Reading over at PowerLine, I see a few posts rightly worried about Obama’s global warming alarmism in his “Sermon to the Germans” yesterday, separated by a post discussing McCain’s possible running mate. The one putative candidate to emerge from their analysis, Minnesota’s Tim Pawlenty, is described as having “no apparent downside” and someone who “would almost certainly do no harm.”

Granted, this is a blog with a Minnesota bias, which could cut both ways: they like Pawlenty because he’s their guy, or they just know him better and to know him is to like him. But I looked at Pawlenty and, relevant to the surrounding posts expressing concern about global-warming alarmism and the harm that policies promoted in its name can yield, I found a steep downside to Pawlenty.

One alarmist on the ticket — and Sen. McCain is certainly that, as is Gov. Pawlenty, even if he seems to do it more as an image thing (which can’t be said for McCain) – and the Republican base can probably hold their nose and pull the lever. But two of them, in my opinion, would cause an appreciable number of those voters to choke.