Posted on 08/10/2010 2:28:39 PM PDT by GOPGuide
Alternate headline: Mitch Danielss dark-horse presidential bid dead on arrival. Heres what he told the Weekly Standard per the profile Ed flagged yesterday:
Beyond the debt and the deficit, in Danielss telling, all other issues fade to comparative insignificance. Hes an agnostic on the science of global warming but says his views dont matter. I dont know if the CO2 zealots are right, he said. But I dont care, because we cant afford to do what they want to do. Unless you want to go broke, in which case the world isnt going to be any greener. Poor nations are never green.
And then, he says, the next president, whoever he is, would have to call a truce on the so-called social issues. Were going to just have to agree to get along for a little while, until the economic issues are resolved. Daniels is pro-life himself, and he gets high marks from conservative religious groups in his state. He serves as an elder at the Tabernacle Presbyterian Church, in inner-city Indianapolis, which hes attended for 50 years.
John McCormack pressed him to elaborate on what he meant by a truce and Daniels couldnt offer any specifics. (Everybody just stands down for a little while, while we try to save the republic.) Enter evangelical leader Tony Perkins to lower the boom:
Not only is he noncommittal about his role as a pro-life leader, but the governor wouldnt even agree to a modest step like banning taxpayer-funded promotion of abortion overseas which [former] President Bush did on his first day in office with 65% of the countrys support. Lets face it. These arent fringe issues that stretch moderate America. Theyre mainstream ideals that an overwhelming majority of the nation espouses. I support the governor 100% on the call for fiscal responsibility, but nothing is more fiscally responsible than ending the taxpayer funding of abortion and abortion promotion. More than 70% of our nation agrees that killing innocent unborn children with federal dollars is wrong. Yet stopping government-funded murder isnt a genuine national emergency? We cannot save the republic, in Gov. Daniels words, by killing the next generation. Regardless of what the establishment believes, fiscal and social conservatism have never been mutually exclusive. Without life, there is no pursuit of happiness. Thank goodness the Founding Fathers were not timid in their leadership; they understood that truce was nothing more than surrender.
Other religious conservatives are piling on too: Something like this will cost him any consideration from one of the key constituencies of the Republican Party, says the president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. Ramesh Ponnuru is right that Daniels is kidding himself if he thinks he can avoid these landmines as president the first Supreme Court vacancy will thrust him right into the middle of it and its amazingly tone-deaf for an aspiring nominee to propose a truce on abortion given how many pro-lifers equate it with murder. But even so, Im sympathetic to his willingness to prioritize Americas entitlements crisis over everything else, even at the expense of alienating a core wing of the GOP. The hard lesson that Republicans seem to have to learn and re-learn is that, thanks to Roe, theres not much a GOP president and Congress can do legislatively about abortion, in which case why not temporarily de-emphasize it as a political issue if itll buy crucial centrist votes needed to redress a fiscal emergency? (In fact, isnt that an unstated assumption of the tea-party movement? Yes, foreign policy and social issues are important, but economic stability is now Job One.) Unless Daniels means that hes willing to compromise on a pro-choice Supreme Court nominee, which would be pure political suicide, Im not sure which social issue hes supposed to be willing to go to the wall for even if it means detonating a potential political compromise with Democrats to reform social security and Medicare. If McConnell and Boehner come to President Daniels and say theyve got the votes for a balanced-budget amendment but in return the Dems want the Defense of Marriage Amendment repealed, Daniels is supposed to tell them to hit the bricks?
Sounds to me like what hes really saying is that we should accept the status quo, whatever it may be, on social issues until entitlements are back on the path to solvency. As for abortion, I suspect his way of squaring the circle will be to argue that, in fact, because fiscal solvency is priority one and because we need lots of young workers to support our federal Ponzi schemes, the moral argument for opposing abortion is actually a very sensible economic argument too. Exit question one: Is this guy done for, assuming he ever had a chance to begin with? Exit question two: Hes pretty much a textbook example of the sort of candidate whod benefit from a California-style free-for-all primary, isnt he?
A man that is only 1/3rd or 2/3rds conservative, is no conservative.
It will be the middle of the roaders....
You lose them you lose.
I don't know if it's over half, but it a very large portion.
Social Conservatives do not put their allegiance to party and often vote on a single issues, or group of issues.
Then again, it matters a lot as to what are considered "Socila Issues". Many would lump together guns, illegals, abortion, gays etc. into that category.
Some anti-religious bigots really just mean "religious issues", gays and abortion.
Though I believe many conservatives would like the pot to be a little bigger and include them all.
I believe you are missing the point he was trying to make. He is neither pro gay or pro abortion, he will simply concentrate on the economy first as a priority and not push for an agenda that centers on those issues. He is not saying he is a lefty on those, but that he sees on the horizon a sh*tstorm coming that takes priority over everything else now.
He avoids social conservatism like the plague.
No more RINOs and no more pretenders.
The underlying problem is that some "conservatives" don't want to lead people to virtue by persuasion and example (that's too much like work), and so they want the gummint to do it for them. This is no different, really, than a bum wanting the gummint to support him instead of getting off his butt and working for a living.
IMO he has the experience and sufficient steel in his spine to do the right thing regarding fiscal discipline, and , for what little the head of governemnt can do, will do the right thing on social issues ( ie on abortion funding he will sign a bill put before him)
We are so effed up right now, we need a Christie -type of administrator, and not a sanctimonious Huckabee type who will buckle on government austerity while giving useless and maudlin speeches.
Then step aside for those less stupid than yourself who do know, idiot.
His platform is basically "I don't know, and I don't care!"
That will make a super T-shirt.
Met the man several times, heard him speak and as a business owner watched closely what he has done to this state in terms of keeping it in the black while others have sank. He is not the perfect candidate, no one man can be here, but he is the best by far throwing his hat in the ring right now IMHO.
(Also he really likes Sarah Palin as well, he was asked about her when I was standing there and you could just tell he lit up and gave a genuine smile when she was mentioned)
Not saying that you are totally ignorant or a liar, but where do you see the Socons on this chart, and where do you see your types, are you secular?
While the primary topic of this thread is interesting, what I found even more interesting came from one of the bloogers on HotAir who was discussing the subject of Mr. Daniels comments (Mary in LA on June 11, 2010).
“Mary in LA” asked: “What would the legal remedies be for the harms that might be done to a mother by her unborn baby, if they were done by a born person?”
She then goes into an analysis of a set of “harms” that she says an unborn person could do to it’s mother, were the mother FORCED to complete the pregnancy.
Among many disturbing things, one of them is the state of “Mary in LA’s” mind and reasoning, which ignores that the “unborn” did not create any of the conditions being discussed, yet she analyzes the “harms” as if the “unborn” would be guilty of them if any of them came to pass. Of course, she also ignores that yes, the mother had a “choice”, a choice not to conceive a child in the first place. But Mary is one of those who thinks that choice can simply be undone by killing the child in the womb.
You have to read her blog post; its amazing and disturbing.
What about the candidate that says these are not Federal issues, but State issues and refuse to take a position on them when running for Federal office?
And, what if they ALSO pledge to confirm only judges who are STRICT CONSTRUCTIONISTS to the Federal courts?
Would that be enough, or would they also have to pledge to take an official position and vote in a certain way at the Federal level...even if they believe the Constitution forbids Federal involvement?
Social Conservatives provide the same sort of energy for Republican candidates that the public employee unions do for the Democrats. Recall that Bush almost lost in 2000 when on the eve of the election they Democrats sprung their little drunk driving trap. Lots of people who saw Bush as a “church” types stayed home because they felt betrayed.
In any case, it is because Republicans have thought the way you do since Reagan’s time, that it was enough to give lip -service to the pro-life cause is the problem.
Gov. Daniels took a whole raft of you-know-what after he floated this brain-dead idea. He appears since to have pretty much backed off it.
Gov. Daniels has an excellent record as a pro-life, fiscally-conservative, small-government conservative. I wouldn’t not vote for the fellow because he tried out a bone-head idea as a trial balloon over two years from election day.
I understand what he was trying to say. If it were possible to put all the other issues on hold, and just get all people of good will, whether socially-liberal or socially-conservative, to focus on fixing the fiscal disaster befalling us, that might be a good thing.
The problem is not the idea but the premises undergirding it.
First false premise - that you can put social issues “on hold.” Good luck with that with your first Supreme Court nomination. Good luck with that when folks want to continue Planned Parenthood funding, and sending American aid dollars overseas to abortionists. That’s not exactly putting the issue “on hold” - looks more to me like “maintaining the pro-death status quo.”
Second false premise - that there are people of good will who are socially-liberal. Anyone who thinks that women have a right to dead babies is a person of evil will and bad faith. We are the frogs to their scorpions. We proceed across the river with them on our backs at our own grave risk.
Third false premise - that there are all that many folks who are socially-liberal who also would agree with conservative ideas about fixing the deficit, etc. I don’t think so. Many of these folks are going to be fine raising taxes to close the deficit. Few folks who are socially-liberal are also truly small-government conservative. I’m not saying they don’t exist, just that they’re not a meaningful part of the electorate or the political class.
If I hear more of this sort of garbage from Gov. Daniels, I will refuse to support him in 2012. But if he continues to move away from it, I’ll give him a mulligan. He’s a good guy and deserves it.
Without social issues there is no point.
I had a thread pulled and was told that if it had involved tax dollars it might not have been.
I said it - and reading through the 1st Chapter of Romans, apparently God is saying it, also.
"Deal with the financial and we can then try and deal with the rest."
They are part of the same - we are heading into economic ruin BECAUSE we have given a nod-and-a-wink to everything that God tells us not to do.
You may not be a believer in the Bible ("a good book, but not really applicable to today's world"), but that doesn't mean it isn't the Truth.
Welcome to FR, you have already built up a nice little troll posting history in your first five days.
And all the liberaltarians, I mean libertarians, vote dem so we ignore them too.
I am going to save this article and when all the tooters, McCainiacs, country clubbers, and Willardites come out supporting this guy, I’ll be happy to remind them exactly who he is and why he will never get elected.
The “fiscal conservatives” have no gauge to determine whats a waste without social conservatism.
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