Pawlenty’s Premature Exit

I think this is correct. In a field that has no logical winner, it seems pretty obvious that the closest thing to an orthodox conservative capable of speaking in complete sentences should have stayed in.  (Both McCain and Kerry, after all, didn’t look like they had much of a chance at various points either.)   In particular, I agree that (unlike with Huckabee, who Republican money hated) an Iowa win would probably have solved Pawlenty’s fundraising issues, and I think had he stayed in he’d be the frontrunner there.    He was a pretty weak candidate, but anybody who could emerge as the alternative to Romney had a shot and with Perry’s implosion he would have been last man standing.   As it turned out, things broke perfectly for him; Perry killed Bachmann’s candidacy while being too inept to displace Mittens.    He just needed to wait.

…to echo what I’ve said in comments, it’s crucial to remember just how bad the rest of the field is. The nomination is a zero-sum game, and the fact that the base refuses to settle for Romney even if that means temporary embraces of vanity candidates means that the opportunity is there.  Pawlenty didn’t have to be good; he needed to be better than Rick Perry.