The 2012 Republican primary is increasingly looking like a two-man race between TPaw and Willard. And you can be sure that — since neither of them in their previous political lives were known as Teabaggers — they’ll be extremely eager to out-crazy each other.

Pawlenty said in his op-ed that “Unionized public employees are making more money, receiving more generous benefits, and enjoying greater job security than the working families forced to pay for it with ever-higher taxes, deficits and debt.”

Now, that’s music to a wingnut’s ears, but like pretty much everything that comforts them —it’s simply not true. And since TPaw, as a governor, knows it’s not true, he’s — what’s the word? — lying.

“How did this happen? Very quietly,” Pawlenty wrote. “The rise of government unions has been like a silent coup, an inside job engineered by self-interested politicians and fueled by campaign contributions.”

You see, the problem with this country is not the rampant criminality of the banksters or unemployment or our crumbling infrastructure or the cost of health care or the run-amok Pentagon or our addiction to fossil fuels or the spiraling wealth inequality that has America resembling a Third World Country.

No, the big problem, you see, is that public school teachers make too much damn money.

Gonna be a fun primary!