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Stephen Crowley/The New York Times Tim Pawlenty the former governor of Minnesota, speaking at the CPAC conference in Washington.

Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota, has scored a 2012 coup of sorts: He will be the keynote speaker at the first Tea Party Policy Summit in Arizona this month.

In a release Friday morning, the Tea Party Patriots announced that Mr. Pawlenty, who is actively considering a bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, will address the group, along with Representative Ron Paul of Texas and other conservative politicians and activists.

“With more than 3,000 affiliated organizations across the county, this summit will be an important opportunity for Tea Party Patriots to come together to celebrate and recommit to the ideals and values that are responsible for the dramatic victories in the November election,” Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator for Tea Party Patriots, said in a statement.

As the Republican presidential nomination fight gets under way, many of the potential candidates are eagerly vying for the attention and support of Tea Party groups, who emerged in 2010 as a powerful force in elective politics.

Mr. Pawlenty remains largely unknown around the country, and has been seeking to raise his profile with a nationwide tour to promote his new book, “Courage to Stand.” A political memoir, the book details his eight years as governor.

“This Tea Party group is a great champion for tax and spending cuts — something Governor Pawlenty feels strongly about,” said Alex Conant, a spokesman for Mr. Pawlenty. “Governor Pawlenty is looking forward to sharing his lessons learned from winning tough battles with the liberals and public employees’ unions in Minnesota.”

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1:48 p.m. | Updated President Obama will have lunch with the Republican leaders of the House on Wednesday as he continues his outreach to Congress in the wake of his party’s heavy losses in November.

The speaker of the House, John A. Boehner of Ohio, will come to the White House along with Representatives Eric Cantor of Virginia, the majority leader, and Kevin McCarthy of California, the majority whip.

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, told reporters that they would discuss the economy and spending.

“Obviously, without a doubt, there will be a heavy discussion of the economy and spending, and I think the president will have a chance to talk through with them many of the things he outlined in the State of the Union,” Mr. Gibbs said. “And I have no doubt they have their cares and concerns as well.” 

Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Mr. Boehner, said, “The speaker is pleased to have an opportunity to speak with the president about our plans to reduce economic uncertainly and create jobs by cutting spending and breaking down barriers to private sector investment.”

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The 2012 race for Montana’s Senate seat moved into the high-profile, competitive category on Saturday, with the official announcement by Republican Representative Denny Rehberg that he would seek to replace Senator Jon Tester, the first-term Montana Democrat.

“If this is a campaign on the issues with two contrasting philosophies, I better represent the state of Montana,” Mr. Rehberg, who has served six terms as the state’s sole member of the House, said in an interview with the Billings Gazette.

The announcement was no surprise since his plans have been circulating for days. He was scheduled to make a more public disclosure of his Senate intentions at a Republican dinner on Saturday night in Helena.

His decision means that Montana will host one of the crucial battles for control of the Senate, with Democrats on the defensive with the retirement of Democratic Senator Kent Conrad in North Dakota and other Democratic incumbents in Republican-leaning states facing tough challenges. Democrats have twice as many seats to protect as Republicans.

Mr. Tester, in various interviews this week and a statement released on Saturday by his office, has indicated he does not intend to easily relinquish the seat he took from Republican Conrad Burns in 2006. On MSNBC on Thursday, he noted that Mr. Rehberg would be appearing at the dinner with Representative Michele Bachmann, the Minnesota Republican and Tea Party favorite who has proposed substantial spending reductions in programs for veterans.

“What bothers me is that the representative from Montana is going to jump into this race and he’s going to be standing beside Michele Bachmann when he makes that announcement,” Mr. Tester said. “I take exception to the fact that he wants to cut $4.5 billion out of the VA. And I take exception to the fact that she wants to do that, too.”

In his interview with the Montana newspaper, Mr. Rehberg joined fellow Republicans in calling for federal spending reductions and noted that Mr. Tester and the state’s senior senator, Democrat Max Baucus, chairman of the Finance Committee, are regular allies of the Obama administration. But Mr. Rehberg, a member of the Appropriations Committee, will probably have to devote some campaign time to explaining his own pursuit of federal dollars for state projects through earmarks during his career in the House.

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When Scott Brown was surging toward victory in the United States Senate race in Massachusetts in 2009, he earned the support — and money — of the National Republican Trust.

But perhaps no more.

The National Journal reports that the group, which spent $95,000 to help elect Mr. Brown in a special election last year, will work to defeat him in the state’s Republican primary next year.

“We believe the Democrats’ policies are destroying the country. Why let them take a Republican vote with them?” Scott Wheeler, the group’s leader, told National Journal last week.

Mr. Brown is likely to face a tough re-election battle in a liberal state. And some of his votes with Democrats last year, including approval of the New Start treaty with Russia, have angered conservatives.

Fund-raising, however, has not been a challenge for Mr. Brown, who has already stockpiled millions of dollars for his re-election campaign.

The freshman senator is also starting a book tour for his memoir, “Against All Odds: My Life of Hardship, Fast Breaks, and Second Chances.” The book will be published in February.

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Not since George W. Bush inhabited the White House have Republicans so outnumbered Democrats at a social event there as they did on Monday night.

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama hosted a reception for new members of Congress and, given Congressional Democrats’ “shellacking” – Mr. Obama’s term – in last November’s midterm elections, the invitation list was bound to make for a Republican majority.

A White House official afterward released a list of 44 attendees; 37 were Republicans, including 10 senators and 27 House members. While that was a respectable turnout, it represented less than half of the 100-plus lawmakers newly elected last fall, most of them Republicans.

Another White House official, who attended, declined to provide details except to say the reception was “just a nice event.”
On that, at least, there was bipartisan agreement: A spokeswoman for one Republican guest, Representative Mike Pompeo of Kansas, said in an email, “Congressman Pompeo and his wife Susan had a pleasant time and he looks forward to hearing the President’s speech tomorrow.”

On Tuesday night, Mr. Obama will be the guest of a joint session of Congress, to deliver the annual State of the Union address.

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It is a Washington tradition that on the night the president gives his annual address to Congress, a member of the opposition gives a formal response. Tonight, there will be an opposition to the opposition response.

Representative Michele Bachmann, who has styled herself as the leader of the Tea Party movement within the House, plans to give her own rebuttal to President Obama’s speech following the official reply given by Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, the chairman of the House Budget Committee.

Mr. Ryan has become a focus of attention for members of both parties because of the unusual powers granted to him in the budget process that has commenced on the Hill, and because he is the author of the Republican fiscal road map, a budget alternative to what Democrats have on the table.

But Ms. Bachmann had proven herself a potent force all on her own, making the rounds on conservative talk shows and speaking for the more conservative corner of the Republican caucus, which has increased with scores of new members elected last November. Ms. Bachmann is expected to attack the President’s speech and make a case for fiscal discipline, a theme of the Tea Party and Republicans generally.

“Thanks to all of you, there’s reason to hope that real spending cuts are coming,” Ms. Bachmann plans to say, according to excerpts from her prepared remarks distributed to reporters. “Last November many of you went to the polls and voted out big-spending politicians, and you put in their place men and women who have come to Washington with a commitment to follow the Constitution and cut the size of government. And I believe that we are in the early days of a history-making turn here in the House of Representatives.

“Last week we voted to repeal ObamaCare, and each day going forward, we must work hard to dismantle the massive government expansion that has happened over the past two years.”

Ms. Bachmann said Monday that her speech was “not a competition” with Mr. Ryan, who is now sandwiched between the President and his own colleague. But the existence of her alternate response, which was not officially sanctioned by Republicans in the House, did not go unnoticed.

The Republican majority leader, Eric Cantor, told reporters on Monday: “Paul Ryan’s giving the official Republican response. And Michele Bachmann, just as the other 534 members of the House and Senate, are going to have opinions as to the State of the Union. Again, this is a process that happens every year, and I look forward to all comments, but it’s Paul Ryan that’s giving the official Republican [response].”

Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, meanwhile, said in an interview on MSNBC: “I’ve never seen, in the 20 years I’ve been involved in the political process, that there has been more than one response to either side’s presidential State of the Union address. We have differing opinions in the Democratic Party, but we don’t have a Blue Dog response. We don’t have a progressive response. We have the State of the Union, and then we have the Democratic response when there’s a Republican president. So I think it shows the deep divisions that exist and that the Republicans are really not able to be on the same page, and it’s shades of things to come as they move forward.”

Ms. Bachmann, whose own party has rebuffed her in the House by denying her the committees and leadership positions she has sought, acknowledged on the Bill O’Reilly program Monday night that her response was more or less her own. “I am not the official GOP response,” she said. “That will belong to Paul Ryan. I am sure he will do a wonderful job. About a month ago, the Tea Party Express asked if I would speak to their membership about President Obama’s remarks, and I am looking forward to doing that.”

Only CNN has said will carry the congresswoman’s remarks live and in their entirety; however, the Tea Party Express plans to live-stream her speech on its Web site.

“The Tea Party has become a major force in American politics and within the Republican Party,” Sam Feist, CNN’s political director and vice president of Washington-based programming, said in an announcement of the station’s plans. “Hearing the Tea Party’s perspective on the State of the Union is something we believe CNN’s viewers will be interested in hearing and we are happy to include this perspective as one of many in tonight’s coverage.”

Ms. Bachmann has hinted that she may throw her name in the ring for the 2012 presidential race, but has so far demurred from a full declaration. This week she played hostess to the first in what she said will be a series of “constitutional seminars” with legal experts. On Monday Justice Antonin Scalia of the gave a seminar to roughly 30 members of the House.

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