Posted on 08/10/2010 2:28:39 PM PDT by GOPGuide
Alternate headline: “Mitch Daniels’s dark-horse presidential bid dead on arrival.” Here’s what he told the Weekly Standard per the profile Ed flagged yesterday:
Beyond the debt and the deficit, in Daniels’s telling, all other issues fade to comparative insignificance. He’s an agnostic on the science of global warming but says his views don’t matter. “I don’t know if the CO2 zealots are right,” he said. “But I don’t care, because we can’t afford to do what they want to do. Unless you want to go broke, in which case the world isn’t 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. We’re 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 he’s attended for 50 years.
John McCormack pressed him to elaborate on what he meant by a “truce” and Daniels couldn’t 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 wouldn’t 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 country’s support. Let’s face it. These aren’t fringe issues that stretch moderate America. They’re 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 isn’t 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 it’s 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, I’m sympathetic to his willingness to prioritize America’s 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, there’s 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 it’ll buy crucial centrist votes needed to redress a fiscal emergency? (In fact, isn’t 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 he’s willing to compromise on a pro-choice Supreme Court nominee, which would be pure political suicide, I’m not sure which social issue he’s 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 they’ve 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 he’s 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: He’s pretty much a textbook example of the sort of candidate who’d benefit from a California-style free-for-all primary, isn’t he?
At all the Tea Party rallies I have been to, social issues aren't even on the map. What you are seeing now is the rise of the libertarians and South Park conservatives.
I'm not describing "working class, white Christian conservatives" since the folks I'm describing don't work a whole lot, aren't really Christian, and don't vote conservative. Though I guess they are white.
Guess I've been to a different type of Tea Party then.
What you are seeing now is the rise of the libertarians and South Park conservatives.
Way to fragment the Reagan coalition there, bucko!
I guess that you voted Democrat that election.
I will tell you that all Protestant Christians lumped together, no matter whether they are black, white, Hispanic, go to church every week, or almost never go, when you lump them all together under Protestant, the Republican party always wins the majority of that category.
That Protestant category even voted majority Republican in 1940 and 1944, in the turmoil of the 1964 year, the Protestant vote went Democrat for the only time since the 1932/1936 elections.
Tea Partiers (myself included) are more worried about the intrusion of the State into peoples lives and our crushing tax burden than we are about the gays getting hitched.
You spewed a lot of nonsense venom in that vile post, you may want to open your eyes a little.
Funny, I'm a Tea Partier too, and I'm concerned about conservatism across the board. But then again, that's because I'm the only reliable kind of conservative around - a movement conservative. Not some pseudo-conservative, RINOish libertarian/fiscal conservative type.
Your issue is clearly with conservatives and conservatism.
You are one of the small percentage of secular/liberal voters that wants to vote Republican for economic reasons but you despise who they are.
Wow, somebody's pitching a fit tonight.
What's wrong, the tornader trash yer trailer?
/ducks
I would venture to say that I am to the right of you on many issues.
LOL, sure.
I was just surprised to hear such irrational, bigoted trash talk coming from you. You made it clear that you despise Southerners and working class people, that sneering tone really put you in a bad light.
“They may go on TV and say stuff like “Sweet Jeeeeeesus, I thought that thar tornader was gonna take ma trailer!” but that doesn’t mean you’ll find these folks in church on Sunday in large numbers. Actually, you won’t. Trust me, I’ve done a lot of door-to-door and visitation in a lot of neighbourhoods, and this type of folk talk a lot about God and they sound religious, but don’t typically have much to do with religion. Yet, when they vote Democrat so that the welfare will keep flowing, you then have people like meadsjn squawking about all these “SoCons” are voting Democrat. Except these folks aren’t SoCons. They aren’t really against abortion, and to the extent that they would oppose gay marriage, it would not be out of any moral or philosophical principles, but instead would be because “them queers jus’ ain’t raaaht.”
You're right - I DO despise people who draw welfare checks and watch Jerry Springer all day, who use emergency rooms as taxpayer-paid clinics, who pump out babies from three different baby daddies, and who are more likely to make a living by selling meth than from honest labour. I despise them very much.
But guess what? I'm not talking about either working class people or Southerners in general when I describe this type of person. Think along the lines of Levi Johnson (who is not a Southerner, and who doesn't seem inclined to get a real job of ANY sort) - HIS type of person.
You know nothing about "my group", as I have no such "group", unless you want to "group" me with the plurality of reasoning people who don't subscribe to "groupthink" of any sort.
I can see your silly charts now, without the hinderance of a firewall. Your assumptions are as silly as the silly assumptions made in your silly charts.
Church attendance has nothing to do with belief in God. Neither does church attendance have anything to do with political propensity to vote one way or the other, as the majority of Obama voters "attend church" and claim to be Christian, as is their right.
You want to belong to a cohesive, vote-alike "group" that does not exist.
Here's a choice of "groups" for you. Reasoning, constitutional conservative individuals do not vote for communist, collectivist candidates; and communist, collectivist voters do not vote for candidates who support the constitutional freedoms of individuals.
You want a religious tyranny, which is no better than any other sort of tyranny. I prefer the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion, wherein each individual can worship as he or she sees fit.
The Age of Reason that provided the platform for the formation of this nation also had its share of clerics of various sorts who each wanted to instill a religious tyranny of their own flavor and choosing. The founders had to resist such religious tyrants, just as they resisted the political tyranny of Britain. Here's what Jefferson had to say about the topic:
"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
Thomas Jefferson
"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear."Of course, such reasoning is a terrifying prospect to those who choose to live in "blind-folded fear".
Thomas Jefferson
Too late, the inner man oozed out.
“Another group that I’ve noticed this to be the case with, at least as far as assumptions based on stereotypes are made, is poor rural whites - you know, the stereotypical trailer-dwelling, truck on blocks in the front yard, Wal-Mart-shopping, good ol’ boy types. Fact is, these folks generally are not religious. They may go on TV and say stuff like “Sweet Jeeeeeesus, I thought that thar tornader was gonna take ma trailer!” but that doesn’t mean you’ll find these folks in church on Sunday in large numbers. Actually, you won’t. Trust me, I’ve done a lot of door-to-door and visitation in a lot of neighbourhoods, and this type of folk talk a lot about God and they sound religious, but don’t typically have much to do with religion.
Yet, when they vote Democrat so that the welfare will keep flowing, you then have people like meadsjn squawking about all these “SoCons” are voting Democrat. Except these folks aren’t SoCons. They aren’t really against abortion, and to the extent that they would oppose gay marriage, it would not be out of any moral or philosophical principles, but instead would be because “them queers jus’ ain’t raaaht.”
The data as shown in post 93 and post 51 says different.
If you are secular, or indifferent to Christianity, then you are overwhelmingly likely to be a liberal voter, and anti-conservative.
Look at your personal category in those charts, it explains why you so despise conservatives, LOL, it must torment you to have to vote with us to get our economic policies.
Again, you know nothing about my "personal category", as I claim no such category.
You sound like one of those yahoos who show up in traffic court quoting scripture at the judge. The only principle involved is that of stupidity.
Wow, you really seem to have a chip on your shoulder and want to moan about something.
Somebody tip over the truck on blocks in your front yard again?
Whatever else we might say, your position on the Nicaragua canal is well nigh irresponsible. What next, Free Silver?
Hey, you don’t like Southerners, I do.
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