Tim Pawlenty

Now that the Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Al Franken there is a lot of expectation that Governor Tim Pawlenty will sign the certification and Al will be on his way to the Senate. One problem though:

Pawlenty, a Republican, has said he would sign the certificate if ordered to do so by the court. The court's ruling stopped short of explicitly ordering the governor to sign the document, saying only that Franken was "entitled" to it.

I could see this being the very kind of bullshit technicality a Republican would use to try and keep Franken out of the Senate. We are in an era of seeing Republican presidential front runners doing very stupid things, and I wouldn’t be shocked if Pawlenty isn’t next. Not signing the certificate would be the very kind of stupid thing I am talking about.

I guess most of this will depend on what Coleman says in about 5 minutes.

UPDATE:

Coleman has just congratulated “Senator Al Franken” and said he will live by the decision. Sounds like he is giving in – FINALLY!

Ed Rollins, former political director for Reagan and strategist for Huckabee, cuts through the BS and delivers some strong words for his party:

The battle to be the "de facto leader" of this party is akin to the question of who wants to steer the Titanic after it hit the iceberg. Who represents the party or its values is not relevant when only 26 percent of voters have a positive impression of the party at all and only 7 percent very positive, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey.

The Democratic Party is the reverse, with 49 percent positive. When 60 percent of the country approves of the job President Obama is doing, every Republican leader is going backward.

Republicans are not relevant. We just lost two back-to-back elections (2006 and 2008), and obviously, what we are selling, the voters aren't buying. In the midst of the most severe economic crisis in my lifetime, we have a president who is taking the country on a dramatic sea change. This is what he said he would do and he is doing it. And where are Republicans? Right now we don't have the alternative ideas, a message or, more important, the messenger.

I really like the Titanic reference there.

Interesting enough, this brings me to something I saw last night on Rachel Maddow. She had Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty on. Pawlenty is considered one of the rising stars of the GOP, and he said something that goes right to the heart of the failing Republican argument.