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?
Daniels simply has never looked at the issue of abortion, except as something insoluable politically. Much as Steven Douglas could never get his head around the issue of slavery. Men like Douglas could never understand that the war came about because too many Americans were in love with evil or indifferent to it, until it came around and bit them in the butt.
In practice ,there probably isnt a more conservative governor out there right now.
I think his political tack here is a mistake, but for you to call him a Rockefeller Republican, you must be on drugs.
Evil deeds have real consequences. For instance, the fifty million dead babies if allowed to grow to maturity would be doing the jobs now filled by fifteen million immigrants, and most of them doing the jobs better.
God will not be mocked - these issues may not matter to you, but they matter to God.
God will continue to remove His hand of protection from America as long as she keeps slaughtering babies and winking at the abomination of homosexual lewdness.
We will never regain our economic footing if we don't heed His warnings.
Daniels is not correct. We have a fiscal problem precisely because we have a severe morality problem. If we don’t take on both problems at the same time, we solve nothing.
Promise:
No candidate that supports either abortion or same sex marriage,etc will ever get my vote. I don’t care what else the person has to offer, they are unfit to serve.
I saw him on Fox News Sunday and FWIW, I wouldn’t take alipundit’s word for anything.
I don’t know enough about the governor to offer an informed opinion, but I’d sure like to hear what hoosiermama, Miss Marple and other residents of Indiana think about him.
Dirk Kempthorne is a conservative who was a U.S. senator from Idaho, 1993-’99; governor of Idaho, 1999-’05; and U.S. Secretary of the Interior, 2005-’09.
He is politically tone deaf if he think he can win the election without the energetic support of social conservatives. It was they would twice elected George Bush.
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.
*********************
Sounds like the past five decades, at least.
SSDD
There will always be criticism of any decent candidate. It is FAR too soon to make a determination like your article tries to do.
A nation’s greatness and soundness are directly tied to its goodness in the sight of God.
************
Which is why we are presently tipping into the crucible.
Agreed. The only way such a deal could possibly work would be for all laws and court rulings to be reversed until we get back to what they were in 2000. Then absolutely no movement in either direction until we solve the debt problem.
The left would never agree to such a deal. Their idea of a truce is just like the jihadists. It is an opportunity to re-arm and flank your enemy. Truce to them means surrender by us.
You will not lead conservatives by telling them that you only support a portion of what they vote for and why they are conservatives.
Have you ever looked at who the conservative movement is?
I wasn't aware that he ever tried.
(Or were you talking about Stephen Douglas ?)
We have a major problem that must be fixed if we want the country to survive.
To fix it will require focus and sacrifice from many. It will require a UNIFIED front.
If you continue to fracture the electorate on social issues we all lose.
Deal with the financial and we can then try and deal with the rest.
What good is character if you have no country left?
****************
What good is a country which is utterly corrupt?
Well clearly thats your opinion, I just thiink it a failed position. Of course thats just my opinion.
I’ve met the man several times, shook his hand and talked to him. (In fact when he came to speak to our county’s Lincoln Day dinner I had to quick build him a small platform to set behind the podium for him to stand on, but if you vote on his height you should be too stupid to cast a vote anyway.) All I can say is I will campaign for him, donate to him and vote for him if he decides to run. People here who post this nonsense about him really need to see what he has done for this state and what he really stands for before they spout off on him.
No one will be the perfect candidate that is accepted by all here, but put him on the ticket and Sarah as the VP again and it will be our best chance to save this nation financially of all the candidates I have heard are looking to run now IMHO.
So you prefer no country then?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.