Tag: Tim Pawlenty

Sam’s Club Republicanism Died Because It Never Had a Life to Live

Now that Tim Pawlenty’s candidacy is dead, the media is performing an autopsy on “Sam’s Club Republicanism.” That’s the notion—made famous by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam in a 2005 Weekly Standard article, which they later turned into a book—that the GOP needs to reconnect with the working-class and independent voters who made it a majority party under Nixon and Reagan. These voters are conservative, but they’re worried about paying their bills and making ends meet. They’re not opposed to government: they just want it to do something for them, as opposed to for the rich. As Pawlenty put it in 2002, the GOP needs “to be the party of Sam’s Club, not just the country club.” Thus was an […]