Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann begin to duke it out

WASHINGTON — No more “Minnesota Nice” between presidential hopefuls Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty.

In one of the most intriguing subplots of the 2012 GOP nominating contest, the two Minnesota Republicans have begun trading jabs in Iowa over everything from Bachmann’s penchant for gaffes

to Pawlenty’s conservative credentials.

“She has a record for saying things that are off the mark,” Pawlenty said Monday in Davenport, Iowa, where he emphasized his executive experience as governor for two terms. “There is a big difference between talking about things and getting them done.”

Pawlenty’s swipes came in response to a weekend broadside by Bachmann, who compared him to President Barack Obama on the central complaint of the Tea Party movement.

“I have fought against irresponsible spending while Governor Pawlenty was leaving a multibillion-dollar budget mess in Minnesota,” said Bachmann, echoing the Democratic critique of Pawlenty.

The barbs highlight the stakes for both candidates in Iowa, the first-in-the-nation caucus state.

Even the title of Pawlenty’s current RV tour, “Road to Results,” seemed destined to put him on a collision course with Bachmann, whose record in Congress he’s assailed as “nonexistent.”

Bachmann, leading in the polls in a state where both need to do well, had kept her powder dry until now, rejecting what she called “negative” politics.

But Pawlenty, trailing badly, began taking regular shots a week ago, portraying Bachmann as someone with “speech capabilities” but little substance to back that up.

With the all-important straw poll in Ames just three weeks away, Bachmann decided to hit back. On Sunday, hours after Pawlenty criticized her during a CNN interview, Bachmann issued a sweeping statement on Pawlenty’s record as governor, attacking him for his past praise for Wall Street bailouts, health care mandates and climate change regulations.

“Executive experience is not an asset if it simply means bigger and more intrusive government,” said Bachmann, taking aim at the Pawlenty campaign’s core selling point.

Bachmann’s haymaker also came days after Pawlenty was one of the few Republican candidates to weigh in on revelations about her chronic migraines, saying the president must be able to “do the job every day, all the time.”

Even though Pawlenty later backpedaled about her headaches, the feud continued to escalate between the allies-turned-rivals.

Pawlenty’s Freedom First political action committee donated $2,400 last year to Bachmann’s 2010 House re-election campaign. But the support iced over during the winter when Bachmann began exploring her own presidential bid.

Already a national figure as an outspoken Tea Party champion, Bachmann rapidly eclipsed more than a year of methodical preparation by the lesser-known Pawlenty.

The two, sometimes referred to as the “Minnesota Twins” of the 2012 race, largely avoided public mention of each other for the past several months, each cultivating separate donor bases.

But with Iowa looming large in the long-term strategies of both campaigns, it was probably inevitable they would clash.

The day after Bachmann’s formal presidential announcement in her native Waterloo, Pawlenty supporter Ron Carey, Bachmann’s former chief of staff, penned an opinion piece in the Des Moines Register describing her congressional office as “wildly out of control.”

“It is clear to me that while Tim Pawlenty possesses the judgment, the demeanor, and the readiness to serve as president,” Carey continued, “Michele Bachmann decidedly does not.”

Carey, a former chairman of the Minnesota Republican Party, is among the state’s GOP luminaries who have sided publicly with Pawlenty.

But on Friday at a Des Moines ice rink, Pawlenty found himself in a media scrum fending off speculation that Carey or another Bachmann defector might have been the source of the migraine story, which was leaked anonymously to the conservative Daily Caller website last week.

Pawlenty said he had checked with his “senior staff,” and was certain his camp was not involved.