The 2012 Republican primary is increasingly looking like a two-man race between TPaw and Willard. And you can be sure that — since neither of them in their previous political lives were known as Teabaggers — they’ll be extremely eager to out-crazy each other.

It’s bad enough to have a Republican Grover Norquist acolyte for one’s state governor. It’s even worse when he decides to run for president. And it’s really bad when his grandstanding for the Tea Party crowd (aka the GOP base) shows he’s more than willing to plunge his rusty knife a few more times into the torn, barely-breathing body of what used to be a happy, healthy state back in the long ago when Rudy Perpich ran it.

It’s been funny as hell watching Minnesota’s absentee governor getting into increasingly deep French kisses with the far right. The latest incident involves his attempt to jump on the FOX News “Let’s Slime ACORN!” bandwagon.

While trying to make a virtue of what might have been necessity on her part, Sarah Palin takes dead aim at the actions of fellow governor, Republican and presidential wannabee, Minnesota’s Tim Pawlenty: “…I thought well about how much fun some governors have as lame ducks – travel around their state, maybe travel to other states, maybe take their overseas international diplomatic trade missions, so many politicians do that. Then I thought that’s what’s wrong – many just expect that lame duck status, they draw a pay check and milk it and I’m not going to put Alaskans through that.”