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[Music] Pawlenty (voiceover): If you're a crusher—dig out the puck, take the hits—and then you try to become a rusher, in other words a finesse player, you'll soon become an usher at the local movie theater because that's not your role. 

I think in public life and public policy, you've got to make sure you understand your values, you have your compass set, and you stay true to them.  And if not you're going to find yourself in trouble.

[Music down, fade up new track; on screen "Life Lessons"]

Pawlenty (to camera and voiceover): Well South St. Paul was a wonderful place to grow up.  It was then the home of the world's largest stockyards and some of the world's largest meat packing plants, and so my neighborhood and my community was just filled with good, hard-working Minnesotans and people who cared about their family, cared about their neighborhoods. And they didn't have a lot of money, but they had a lot of heart and a lot of grit and so I learned a lot growing up in a place like that.

I saw in the face of my mom and oftentimes in the face of my dad, too, just the worry about making ends meet and trying to make sure they had a job and could pay the bills and take care of their family, just the basic you know desires and hopes and wishes that I know so many Minnesotans and so many Americans have.

One of the folks that my brother worked with had heard about the hardship of my mom passing away and the worry that we had in our family and this is somebody who said, look, your family's going through a challenge, we can interview Tim for a job at the grocery store.  And he gave me the job, and I was very grateful for it, and I worked in that grocery store for I think six or seven years.  And it was a good job and I worked in the produce department, cutting vegetables and fruits and getting them wrapped and put on the rack.  Worked through high school and college and I think even into part of law school in that job.

When people say, oh you Republicans, you don't understand us, you haven't walked in our shoes, you don't know what it's like to, you know, worry about whether you can afford gas for your car, whether you're going to have health care, whether you can even get to college or pay your tuition for college, I can look them right in the eye and say yes I have.  You know I've walked exactly in those shoes.  I've lived that life, and so I can relate to them with some credibility that at least allows me to make the case from a conservative standpoint of why our ideas, our values, our principles are better for their hopes and dreams.

[Music down, fade up new track; on screen "History is on our side"]

Pawlenty (to camera and voiceover): We need strong leaders who are going to stand up, rise up, tell the truth, tell the American people the system is broken, it's headed towards the cliff and we need to stop it before it happens.  And the way we do that is to start by getting control on spending.  Have a budget, live within our means, set priorities and then do those things that we're going to do well, but we have to start reducing and slowing down spending in every other category.  Each one of us has a gift or an opportunity to make a difference and say we're going to take this country back. 

The Freedom First PAC is a great platform and opportunity to help like minded people all across this country who are taking a step forward to elective office because they want to serve this country.  We want to rally people to the cause and turn this country back to common sense, good old-fashioned American common sense, and get this country back headed in the right direction.

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Notes: Pawlenty is known as a very low key individual; perhaps to counter that, the video opens on a very jazzy hockey intro with lots of cuts and effects.  Scattered through the first half are archival photos of Pawlenty as a youth.  About two-thirds of the way in ["History is on our side"] several text screens ("The System is Broken," "Get Control on Spending," "Reducing the Size of Government") reinforce Pawlenty's words.  Then there are images of various candidates, including Pat Toomey, Nikki Haley, Rob Portman, and Michele Bachmann.  The close has inspirational scenes including a rocket blasting off, the Constitution, the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, a cowboy, Ronald Reagan, D-Day and the clip from Pawlenty's CPAC speech. 

Copyright © 2010 Eric M. Appleman/Democracy in Action. All rights reserved.