In a CPAC speech that mixed conservative red meat with humor that mostly came at President Obama's expense, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty positioned himself as a mainstream conservative who could appeal to both fiscal and social conservatives, even as other prospective Republican presidential candidates have focused mainly on pocketbook issues.

"One of the most important things that we should always remember is the motto of our country, In God We Trust, and we should stand on that foundation as our founders intended," Pawlenty said. "Ladies and Gentlemen, we as a nation must move towards God, not away from God."

Pawlenty made sure to distinguish himself from former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney-a likely 2012 rival for the GOP presidential nomination, who spoke at the conference earlier on Friday-by attacking Obama over the health care reform law.

Romney has been criticized in conservative circles for enacting a law in Massachusetts that also included an individual mandate for citizens to buy insurance. Though he did not mention Romney by name, Pawlenty's jab sounded like the opening salvo of a broader attack that he is likely to launch against the early GOP frontrunner in the coming months.

"The individual mandate in Obamacare is a page right out of the Jimmy Carter playbook," Pawlenty said. "The left simply doesn't understand."

Pawlenty spoke in front of a mostly receptive crowd in a packed ballroom, but he had the misfortune of having to speak directly before Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), who has a massive following of enthusiastic supporters here who cheered nearly every line of his speech.

As he did in his recently released book, Courage To Stand, Pawlenty touted his blue-collar biography in an effort to present himself as someone who is intimately familiar with economic hardship.

"For me, that real world experience started in my hometown of South St. Paul, Minnesota - a place filled with good-hearted people, strong families and the rock-solid values of the heartland," Pawlenty said. "Back in the 60s, when I grew up there, it was home to some of the world's largest stockyards and world's largest meat-packing plants. Many, many families in my hometown relied on those big plants for their paychecks, for their family's well-being and for their future. But those plants shut down, and so did a big part of the spirit and the soul of my hometown."

Hitting on many of the themes about the unsustainability of the federal deficit that nearly every speaker has focused on at CPAC, Pawlenty said that the issue was not one that was "a matter of right versus left."

"It's a matter of 6th grade mathematics," he said. "It isn't going to work. It's irresponsible, it's unsustainable-it's reckless. And just because we followed Greece into democracy, does not mean we need to follow them into bankruptcy."

On the day when Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced his resignation amid a popular uprising in Cairo, Pawlenty listed the Muslim Brotherhood among foreign entities that Obama had "appeased." He said that the current administration did not understand the principle of projecting strength in the international arena.

"Bullies respect strength, they don't respect weakness," he said. "So when the United States of America projects its national security interests here and around the world, we need to do it with strength. We need to make sure that there is no equivocation, no uncertainty, no daylight between us and our allies around the world."

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