From Eric Dondero:

Presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty was in Washington meeting with the folks at the Cato Institute on Wednesday.

From the Washington Post "Pawlenty reaches out to free-market conservatives":

Pawlenty made a direct appeal to a gathering of conservatives in downtown Washington, pledging to place a temporary freeze on public employee salaries and to cut one in two federal jobs through attrition.

The venue, the libertarian Cato Institute, was rich with the symbolism of what Pawlenty was hoping to do: fill the free-enterprise space that many Republicans had hoped Daniels or Christie would step into — and demonstrate that he was up to the task.

“We can’t have federal employees getting a better deal than the people paying the bill — and that’s the taxpayer,” Pawlenty said at the third stop of a week-long swing across the country that began Monday with the official kickoff of his presidential campaign.

It has been a week of symbolic backdrops. In Iowa, where the ethanol lobby has held an iron grip on political discourse, Pawlenty promised to end ethanol subsidies. In Florida, where politicians historically have courted an older population by promising to protect entitlement programs, he pledged to stem the runaway costs of Social Security and Medicare by tightening benefits. And in New York on Friday, he will take aim at the bailouts of big businesses and Wall Street.

Crane noted that Pawlenty received an 'A' from Cato in his last year as Governor. But hinted that the Beltway libertarian crowd is still holding out hope for Christie.