Posted on 01/24/2012 7:58:22 PM PST by Brown Deer
Following is the full text of Gov. Mitch Daniels' Republican Address to the Nation, as prepared for delivery:
"The status of 'loyal opposition' imposes on those out of power some serious responsibilities: to show respect for the Presidency and its occupant, to express agreement where it exists. Republicans tonight salute our President, for instance, for his aggressive pursuit of the murderers of 9/11, and for bravely backing long overdue changes in public education. I personally would add to that list admiration for the strong family commitment that he and the First Lady have displayed to a nation sorely needing such examples.
"On these evenings, Presidents naturally seek to find the sunny side of our national condition. But when President Obama claims that the state of our union is anything but grave, he must know in his heart that this is not true.
"The President did not cause the economic and fiscal crises that continue in America tonight. But he was elected on a promise to fix them, and he cannot claim that the last three years have made things anything but worse: the percentage of Americans with a job is at the lowest in decades. One in five men of prime working age, and nearly half of all persons under 30, did not go to work today.
"In three short years, an unprecedented explosion of spending, with borrowed money, has added trillions to an already unaffordable national debt. And yet, the President has put us on a course to make it radically worse in the years ahead. The federal government now spends one of every four dollars in the entire economy; it borrows one of every three dollars it spends. No nation, no entity, large or small, public or private, can thrive, or survive intact, with debts as huge as ours.
"The President's grand experiment in trickle-down government has held back rather than sped economic recovery. He seems to sincerely believe we can build a middle class out of government jobs paid for with borrowed dollars. In fact, it works the other way: a government as big and bossy as this one is maintained on the backs of the middle class, and those who hope to join it.
"Those punished most by the wrong turns of the last three years are those unemployed or underemployed tonight, and those so discouraged that they have abandoned the search for work altogether. And no one has been more tragically harmed than the young people of this country, the first generation in memory to face a future less promising than their parents did.
"As Republicans our first concern is for those waiting tonight to begin or resume the climb up life's ladder. We do not accept that ours will ever be a nation of haves and have nots; we must always be a nation of haves and soon to haves.
"In our economic stagnation and indebtedness, we are only a short distance behind Greece, Spain, and other European countries now facing economic catastrophe. But ours is a fortunate land. Because the world uses our dollar for trade, we have a short grace period to deal with our dangers. But time is running out, if we are to avoid the fate of Europe, and those once-great nations of history that fell from the position of world leadership.
"So 2012 is a year of true opportunity, maybe our last, to restore an America of hope and upward mobility, and greater equality. The challenges aren't matters of ideology, or party preference; the problems are simply mathematical, and the answers are purely practical.
"An opposition that would earn its way back to leadership must offer not just criticism of failures that anyone can see, but a positive and credible plan to make life better, particularly for those aspiring to make a better life for themselves. Republicans accept this duty, gratefully.
"The routes back to an America of promise, and to a solvent America that can pay its bills and protect its vulnerable, start in the same place. The only way up for those suffering tonight, and the only way out of the dead end of debt into which we have driven, is a private economy that begins to grow and create jobs, real jobs, at a much faster rate than today.
"Contrary to the President's constant disparagement of people in business, it's one of the noblest of human pursuits. The late Steve Jobs - what a fitting name he had - created more of them than all those stimulus dollars the President borrowed and blew. Out here in Indiana, when a businessperson asks me what he can do for our state, I say 'First, make money. Be successful. If you make a profit, you'll have something left to hire someone else, and some to donate to the good causes we love.'
"The extremism that stifles the development of homegrown energy, or cancels a perfectly safe pipeline that would employ tens of thousands, or jacks up consumer utility bills for no improvement in either human health or world temperature, is a pro-poverty policy. It must be replaced by a passionate pro-growth approach that breaks all ties and calls all close ones in favor of private sector jobs that restore opportunity for all and generate the public revenues to pay our bills.
"That means a dramatically simpler tax system of fewer loopholes and lower rates. A pause in the mindless piling on of expensive new regulations that devour dollars that otherwise could be used to hire somebody. It means maximizing on the new domestic energy technologies that are the best break our economy has gotten in years.
"There is a second item on our national must-do list: we must unite to save the safety net. Medicare and Social Security have served us well, and that must continue. But after half and three quarters of a century respectively, it's not surprising that they need some repairs. We can preserve them unchanged and untouched for those now in or near retirement, but we must fashion a new, affordable safety net so future Americans are protected, too.
"Decades ago, for instance, we could afford to send millionaires pension checks and pay medical bills for even the wealthiest among us. Now, we can't, so the dollars we have should be devoted to those who need them most.
"The mortal enemies of Social Security and Medicare are those who, in contempt of the plain arithmetic, continue to mislead Americans that we should change nothing. Listening to them much longer will mean that these proud programs implode, and take the American economy with them. It will mean that coming generations are denied the jobs they need in their youth and the protection they deserve in their later years.
"It's absolutely so that everyone should contribute to our national recovery, including of course the most affluent among us. There are smart ways and dumb ways to do this: the dumb way is to raise rates in a broken, grossly complex tax system, choking off growth without bringing in the revenues we need to meet our debts. The better course is to stop sending the wealthy benefits they do not need, and stop providing them so many tax preferences that distort our economy and do little or nothing to foster growth.
"It's not fair and it's not true for the President to attack Republicans in Congress as obstacles on these questions. They and they alone have passed bills to reduce borrowing, reform entitlements, and encourage new job creation, only to be shot down time and time again by the President and his Democratic Senate allies.
"This year, it falls to Republicans to level with our fellow citizens about this reality: if we fail to act to grow the private sector and save the safety net, nothing else will matter much. But to make such action happen, we also must work, in ways we Republicans have not always practiced, to bring Americans together.
"No feature of the Obama Presidency has been sadder than its constant efforts to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans by castigating others. As in previous moments of national danger, we Americans are all in the same boat. If we drift, quarreling and paralyzed, over a Niagara of debt, we will all suffer, regardless of income, race, gender, or other category. If we fail to shift to a pro-jobs, pro-growth economic policy, there will never be enough public revenue to pay for our safety net, national security, or whatever size government we decide to have.
"As a loyal opposition, who put patriotism and national success ahead of party or ideology or any self-interest, we say that anyone who will join us in the cause of growth and solvency is our ally, and our friend. We will speak the language of unity. Let us rebuild our finances, and the safety net, and reopen the door to the stairway upward; any other disagreements we may have can wait.
"You know, the most troubling contention in our national life these days isn't about economics, or policy at all. It's about us, as a free people. In two alarming ways, that contention is that we Americans just can't cut it anymore.
"In word and deed, the President and his allies tell us that we just cannot handle ourselves in this complex, perilous world without their benevolent protection. Left to ourselves, we might pick the wrong health insurance, the wrong mortgage, the wrong school for our kids; why, unless they stop us, we might pick the wrong light bulb!
"A second view, which I admit some Republicans also seem to hold, is that we Americans are no longer up to the job of self-government. We can't do the simple math that proves the unaffordability of today's safety net programs, or all the government we now have. We will fall for the con job that says we can just plow ahead and someone else will pick up the tab. We will allow ourselves to be pitted one against the other, blaming our neighbor for troubles worldwide trends or our own government has caused.
"2012 must be the year we prove the doubters wrong. The year we strike out boldly not merely to avert national bankruptcy but to say to a new generation that America is still the world's premier land of opportunity. Republicans will speak for those who believe in the dignity and capacity of the individual citizen; who believe that government is meant to serve the people rather than supervise them; who trust Americans enough to tell them the plain truth about the fix we are in, and to lay before them a specific, credible program of change big enough to meet the emergency we are facing.
"We will advance our positive suggestions with confidence, because we know that Americans are still a people born to liberty. There is nothing wrong with the state of our Union that the American people, addressed as free-born, mature citizens, cannot set right. Republicans in 2012 welcome all our countrymen to a program of renewal that rebuilds the dream for all, and makes our 'city on a hill' shine once again."
I have been reading speculation in the comments sections of a British newspaper about these countries threatening to use gold to pay Iran for oil. That is scary.
Truer words have seldom been said. I’ve said a few times he’d have been Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and the country and media (and more than a few here) want fire-in-the-belly charisma and rhetoric. I get that. But charisma doesn’t mean integrity and humility doesn’t mean a lack of passion as we Hoosiers know very well from what Daniels has accomplished here.
Graces and blessings!
Daniels is rumored to be the guy the DC GOP will throw into the race to stop NEWT once MITT fails. So that explains why praise for Daniels speech is not welcome.
If we were not in the middle of a campaign, the circumstances and attitude would be different. At this point, he is persona non grata from the anti-MITT forces.
Cooled reasoned logic is fine for Freepers who think and are knowledgeable. That's not the group that a response should be aimed toward.
Sounds like you all have a great Governor in Mitch. Congratulations. We should all be so lucky. But, for my money, the GOP response should be hard hitting and designed to move some of those smoes who aren't knoweldgable and actually thinking to themselves that Barraque Ubama made sense in his speech.
Maybe I just have a bad attitude.
Oldplayer
You are right on the money. I would have to do some research, but at some point I assume back in the 70s or 80s the British people faced an election like we now face,and they had a choice between a party(labor party)that wanted socialism (government control of healthcare and the key sectors of the economy and the conservative party that wanted the status quo as far as the economic system - free enterprise.
The people of England made the wrong choice and the socialist once in power started baby-sitting the people. Good for the first little while, but as history has shown us time after time, socialism finally proves to be a failed system and we have what we see in England today. It’s a total mess.
“It is a setup for a brokered convention....if romney does not take it in the primaries.....we will go to the point of spilling the blood of conservatives on the convention floor. We shall see.”
My take on Daniels, too.
I despise Romney and I will not vote for him even if he becomes our nominee.
I’m a Pat Buchanan, Joe Sobran paleoconservative from the alleged protectionist wing of the party and it’s barely conservative enough for me. I read Chronicles magazine, think Rush is too party-line and can’t stand Sean Hannity. I want to retch at being of the same mind of Bill Kristol and the Weekly Standard on Mitch Daniels but there you have it. :-)
I would vote for Daniels in a heartbeat.
.... Perhaps .... but he said it at a strategic and poignant time when people other than the "Chorus" just might be listening ..... Just sayin
This is not about what one person said or the other .... this is now the final stages of fighting socialism on our own soil .... The battle is now .... and we are NOW on the same team and must gather together NOW to fight this battle whether we like it or not. Otherwise this great nation may well just go down with a whimper and become a mere footnote of a couple hundred years in what might suffice in the history books of the future.
We may dream of what might have been .... However, the reality of events lay before us in this time that is called NOW.
What we do now is what will be written in the history books .... for all eternity.
What we wish that could have been ..... will be of no consequence.
Actually, I tend to agree. I was letdown by the tenor of the speech and to some extent, the content.
As academically correct as Mitch might have been, you had more passion and urgency in your short post than he had in his whole response.
When the GOP has a bit of the spotlight, they can't afford to waste it. (But they seem just all too happy to.)
Oldplayer
Thanks for the explanation... I was unaware of that. I thought Daniels was firm in his position of not running for POTUS under any circumstances.
Daniels called for a "truce on social issues" this time last year at CPAC. That speech was absolutely unforgivable. No one accuses Mitch Daniels of being a stupid man. He knew what he was saying and he will forever be held responsible for that speech which was designed to suck up to the national elitist brain dead of the party. If money is all that interests him as an issue, then he, like Romney, will have to depend on the money obsessives for support. Unlike Romney, I would still vote for Daniels if he were nominated (in the absence of any new gaffes on social or military or gun issues) but I would not lift a finger to see him nominated after the CPAC speech.
He is certainly miles ahead of Romney as a state governor on conservative issues generally, has little or no reputation for lying, and does not carry Romney's massive baggage, but being better than Romney is something that any GOP governor of any state can accurately claim. It is not enough.
Gingrich is not problem free but he has NEVER betrayed us like Daniels did with the CPAC speech. Whatever his flaws, Gingrich is and always has been one of us. He lost two Congressional races before winning, built his own caucus within the GOP House caucus, deposed the spineless Robert Michel as leader and led the GOP to majority status for the first time in several (four?) decades. He did a good job as Speaker and suffered rebellion in the ranks (one suspects because he was opposed to the level of special interest corruption as usual). He was succeeded by the ultra corrupt and dismally bland Dennis Hastert (whose district was just south of my own) who has continued his corruption here in Illinois after retiring and by weepy Boehner who, with McConnell in the Senate, has served as a gutless sockmonkey in the face of Obozo.
We do not incur the debt limit increases without their cowardice and dereliction in the face of the enemy. Now, to reassure the government dependent greedheads (that these trash serve faithfully: remember also TARP) that they can continue feeding at the taxpayers' trough in exchange for campaign money, they bludgeon the Tea Party freshmen into line (discrediting them in their districts) and elevate to positions of party leadership nothing but more lapdog servants of the special interests distinguished only by their corruption and utterly bland approach. Cowardly mice! Enough.
Oh I did not know that, thanks for the info. Well then he knows the problem and he knows exactly where we are headed if we don't turn this ship of state around fast. However as part of the Bush Admin is deserves a good deal of the blame too. As does the House and the Senate that went along with all the Bush spending. The Bush spending was bad, real bad but the Obama spending is downright criminal.
Herman Cain did a better job.
.... Sadly tho .... it does all seem fleeting .... doesn’t it :-(
Daniels, all TALK and no ACTION. Crummy RINO.
Maybe, just Maybe! with the will of Providence blessing us as He did our first Founding Fathers, we won't need a GOP response next year.
Dear God, rescue us soon! (And please make the Progressives have to respond to the SOTU for years to come.)
Oldplayer
I read a couple of articles today that said the gold for oil with Iran was a done deal but I do not believe it. Or I should say that I do not believe it at current dollar price of $1500/oz gold = 15 barrels of oil per ounce of gold. India alone would be sending 250 tons of gold per year to India now I could believe 50 barrels of oil/oz gold. But the real point is, is that the rest of the world is desperately looking for a way of getting off the US dollar as a world currency. They know as well as our leaders in D.C. that our debt is unsustainable and that at some point (soon) the dollar will collapse burning everyone holding US dollars.
yup2394871293 has been here for a year (since 1/21/2011) but your post is in all other respects well taken and on point. Watch yup2394871293 not specify whom he supports.
GD liar!
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