Forget Michele's migraines, it's Pawlenty's headache now

Ever since the story about Rep. Michele Bachmann’s headaches surfaced, Right Turn and other media outlets have questioned whether Tim Pawlenty’s campaign had any role in the matter. In a long phone conversation, Pawlenty spokesman Alex Conant denied to me repeatedly that the campaign had any role in revealing Bachmann’s health information. He also revealed that Pawlenty questioned his senior staff as to whether anyone had a role in the story, but he dismissed the need to question and distance himself from Ron Carey, a vocal supporter of Pawlenty who was Bachmann’s chief of staff (and therefore would have had access to her schedule), and whose name has been mentioned in press accounts. Carey left Bachmann’s office in the summer of 2010 (which is the last headache incident cited in the Daily Caller story) and has since issued blistering statements about her fitness to serve. …

Now, certainly, defenders of Palwenty will argue that, had the Pawlenty campaign wanted to drop this bomb, it likely would not have chosen a week when Pawlenty faced scrum after scrum of reporters. If the Pawlenty campaign wanted to avoid suspicion, arguably Pawlenty’s responses would have been better scripted. …

Nevertheless, the Pawlenty campaign contributed to the feeding frenzy by not emphatically denying involvement with the story as other campaigns did. Pawlenty compounded the problem by offering the line both to reporters in Iowa and to Greta van Susteren that “candidates are going to have to be able to demonstrate they can do all of the job, all of the time.”