Pawlenty: ‘Take my name off’ the list of VP candidates

{mosads}“I’m going to take my name off the list, so if … you’re a journalist, an observer, remove my name from the list,” Pawlenty told the Minneapolis Star Tribune on Tuesday. “I went through it before with [John] McCain.”

The Arizona senator famously passed over perceived safer options like Pawlenty in favor of then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Pawlenty was viewed as a formidable Republican presidential candidate upon entering the race in 2011, but was the first candidate to exit. Pawlenty coined the term “ObamneyCare” early in the primary cycle in an attempt to tie Romney to the president’s healthcare legislation, but his campaign never recovered from a June debate in which he declined to repeat that line of attack to Romney’s face.

Pawlenty has since endorsed Romney and become one of the campaign’s most visible surrogates, and many believed he was the kind of plain-vanilla vice presidential candidate the Romney campaign was looking for.

Pawlenty wouldn’t say whether he had his sights set on a 2014 congressional run.