Tim Pawlenty may very well be...

...the best positioned candidate for the 2012 Republican nomination. T-Paw seems to be everyone's second choice and could be acceptable to all the various GOP constituencies: the establishment, tea partiers, the religious right, libertarians, budget hawks, the Club for Growth and whomever is currently responsible for crafting the party's foreign policy (hint: the opposite of whatever President Obama is doing at the moment).

So if Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Mitch Daniels, John Huntsman, Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul are all seen as flawed by one or more of these groups, is T-Paw a possible dark horse for the nomination? Perhaps.

And yet ... a look at the actual calendar gives me pause.

The first contest is Iowa, which is usually won by someone with support from the religious right (think Mike Huckabee or Pat Robertson). Does T-Paw fit that description? Maybe. But so does Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, Sarah Palin and even Newt Gingrich. So let's say that someone besides T-Paw wins Iowa. What's next? New Hampshire, where Mitt Romney is the heavy favorite. Figure the former Massachusetts governor wins there (and in Nevada, which he won in 2008). Now it's on to South Carolina. If T-Paw is 0-for-3 at this point, are southern evangelicals going to suddenly rally to his side? Doubtful, in my mind. So somebody else takes the Palmetto State. By the time Super Tuesday rolls around, T-Paw could very well be out of money (and out of the race).

So what does all this mean to me (today)? Pawlenty has to win Iowa or it could be curtains for his candidacy.