By Michael Collins
Piper
 |
. Tim Pawlenty is in the race for the GOP presidential
nomination, but there’s more to his
campaign — and the people behind it — than
meets the eye. The former Minnesota governor
doesn’t have much charisma. Some even say he’s
boring. Pawlenty doesn’t have movie-star good looks,
nor is he descended from distinguished GOP “royalty.”
Instead, Pawlenty has “regular folks” appeal. One of
five children of a milk truck driver and the first kid in
the family to get a college degree, Pawlenty lost his
mother to cancer when he was just 16 and later worked
his way through high school, college and law school.
After a brief period as a labor law attorney, Pawlenty
went on to serve as vice president of a software company
before entering politics. He and his wife Mary, a former
Minnesota district court judge, have two daughters.
A five-termer in the Minnesota state House of
Representatives, where he was eventually voted majority
leader, Pawlenty was elected governor of Minnesota
in 2002 and re-elected in 2006 — winning both contests
by narrow margins in three-way races.
His gubernatorial years were notable and quite distinguished
in the eyes of conservatives. Pawlenty balanced
the state budget, reduced the growth of spending
and cut taxes. On social issues, Pawlenty is distinctly
conservative.
Running for president, Pawlenty is working to present
himself as a tough-talking, no-nonsense candidate.
Media reports variously say Pawlenty wants to appear “bold and decisive” and as “the GOP’s blunt talker.” As
such, Pawlenty is adopting hard-line rhetoric, particularly
in the foreign policy arena, that places him in the
center of the warmongering neo-conservative realm.
Even as Pawlenty is asking Americans to accept cuts
in Social Security and Medicare benefits and suggesting
we should work longer years before getting Social
Security at all, he’s even taken Barack Obama to task
for not charging more forcefully and immediately into
the U.S. imperial military venture in Libya — even as
the U.S. budget is already strapped.
A former Roman Catholic who converted to evangelical
Christianity, Pawlenty is an unabashed supporter
of Israel — to which he made the standard politician’s
pilgrimage this past December.
Pawlenty recently charged that the Obama administration “has shown an astonishing unwillingness to
stand by Israel at the UN,” a position that will endear
him not only to well-heeled Jewish campaign contributors
who bankroll upwards of 70 percent of all national
Republican campaign funds, but also to his fellow
evangelical voters who are steadfast Israel supporters.
Some Pawlenty critics believe his close and longstanding
friendship with former Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.) —
a key Pawlenty campaign advisor — does not
reflect well on Pawlenty, however.
A member of the board of directors of the Council
on Foreign Relations — the New York offshoot of the
London-based Royal Institute for International Affairs,
the foreign policymaking arm of the Rothschild banking
dynasty — Weber is a key figure in the global elite.
Weber is also a veteran of the now-infamous Project
for the New American Century (PNAC), which once
declared the need for a “new Pearl Harbor” to stimulate
American grassroots support for global interventionism.
During the early 1980s, Weber urged the GOP to
become “America’s new internationalist party.”
As a member of Congress from 1981 to 1993 — who
retired abruptly after being caught up in the House
banking scandal, where he was found to have written
125 bad checks on his House bank account — Weber
engaged in a scurrilous effort to smear Liberty Lobby,
the populist publisher of the newspaper The Spotlight,
for its efforts to focus public attention on Israel’s deliberate
attack on the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967, resulting
in the slaughter of 34 Americans and the grievous
wounding of 172 others. (See page 17.)
Weber charged that The Spotlight played a pivotal
role in nearly causing his own reelection defeat after it
publicized Weber’s betrayal of the men of the Liberty.
The Weber-CFR-PNAC connection says much about
the presidential aspirations of Pawlenty and is a point
that savvy GOP primary voters need to keep in mind.
Pawlenty clearly has some powerful negative influences
lined up behind him.
. . ..Michael Collins Piper can now be
heard on the Internet at michaelcollinspiper.podbean.com.
He is the author of Final
Judgment, the controversial
“underground bestseller” documenting
the collaboration of Israeli intelligence in
the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He is
also the author of The
High Priests of War, The
New Jerusalem: Zionist Power in America ,
The
Judas Goats: The Enemy Within,
Dirty
Secrets: Crime, Conspiracy & Cover-Up in
the 20th Century,
The
GOLEM: Israel's Hell Bomb,
and Target:
Traficant. These works can
be found at America
First Books and FIRST
AMENDMENT BOOKS:
1-888-699-NEWS. He has lectured
on suppressed topics in places as diverse as
Malaysia, Japan, Canada, Russia and Abu Dhabi. |
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(Issue #24/25, June 13 & 20, 2011,
AMERICAN
FREE PRESS)
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