Meanwhile, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) gave a major foreign-policy address on Tuesday, blasting President Obama for being “timid, slow and too often without a clear understanding of our interests” while warning isolationist Republicans, “America already has one political party devoted to decline, retrenchment and withdrawal. It does not need a second one.”

Did anybody notice?

Before another Minnesotan with a much slimmer record took his place behind front-runner Mitt Romney, Pawlenty was a heavy hitter establishment pick, vying to be the anti-Romney. Suddenly Bachmann, a third-term congresswoman, owns that space. He started running more than a year ago, saying all the right things in all the right places to all of the right wing. Forget Romney, Palin or the others with their wobbly two- or one-half-legged stools. Pawlenty focused intently on the three kinds of GOP voters critical to the primary coalition, from defense hawks to evangelicals to fiscal conservatives. Yet after working Iowa harder than any other GOP candidate for months now, Pawlenty registered at a dreadful 6 percent in a Des Moines Register poll this past weekend while Bachmann earned nearly four times as much support (22 percent). Other second-tier candidates including Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Herman Cain fared better as well. Most painful was former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) beating Pawlenty with 7 percent, considering that Gingrich’s decimated campaign is nothing more than an amusement.