But then, at this point in Pawlenty’s all-but-declared presidential campaign, he might not recognize a Minnesotan if one showed up at his Washington fundraisers in a parka. He even brags in a recent Esquire about defying “the history, the tradition, the culture” of Minnesota, calling himself “quite a departure.” Indeed, he’s a departure even from his fellow Minnesota Republicans: Governor Arne Carlson approved the largest funding increase for the arts in state history, some of which probably even supported a mime.

No, this isn’t about donkeys and elephants. It’s about the 800-pound gorilla in the capitol: Pawlenty’s misguided notion that if we cut things like the arts and dropped Minnesota’s overall tax burden (currently about the 12th-highest in the country) closer to that of the average American, we’d somehow be better off. It hasn’t worked out so far—from 2004 to 2008, Minnesota was actually the only state in the union where median household income dropped—and it likely never will. Because we’re not average Americans. We’re Minnesotans, well above average by almost any measure but temperature. And if we chip away at the things that make us unique, like being the number-one state for the arts, we become less Minnesotan, and, sadly, more average.

— Tim “The Chairman” Gihring has some words for Tim “the panderer who clocked in 4th at CPAC” Pawlenty on arts funding, one of the many areas of our state f’d by the Governor’s ideologically driven mismanagement of the state. [fr iteeth]