Gov. Tim Pawlenty was in Washington, DC Thursday night for a fundraiser for his FreedomFirst PAC. Based on a friend’s report, it was a rousing success. (Yes, this friend is the “loyal LFR reader” that saw Tarryl heading for the DNC headquarters.

The thing that my friend said that stood out for me was that approximately 300 people attended the event. That’s alot of people, especially for someone whose name recognition is relatively low.

The other thing my friend said was that two veterans of the Bush-Cheney campaigns, Sara Taylor of BS ‘00 and Patrick Ruffini of BC ‘04, attended the event. The report I got was that Ruffini is helping TPaw. If that’s true, that’s a huge get for Gov. Pawlenty. I’ve talked with Patrick a couple of times. I also read his blog on a fairly frequent basis.

Patrick knows demographics as well as anyone not named Michael Barone or Karl Rove. As impressive as that is, the thing that is Pat’s specialty are his messaging abilities. Patrick is sort of my mentor in that he’s a cut to the best argument type of guy. Once he locks onto his best message, which is frequently, he’ll use that message until his opponent quits.

Patrick isn’t a believer in the traditional stay-on-message thing. On the contrary, Patrick loves seeing his candidate find a great argument that resonates with the people, then use that message to win that issue.

The other thing that my friend said that impressed me was that half of the crowd were young Capitol Hill staffers in their 20’s. I don’t doubt that because Gov. Pawlenty resonates with young people. In fact, my friend said that Gov. Pawlenty “went around and shook hands and spoke with everyone.” My friend’s observation was that they couldn’t picture Mitt doing this even if his life depended on it. That certainly sounds like the TPaw I’ve met.

Simply put, TPaw is one of the most skilled retail politickers I’ve ever seen. Frankly, that’s why I think he’s tailor-made for Iowa and New Hampshire. Simply put, he’s a natural for talking with main street people. That’s something Mitt Romney will never have.

According to my friend, the biggest points to his stump speech were his criticizing President Obama’s weakness on national security issues, especially as it relates to Iran going nuclear, and his talking about “Hillary begging on hands and knees” with the Chinese so that they’ll buy up our debt.

That last point should resonate for two reasons. First, how embarrassing for President Obama after preaching about how, under his administration, we’d be popular again. For all President Obama’s talk, the U.S. is less respected in the world now than when President Bush left office. At least with President Bush, allies knew that he’d honor his commitments once he’d made them.

Secondly, it’s embarrassing to have the French lecture you as weak against the Iranians. It’s a nice jab at President Obama that suggests that being liked isn’t as important as being respected in the world.

The bottom line is that Gov. Pawlenty’s PAC is off to a strong start. He’s already connecting with people, which isn’t surprising. It’ll be interesting to see how much of an impact he’ll have on the competitive races across the country. So far so good, though.

Technorati: TPaw, FreedomFirstPAC, Fundraiser, Pretzels & Pints, Retail Politics, Mitt Romney, Iowa, New Hampshire, Sarkozy, Iran, National Security, Election 2010