Coleman Hits the Road

My brother the Rocket Prof pointed us to this Associated Press article on Minnesota’s freshman Senator Norm Coleman, which ran today in the Salt Lake Tribune and many other newspapers.
The article describes Coleman criss-crossing the country to address Jewish groups, urging them to support President Bush and to vote Republican. Coleman, who is Jewish and grew up in Brooklyn, jokes that until he went to college he never met either a Republican or a Lutheran. He switched parties in 1996, while he was Mayor of St. Paul. “Compassionate conservatism is a Jewish ethic,” Coleman says. “I became a Republican to make come to life the ideals I had as a Democrat.”
Coleman is a tremendously talented politician; the fact that he has embarked on a national speaking tour in his first year in the Senate suggests that he may harbor national ambitions. Either Coleman or Minnesota’s equally talented Governor, Tim Pawlenty, could make an interesting Vice-Presidential choice in 2008 or thereafter. I doubt that any other state has two young, able, dynamic Republican politicians the equal of Coleman and Pawlenty.