He may have not yet officially declared his candidacy, but Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty continues to make it increasingly clear that he plans to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. Wednesday morning he released a pair of press releases aimed squarely at gaining favor in the first two states in the nomination calendar.

Pawlenty praised Republicans who won elections in Iowa and New Hampshire on Tuesday. Beyond noting the GOP gains in the Hawkeye State, he also touted the fact that Iowa voted against retaining the three Supreme Court justices on the ballot, a prominent cause for the social conservative base in the state during the election and a topic that Pawlenty addressed in visits to the state earlier this year.

Pawlenty has invested large amounts of both his time and his political action committee’s donations into these first-in-the-nation states. While many potential 2012 Republican aspirants have taken a slow pace toward starting their Iowa campaigns, Pawlenty has frequently visited his neighbor state to stump for Republican candidates.

Pawlenty’s full statement on the Iowa results:

Voters in Iowa rejected big government and elected conservatives up and down the ticket. Governor Branstad, Secretary Schultz, Secretary Northey, Auditor Vaudt, Kraig Paulsen and the newly elected Republicans in the state legislature will fight for fiscal responsibility and keep a lid on taxes to create new jobs. Our Freedom First PAC in Iowa was proud to support dozens of these candidates and congratulates them on their historic victories.

To their great credit, voters in Iowa yesterday exercised their right to remove judges who were making laws, rather than interpreting them. They broadcast to Iowa and to the nation the clear and strong reminder that the Constitution says ‘We the people’ not ‘We the judges’. The people of Iowa defined marriage as between one man and one woman, and activist judges wrongly attempted to undermine that.

(Photo: Flickr Creative Commons/IowaPolitics.com)