cable television highlights Limbaugh’s statement that he wants Obama to fail.
Pawlenty, without directly addressing Limbaugh, called this a losing strategy. “It would be a sad day if all the conservatives had to offer was a wish or a hope that the president would fail so that we could benefit,” he said in the interview.
Pawlenty’s path to national office is obscured by the better-known leaders such as Palin, 45, Romney and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, 53, who also ran for the Republican nomination last year. Jindal, 37, had been touted by some Republicans as the party’s answer to Obama until he delivered a response to Obama’s joint address to Congress last week that was criticized as lackluster, including by some members of his own party.
Before any run for national office, Pawlenty must decide whether to seek re-election in 2010. A presidential bid also would subject Pawlenty to increased scrutiny, with some nonpartisan analysts saying that his record might belie his claim to be a different kind of Republican.
“Here’s the big puzzle about Tim Pawlenty,” said Larry Jacobs, chairman of the politics department at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. “He’s very smart and he’s very winsome in person. He is a talent. He stands out. When you actually look at what he’s done he’s extremely conservative.”
