Look who's sniffing at the hindquarters of 2012: Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, or "TPaw," which is what he calls himself when he slips into his badass presidential candidate alter ego.

Speaking of, in a weekend interview with the Washington Times, ol' TPaw did everything short of revealing his campaign theme song…

He equated abortion with murder, noted that the Earth is cooling, not warming, and said Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and the Treasury secretaries in the Bush and Obama administrations were "misguided" at best in declaring certain financial and manufacturing organizations too big to be allowed to fail.

Dang, this fella Pawlenty, he's some smart. How could the Earth be warming if I had to dig out my sweaters just the other day? But I'm still not convinced that he's the one guy I want to wave cardboard signs for…

In the telephone interview, the 48-year-old, hockey-playing Republican also repeated the standard early denials of presidential aspirations.

Ding ding ding ding!

You know, they say, the difference between a hockey-playing Republican and a pitbull?

A mullet.