Here’s a great way to start your campaign in Iowa: Tell them you want to phase out ethanol subsidies. Classic Tim Pawlenty! Does he even want to be president?
Grist is no fan of corn ethanol, mind you — if you have a spare moment you should get Tom or Dave started, it’s super entertaining. Pawlenty was a fan, though, when he was the governor of Minnesota. But now that he’s running for president, he has the freedom to throw ethanol under the bus, because instead of trying to get people to vote for him for governor of a Midwestern state, he’s trying to get people to vote for him in the GOP primaries in a Midwestern state. Totally different! Screw you, corn economy!
Pawlenty says he still supports renewable energy, maybe even renewables that are less of a clusterf*ck than ethanol. But his objection to ethanol subsidies has to do with the deficit, which he says means we need to cut subsidies “across all sources of energy.” So he’s probably not going to propose sinking that money into wind or solar.
