Move over Newt, there's a new sacrificial lamb on the altar:

Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty formally announced his campaign seeking the GOP nomination for the presidency Monday morning, but by midday, his political past had already caught up to him. Reporting by Minneapolis City Pages' Nick Pinto brought to attention a pardon then-Gov. Pawlenty granted to a sex offender in October 2008, which is sure to haunt the candidate throughout his campaign: the man Pawlenty pardoned was later arrested again for molesting his daughter more than 250 times in an eight-year span, including six years prior to his pardon.

Jeremy Giefer had been convicted of statutory rape, but because he married his 14-year-old victim and stuck around to raise their child, Pawlenty granted him an extraordinary pardon which no longer required Giefer to report as a sex offender. I can see the Willie Horton-like ads now.

But perhaps the most damning detail:

According to the complaint his daughter, identified in court documents as C.G., filed, Griefer would often make her have sex with him or perform oral sex on him as a favor before he would give her permission to do things, and that he put her on birth control when she was 15 years old so that she wouldn't get pregnant when he raped her without a condom. The abuse started when she was 9 years old.

Oh man. Birth control. That's not going to go over well with the right to life crowd that makes up such a large chunk of the GOP base.