Fort Dodge, Iowa – Tim Pawlenty, who has been campaigning since 8 a.m. and is now, twelve hours later, at his sixth event of the day, betrays little weariness as he launches into the key theme of his stump speech.

“We’re going to have to have a candidate who’s got experience, executive experience,” Pawlenty tells the roomful of Republicans. “We’re going to have to have a candidate who’s actually got a record of not just talking about these things, but getting them done. We’re going to have a candidate who can win in swing states.”

“Those are the ingredients that we are going to need for the successful Republican nominee to defeat Barack Obama,” Pawlenty says.

Michele Bachmann is not mentioned by name in Pawlenty’s stump speech. But listening to how much time and energy Pawlenty puts into attacking Obama’s lack of experience and his use of stellar speeches as a springboard to the presidency, it becomes clear that Bachmann’s name could often be substituted for Obama’s. Pawlenty is fighting to dispel the excitement over the Bachmann candidacy, which threatens to catapult his fellow Minnesotan into a first-place finish at the Ames Straw Poll, just days away.

For example, in an address to 60 or so people at the Boone Public Library this afternoon, Pawlenty jabbed at Obama’s sweep through Iowa last election. “He came through town like an elixir salesman,” he said. “The words sounded great, the speeches were soaring, the rhetoric was incredible.”

He also spoke to the Humboldt County Republicans, as did Bachmann. Bachmann, whose voice dramatically rises and falls as she alternately warns or confides in her audience, energized the crowd with a feisty, passionate speech, zinging Obama and the Democrats with one-liners. After the speech, she was treated like a rock star: As her campaign blasted raucous music at full volume, people begged her to autograph their campaign signs or pose for a picture. One excited woman handed her baby to Bachmann, who gamely posed for a few photos with her youngest supporter. Eyes sparkling, Bachmann worked the crowd that raced up to her, asking their names and telling them she was counting on their support at Ames.

Following Bachmann, Pawlenty generated a favorable response, earning applause, cheers, and a standing ovation at the end. But he was no rock star. “Bachmann was much more vivacious and exciting to listen to,” Marena Fritzler, a graphic designer, told me afterward. “Her enthusiasm, motivation, and backbone inspired me to support her more than Pawlenty with his oh-so-passive and un-motivating delivery.”

“The rhetoric, if it’s not backed up by results, doesn’t mean much, does it?” Pawlenty asked the earlier gathering at Boone. “Barack Obama’s rhetoric doesn’t put gasoline in your car. Barack Obama’s rhetoric doesn’t pay your mortgage. Barack Obama’s rhetoric doesn’t pay your health-insurance premiums. Barack Obama’s rhetoric doesn’t pay for your kids’ college. So you can’t live or eat on his rhetoric. We’ve got to have more than more political rhetoric. We have to have results to get this country moving again.”

Pawlenty has a list of accomplishments that he launches into during campaign speeches. It sounds like a Christmas list for GOP activists: He slashed spending, cut taxes, reformed health care without an individual mandate, defeated unions’ salary demands, appointed conservative judges, co-authored a bill defining marriage as between a man and a woman, and fought for the pro-life movement.

“He’s right, his strongest selling point is he’s done it,” observes Ron Hack, a farmer who attended the Boone meeting. He notes appreciatively how Pawlenty’s detailed accomplishment list shows that “he really did do it — he’s not just saying he did it.”

Matthew Coleman, a second-year law student attending the Boone meeting, says that he was initially torn between Pawlenty and Bachmann. “I don’t feel like Bachmann has a lot of experience. Pawlenty’s actually been governor for two terms, and I feel like that is a much better, more applicable set of experiences to be president,” Coleman says of why he moved firmly into the Pawlenty camp. But at that same gathering, another attendee, Roland Cronk, told me he doesn’t buy the argument that Bachmann has as little experience as Obama had in 2008. “She has proven that she’s there to support and to participate more than I think Obama did,” he said of Bachmann’s years in Congress.

It is ironic that Pawlenty, while in the thick of his “Results, Not Rhetoric” tour, is himself hitting his rhetorical stride. He may not whip audiences into a frenzy, but his speeches elicit chuckles and applause from the crowds. He pokes fun at himself, telling self-deprecating anecdotes. (One is about his wife, Mary. She was concerned about how busy he was as governor; when he reminded her that she had pushed him to run, she rejoined, “Yeah, I remember. But I never thought you’d win.”)

“President Obama is like a manure spreader in a windstorm,” Pawlenty says. “He sets stuff flying all over the place, not much focus, not much strategy, not much good result in that circumstance.” That line, along with his proposal to spur tax reform by forcing congressional members to do their own taxes, delights audiences. He seems just a couple of rhetorical beats away from becoming the friendly candidate, the guy you would like to have a beer with. There are some signs of momentum, too: At Boone, surprised Pawlenty staffers haul out more chairs to accommodate the larger-than-expected crowd.

“You can stick a fork in Barack Obama, because politically, he’s done,” Pawlenty says, citing Obama’s low poll numbers nationally and in the swing states. “The main way we’re going to goof this up is to not have the best Republican candidate get nominated. . . . So I’m going to encourage you, as Iowans, to think not just about being first, but about being right in your decision-making, starting with the Ames Straw Poll this weekend.”

That theme of picking the best Republican candidate is one Pawlenty circles back to later in his speech.

“Any bobblehead can stand up here and spout out the Republican talking points,” he says. “That’s not the hard part.”

— Katrina Trinko is a NRO reporter.