Pataki Hits The Road With Petition To Repeal Health Care, Collect 1M Email Addresses

Former New York Gov. George Pataki (R) had kept himself out of the fray during the health care debate, a move that seemed smart for a moderate Republican expected to take a run at the White House. But Pataki bounded back into the public eye last week, waving the tea party flag with a new group that officially aims to get health care repealed -- but looks an awful lot like the seeds of a new campaign to establish his conservative credentials.

Pataki launched his organization, Revere America, with the lofty initial goal of collecting one million signatures on a petition to repeal "ObamaCare."

The petition is full of tea party dog whistles: The law (or "bill"): "ignores the will of the majority of Americans who vigorously oppose government controlled national health care;" "tramples on the Constitution" and "represents an arrogant disregard for the personal freedom of the people of the United States."

But the petition's real purpose, as Pataki admitted in a C-Span interview, is to "get over a million e-mail addresses of people who would support us in working to repeal ObamaCare." And, presumably, of people who would support a Pataki for President campaign.

To get those signatures, Pataki has been traveling, holding rallies in battleground states all week. Each rally has the same M.O.: Pataki, a handful of local Republicans and about 100 supporters. There's also the word "ObamaCare," a lot.

In Reno Monday, he spoke in the parking lot of an empty strip mall. In the Des Moines Embassy Suites on Tuesday, he said, "Obamacare is not just wrong, it's unconstitutional." In Austin Tuesday, he stood with the lieutenant governor and attorney general on the Capitol steps.

At each rally, Pataki skirts around questions about whether he's using the group to prepare a 2012 run. But he never says never.

"You know, when I was elected governor, I said I'm never going to run for a third term. I did," he said in Iowa. "When you spend the time that I have in public office, you learn you never say never. I love the private sector. We're focusing on 2010. And I'm sure there will be a lot of good people after 2010, looking at 2012."

If he is, he's completely abandoned what seemed to be a deliberate strategy of staying quiet in order to keep up a reputation of being a moderate.

Since launching the group, for example, he accused MSNBC of refusing to run Revere America's ads, which accuse health care reform of trampling on freedom. Pataki sent the network, and the press, an angry email. In it, he claimed that MSNBC had asked him to explain "how ObamaCare is being linked to taking away freedoms."

"I find it incredible that such a question would be asked," he wrote. "Your failure to run this ad reflects a disdain and disregard for America's most basic freedom -- freedom of speech. There is a direct 'linkage' -- to use your term -- between freedom of speech, guaranteed in the First Amendment, and the fact that MSNBC did not run the ad."

Pataki attached a copy of the Constitution.

But MSNBC said it never refused to air the ads.

All in all, Pataki is clear that he wants to be a hero to the conservatives -- the Paul Revere, as it were, for the new tea party.