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?
Let us see them win the election without social conservatives.
But this was a stupid remark. There is no possibility of a truce, and right now the Democratic party is unapologetically pro-choice about pro-gay. Obama’s views are precisely those of Sarah Weddington: The woman’s right to kill her child is
absolute, in the womb or out.
and we all know that "middle of the roaders" want sex in kindergarten and free abortions to middle schoolers
Daniels has just lost credibility. While the debt and spending are the most important issues, social issues cannot be dismissed.
He's very knowledgeable, no doubt about that and I thought he came across honest and sincere. He was quick with his answers and I loved his comment (paraphrasing) “you'd be surprised at how much government, you never miss.”
It's nice to know that he likes Sarah. I'll wager she admires him. I guess they know one another as governors.
What was the context? Is he anti-life, pro-gay?
The answer is NO. Daniels is a very good man who has very traditional values.
Maybe he was making a larger point which is being twisted out of all recognition?
One very fat point IN FAVOR of Daniels is that he is a huge BUDGET HAWK. Not saying he should be President yet, necessarily, but his skills are very badly needed in DC.
Really? That's a damn joke. The GOP has been doing that for over 40 years. How's that working out? Graham, McCain, Daniels and all the other namby pamby golden calf worshipers are part and parcel of why we are where we are today. These go along to get along types are the main reason we are staring into the abyss. If these guys are conservatives I hate to think what liberal means.
The GOP compromises and or backs away completely on social issues and the Left crams it down our throats. Not to mention much of the financial debacle is directly related to social issues and the associated sending and/or programs which the right caves on all the time.
If they have no stomach or backbone for the fight to preserve both our nation and culture they need to move the hell out of the way.
I agree with you. He is top notch in a fiscal sense, but he messes up here.
so killing a third of my generation has absolutely zero fiscal consequences? Think again. Fix the social issues and the fiscal issues will sort themselves out.
There are long-term structural problems with the economy that tax cutting alone are not going to fix.
Hint:
It's not abortion or same sex marriage.
Wrong answer. Social issues are important, and most of us are intelligent enough to understand that we can deal with both at the same time.
People who are untrustworthy on social issues also tend to be untrustworthy on fiscal issues, as well. This nonsense that we "have to focus on fiscal issues" and ignore social issues is just cover fire for RINOs. No thanks. Anyone not smart enough to realise that abortion and gay marriage are just as important to the future of this country as debts and deficit are is someone who is obviously too stupid to have anything good to contribute to the political process.
Lets see them win without the middle...never gonna happen.
What good is a country without character?
Abortion isn’t the issue, character is. I want to know what makes up a candidate inside them. If they haven’t a problem with killing an unborn baby, that is a character flaw I am unwilling to look past.
Daniels can focus on economic issues and that would be great. If he is afraid to take a stand on moral issues, he has a problem because the Democrats and the media aren’t going to let him off the hook. When they badger him on abortion as they do all Republican candidates, what is he going to say? Daniels had better be prepared and his answers better be heartfelt because I and others will be watching.
BTW, social conservatives are economic conservatives. It is the economy only conservatives who are the problem. They are the ones willing to sell their soul for a buck.
No they won’t.
As long as you make the social issues your voting plank, you will continue to lose.
The middle are mindless dolts. Flashy commercials and a good ten second soundbite is all that’s needed to land them.
“What good is a country without character?”
So I guess we wait and see. Clearly we don’t agree.
I’ll take the COUNTRY first.
Well said!
They aren’t two issues.
Abortion has severe fiscal long term consequences. Abortion has been legal since 1973, which means that the generation that is now 37 or younger will be smaller than the preceding generations.
This has severe consequences for the tax base in the next 15 years, and beyond, which will persist so long as abortion is legal.
Don’t get me wrong, many of the fiscal problems can be solved by cutting spending, but unless abortion is banned, you won’t get rid of the overall structural problems.
The middle choses, thats the fact. If you are correct (and I don’t think you are)you had better hope its your soundbites that sway them because if they don’t you go down in flames. Can you say Obama for 8?
Reality sucks but that’s reality.
No, fiscal conservatives have a moral compass too. They just understand the battle and what must be won FIRST.
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