The presidential matchups continue and Gov. Tim Pawlenty continues to be a drag on the Republican ticket. The SurveyUSA polling firm continues its state-by-state march across America, this time focusing the relative strenghs of John McCain and Barack Obama when matched with a variety of running mates.

In the absolute battleground of Ohio, Pawlenty’s presence on the ticket results in a GOP loss of between 5 and 18 percentage points. And in Iowa, a state nearly as important in November, the governor of a next-door state (ouch) fares as poorly as 26 percentage pointsbehind Obama and John Edwards.

Full results here.

On the bright side for Pawlentyites, New York Times columnists had some ear-burningly nice things to say about their guy today, calling him in passing a “shining star:”

McCain will need somebody who radiates calm. He’ll need somebody who can provide structure and organization. He’ll need somebody who enjoys working with budgets…

Pawlenty, the governor of Minnesota, is one of the G.O.P.’s leading and most likable modernizers. The son of a truck driver (his mother died when he was 16), he is the godfather of Sam’s Club conservatism, the effort to reconnect the party to the needs of the working class. Pawlenty could help McCain play the Theodore Roosevelt-style role — reforming the nation’s institutions to fit a new century and epoch.

The New York Times just put a John McCain scoop online, reporting that he’ll be meeting with vice presidential short-listers Charlie Crist, Bobby Jindahl and Mitt Romney at his home in Arizona.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty also is mentioned, briefly: “Another governor who has been prominently mentioned as a strong contender to run with Mr. McCain, Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, is not going to Arizona; his associates said he had a wedding on Saturday.”

Here’s the whole thing.

Today’s Tim Pawlenty vice-presidential update:

One of the more creative stabs at vice-presidential progosticating has been running this month on the website of CQ (formerly known as Congressional Quarterly). The magazine set up the potential Republican vice-presidential field much like the NCAA sets its basketball tournament every year.

Pawlenty, invariably mentioned as being on John McCain’s short list, was one of the 32 candidates at the starting gate at the beginning of May. Based on readers’ votes, he handily whomped former Sen. Phil Gramm before handily dispatching former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Sen. Kay Baily Hutchison. Alas, he was upended in the voting that ended Monday by onetime presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, 55 percent to 44 percent.

The final showdown will pit Huckabee against Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a GOP up-and-comer with virtually no national profile.

There’s still time to vote at the CQ page, which shows the entire tournament.

Another day, another dribble of idle speculation about Tim Pawlenty’s political future. (OK, the Strib’s a guilty as anyone, including questions about his vice-presidential prospects in the most recent Minnesota Poll.)

Anyway, the polling firm SurveyUSA has cooked up a statistical parlor game by running nationwide test heats between John McCain and Barack Obama, while grafting hypothetical running mates onto their backs.

This week, the company released its poll of Pennsylvanians (residents of a potential battleground state in November). The results were all over the map, with Obama winning 13 of the matchups (including the one that didn’t include running mates), McCain winning four.

For Pawlenty-watchers, the most notable takeaway was the fact that he didn’t exactly set the GOP ticket on fire. McCain-Pawlenty lost all four of its matchups against Obama and a running mate. Their best performance came against Obama and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, losing by 3 percentage points. Their worst: Obama and former Sen. John Edwards thumped them by an eye-popping 17 points (and that was by far the worst Republican performance in any of the test heats).

Of course, it’s not likely McCain and his brain trust are relying on such polls to make their veep pick, but if you’re a Pawlenty partisan, that has to sting a bit.

For the full poll results, click here.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty spent the weekend schmoozing with other Republican politicos at the Arizona home of Sen. John McCain, once again fueling speculation about his political future.

The name of Pawlenty, one of the national co-chairs of McCain’s presidential campaign, has persistently popped up on short lists of potential vice-presidential running mates for the Arizona senator.

McCain and Pawlenty have consistently dismissed speculation about Pawlenty’s future role, saying they’ve never discussed it.

The presence of Pawlenty at McCain’s vacation home outside Sedona was noted Monday in several political blogs, which had been buzzing about the weekend off the campaign trail.

Among the other GOP officials who stopped over the weekend were longtime McCain ally Sen. Lindsay Graham, of South Carolina, and South Dakota Sen. John Thune (who’s also ended up on some vice-presidential lists).

The weekend was billed as a chance for McCain to kick back before the primaries Tuesday that are expected to clinch the Republican nomination for him. Characteristically, he also served up barbecue for the traveling press corps he used to jokingly refer to as his “base.”

Here are a few of the blog accounts of the get-together in the desert.

From The Swamp.

Politico’s take. (scroll down)

And Fox News…

Well, that didn’t take long.

Just a few days after the most recent round of Pawlenty-could-be-McCain’s-veep, the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza used the National Governor’s Association meeting to have a videotaped sit-down with four governors whose names are being bandied about as possible vice-presidential material.

One was our very own Tim Pawlenty. Of the guv, Cillizza writes, “Pawlenty — widely seen as the current leader in the McCain veepstakes — detailed his long relationship with the senator (the two have known each other for nearly two decades) and his loyalty during the darkest days of McCain’s campaign. But he offered little insight into his own prospects.”

Here’s the video:

For the entire blog post, you can go here.

The Beltway chorus of guessing who John McCain will pick as his running mate keeps swelling and Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s name keeps being sung at the top of the insiders’ lungs.

Most recently, the National Journal privately polled what it calls its “GOP power players” on who McCain would end up picking. Pawlenty led the pack, named by 15 percent of the 87 Republican bigwigs. Running second, with 11 percent, was former presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. They mentioned no fewer than 18 other possible VP picks.

Among the assessments of Pawlenty are the following:

“Pawlenty brings it all—regional balance, youth, looks, plus a policy
background that can appeal to the center. He’s also doing great
work on energy and environment issues, which would be a nice turf
poach for the GOP.”

“Solid conservative, anti-tax increases, good family, and keeps the

Midwest in play for McCain.”

“It needs to be a governor who can help carry a state and help deal
with the age argument. The two lead candidates would be Crist and
Pawlenty. Crist has a Quayle-like ‘deer in the headlights’ quality about
him if he has to answer an unrehearsed question, leaving Pawlenty.”

That poll, published Friday, came a few hours after the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza’s politics blog ran its new line of what he calls the Veepstakes. His assessment of Pawlenty:

“The two-term Minnesota governor has to be considered the frontrunner at the moment to be McCain’s pick. He hails from the electorally important Midwest, is young enough to balance concerns about McCain’s age, and he stuck by the Arizona senator in the darkest days of the campaign. The criticism that Pawlenty is an unknown on the national stage may, in fact, be an argument in his favor — voters won’t bring any preconceived notions about him to the ticket. Never forget that one of the guiding principles in picking a VP is to find someone who is comfortable being seen but not heard.”

Icing on the speculation cake first came this week from the Politico, where Pawlenty was subject of an exceptionally flattering profile. As befits his continuing, studied, silence on the topic, Pawlenty declined to be interviewed for the piece.

Stay tuned. The talk is likely to only intensify.

On his way to a Tuesday afternoon meeting in Washington, D.C. of the National Infrastructure Advisory Council, Gov. Tim Pawlenty took a detour — to New England. He spent Monday stumping across northern New Hampshire on behalf of John McCain before delivering the keynote address at the Grafton County GOP’s Columbus Day dinner, just over the border in the tiny town of Fairlee, Vermont.

The campaign swing was notable because it marks the first time in months that Pawlenty has hit the road for McCain, whose presidential candidacy Pawlenty embraced shortly after winning re-election last year. By hitching his wagon to McCain’s star (diminished in the months since as he has slipped behind his GOP rivals), Pawlenty did nothing to quiet the chatter that he was grooming himself for higher office — possibly a running mate for McCain should the Arizona senator eventually win the Republican nomination.

Pawlenty’s campaign appearances got zero media coverage, if a Nexis search is any indication. But when the New Hampshire Presidential Watch political blog previewed his appearance last week, it dubbed him a “rising Republican star,” “often mentioned as a possible 2008 vice-presidential nominee.” For his part, Pawlenty always swats away all such speculation, invariably saying, “I plan to serve my entire term.”