Beyond this, Pawlenty’s loss provides a useful way to try to understand what is happening in the GOP of the Trump era. After it happened, Pawlenty told reporters:
“The Republican Party has shifted. It is the era of Trump and I’m just not a Trump-like politician.”
The phrase “Trump-like politician,” it turns out, is basically a euphemism for a “politician who is willing to defend President Trump at his most reprehensible moments.” The man who decisively defeated Pawlenty, local commissioner Jeff Johnson, actually ran an ad that blasted Pawlenty for failing to stand by Trump after the news broke of the “Access Hollywood” video, which featured Trump boasting in extremely lewd fashion about his ability to carry out sexual assaults with impunity.
(Snip)
Johnson’s ad hits Pawlenty for calling Trump “unhinged and unfit to be president,” just weeks before the 2016 election, a reference to the statement that Pawlenty put out after the “Access Hollywood” news broke. In the ad, Johnson then says, “When the Supreme Court and our economy were on the line, Tim Pawlenty stuck his finger in the wind,” before declaring himself the real “conservative” in the race and promising not to “panic when it matters most”:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/08/15/the-new-gop-litmus-test-defending-trump-at-his-absolute-worst/?utm_term=.d34c1adb9d43
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