"Note the date. May 23, 2011. That is when a politician with at least a semi-realistic chance of gaining the Republican nomination for president stood in Iowa and called for an end to federal subsidies for ethanol production.
Not only did Tim Pawlenty, former governor of Minnesota, choose to utter such anti-corn heresy in Iowa, center of the grain-based fuel universe, he also managed to do so and not be run out of town, tarred or feathered. The earth did not open up and swallow him whole. It was sort of another Rapture that didn't happen.
The man's political courage should not be underestimated. But the polite reception Pawlenty is receiving in Iowa, home of the first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses, on top of the good reviews his deficit-reduction plans have received in the national media, suggests that the candidate is perhaps not so much gutsy as he is well-attuned to the national mood."
Tim Pawlenty, Pawlenty Campaign Press Release - Calling Out Ethanol Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/296442