{"id":681,"date":"2008-06-19T15:17:04","date_gmt":"2008-06-19T15:17:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/2008\/06\/could-minnesotas-pawlenty-help.html"},"modified":"2008-06-19T15:17:04","modified_gmt":"2008-06-19T15:17:04","slug":"could-minnesotas-pawlenty-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/06\/could-minnesotas-pawlenty-help.html","title":{"rendered":"Could Minnesota&#8217;s Pawlenty Help McCain?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>John McCain is visiting Minnesota this evening, holding a &#8220;town hall event&#8221; in St. Paul, not terribly far from where he&#8217;ll be again when the GOP holds its convention come September. The trip has already stirred up talk of whether the state&#8217;s Republican governor, Tim Pawlenty, might become McCain&#8217;s pick as running mate. <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not idle chatter&#8211;rumors have flown for months, not least because Republicans say Minnesota (which hasn&#8217;t gone for the GOP in a presidential race in decades) might be in play this time around. Moreover, Pawlenty has <strong>notable ties to evangelicals, <\/strong>where (God-o-Meter has oft noted) McCain is considered uncomfortably weak by many in his party. <\/p>\n<p>Raised a Roman Catholic, Pawlenty attends a regionally high-profile megachurch whose pastor, the Rev. Leith Anderson, is president of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nae.net\/index.cfm\">National Association of Evangelicals<\/a>. The 66-year-old organization lists member denominations that read like a Who&#8217;s Who of diverse, modern American evangelicalism. The Assemblies of God,&nbsp;among the nation&#8217;s oldest Pentecostal denominations, belongs, and so too do the Presbyterian Church in America, a theologically conservative body that broke away from larger Presbyterian churches in the 1970s,&nbsp;and the Salvation Army.<\/p>\n<p>In its April 28 issue, Pawlenty told <em>Human Events<\/em>, a conservative publication, that he supported the production and use of &#8220;clean coal&#8221; and nuclear power as environmental priorities: &#8220;I am a person of faith. I believe in the Bible, God instructs us to take good care and be good stewards of what He has given us&#8230;&#8221; Last week, a correspondent at CBN.com introduced some thoughts about the governor with this headline: &#8220;Is Tim Pawlenty the Perfect Evangelical VP Candidate?&#8221;&nbsp; A lengthy and very well-informed commentary on Pawlenty can be found at Chris Cillizza&#8217;s splendid <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.washingtonpost.com\/thefix\/2008\/06\/the_case_for_tim_pawlenty.html\">politics blog, <\/a>&#8220;The Fix,&#8221; at washingtonpost.com.<\/p>\n<p>If nothing else, it&#8217;s great publicity for a politician that (like his partisan opposite, Barack Obama) is still in his mid-40s.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>3<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John McCain is visiting Minnesota this evening, holding a &#8220;town hall event&#8221; in St. Paul, not terribly far from where he&#8217;ll be again when the GOP holds its convention come September. The trip has already stirred up talk of whether the state&#8217;s Republican governor, Tim Pawlenty, might become McCain&#8217;s pick as running mate. It&#8217;s not&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-john-mccain"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Could Minnesota&#039;s Pawlenty Help McCain? - God-O-Meter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/06\/could-minnesotas-pawlenty-help.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Could Minnesota&#039;s Pawlenty Help McCain? - God-O-Meter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"John McCain is visiting Minnesota this evening, holding a &#8220;town hall event&#8221; in St. Paul, not terribly far from where he&#8217;ll be again when the GOP holds its convention come September. The trip has already stirred up talk of whether the state&#8217;s Republican governor, Tim Pawlenty, might become McCain&#8217;s pick as running mate. It&#8217;s not&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/06\/could-minnesotas-pawlenty-help.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"God-O-Meter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-06-19T15:17:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Gustav Niebuhr\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Could Minnesota's Pawlenty Help McCain? - God-O-Meter","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/06\/could-minnesotas-pawlenty-help.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Could Minnesota's Pawlenty Help McCain? - God-O-Meter","og_description":"John McCain is visiting Minnesota this evening, holding a &#8220;town hall event&#8221; in St. Paul, not terribly far from where he&#8217;ll be again when the GOP holds its convention come September. The trip has already stirred up talk of whether the state&#8217;s Republican governor, Tim Pawlenty, might become McCain&#8217;s pick as running mate. It&#8217;s not&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/06\/could-minnesotas-pawlenty-help.html","og_site_name":"God-O-Meter","article_published_time":"2008-06-19T15:17:04+00:00","author":"Gustav Niebuhr","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/06\/could-minnesotas-pawlenty-help.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/06\/could-minnesotas-pawlenty-help.html","name":"Could Minnesota's Pawlenty Help McCain? - God-O-Meter","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-06-19T15:17:04+00:00","dateModified":"2008-06-19T15:17:04+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/97a629a9c402d3a7e1433d1ec21b48f4"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/06\/could-minnesotas-pawlenty-help.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/06\/could-minnesotas-pawlenty-help.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/06\/could-minnesotas-pawlenty-help.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Could Minnesota&#8217;s Pawlenty Help McCain?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/","name":"God-O-Meter","description":"A scientific measure of God-talk in the elections","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/97a629a9c402d3a7e1433d1ec21b48f4","name":"Gustav Niebuhr","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/0bc\/0bc52a50d71efd7fbb78dc334576b700x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/0bc\/0bc52a50d71efd7fbb78dc334576b700x96.jpg","caption":"Gustav Niebuhr"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/author\/gniebuhr"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}