Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty is positioning himself to be a key Republican debater of the president on health care, reports the Star Tribune:

In Chicago on Friday night before party activists from around the nation, he slammed large government-run programs in an implicit criticism of Democratic proposals to overhaul health care.
“The entitlement programs that the federal government currently runs are all broke and headed to bankruptcy,” he told more than 100 people, many of them local officeholders. “Medicare is bankrupt or essentially bankrupt. Medicaid is essentially bankrupt. Social Security is essentially bankrupt.”
“Why in the heck would we give the federal government another entitlement program to match on that track record?” he said, drawing hearty applause.

After controversies erupted this summer around two other GOP governors who were potential 2012 rivals to him, Pawlenty has an opportunity to build some momentum in the coming months. It will be interesting to see what he does with it.