TIM CAVANAUGH: T-Paw Surprises With Best Speech of Cal GOP Confab. “After reciting a long history of Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party dominance in Minnesota – a history that stretches dismally from Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy through Walter Mondale and into the glorious present of Al Franken – Pawlenty concluded, ‘So don’t whine to me about how hard it is for Republicans in California.’ . . . This captures the predicament of the California GOP. The party is marginal and becoming more so, but the leadership is deathly afraid of the one proven source of Republican energy and enthusiasm – because that source is considered too marginal. If the California Republicans continue distancing themselves from the libertarian movement, they will continue to suffer, and so will everybody else who has to live in a state where one party has absolute power and the other refuses to compete.”