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The CNN story on Pawlenty’s visit, Pawlenty says he can win in 2012

The likely 2012 presidential candidate spoke in Sioux City, Iowa, on Monday as part of a lecture series sponsored by the Family Leader […] in a speech threaded with his moral values.

With his wife, Mary, by his side, Pawlenty touted his belief that marriage is “between a man and woman” and his pro-life history.

“(It is) hard to have family life unless you respect life,” Pawlenty said. “It says in our founding documents and in the Bible that we are to respect life, not destroy life.” […]

Pawlenty evidently has studied at the world renowned Bachmann School of History. Continuing on with the CNN story:

When addressing his faith, he said his words weren’t those of a “politician passing through town,” because this is a nation “founded under God.”

“First and foremost we don’t want to be a country that turns away from God, we want to be a country that turns toward God,” Pawlenty said.

Sounds like he graduated summa cum laude from the Bachmann School of History.

The last news piece on Pawlenty’s latest visit to Iowa: Pawlenty in Iowa: American society must ‘elevate traditional marriage’

Nearly every public policy issue that can be named has a direct impact on the very foundation of American society, according to former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, which is a traditional marriage consisting of one man and one woman.

Pawlenty, [who indicated he’ll run], spoke on a litany of issues ranging from the economy to freedom of religion to education to health care, bringing each one back to his primary focus on the family. The remarks were made on the University of Iowa campus at the first of many lecture events featuring national conservatives hosted by The Family Leader, a state-run advocacy group that acts as an umbrella organization for the Iowa Family Policy Center and the formerly federally funded Marriage Matters.

Pawlenty began his public remarks by discussing why he believes the U.S. is a Christian nation.

“That isn’t just my editorial comment,” he said. “It’s in our founding documents.”

Ok, they’ll probably end up naming a professorial chair after Pawlenty at the Bachmann School of History.

Pawlenty applauded Bob Vander Plaats, head of The Family Leader, for “being a champion for saying and doing, and pushing and promoting and leading efforts to try to highlight, encourage and support families.”

Vander Plaats, as I have often written here, heads one of the most rabidly theocratic groups in Iowa.

The Iowa Independent asked if Pawlenty’s discussion of families as the building blocks of society included all families as currently recognized under Iowa law, and if he agreed with Vander Plaats’ and The Family Leader’s continued advocacy to roll back marriage rights for same-sex couples.

“The Family Leader and other organizations have taken a position in favor of traditional marriage. I don’t distance myself from that position — I embrace it,” he said. “I support the notion that we, as a society, should continue to elevate traditional marriage, that it should remain as between a man and a woman, and that all other domestic relationships are not the same as traditional marriage. That’s my view. It’s not something that I’ve changed or evolved on or need to distance from because I strongly believe it.”

Pawlenty explicitly endorses The Family Leader’s position, so let’s be clear what is being said here.

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