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Mitch Daniels: We need a “truce” on social issues (Daniels: SoCons are a Distraction)
Hot Air ^ | June 10, 2010 | Allahpundit

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?


TOPICS: Extended News; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 2012; daniels; mitchdaniels; notmymanmitch; potus2012
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To: ansel12
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?

Sorry, your picture shows up as a red "x" right now, but I'm guessing it is the same chart of voter breakdowns by religion that you posted right after the 2008 elections. IIRC, it didn't identify Social Conservatives as such, but did have some lines for evangelicals of various shapes and colors.

Regardless, the fact is that either Social Conservatives are irrelevant in national elections, or more than half of them voted for Obama in 2008. Most of the same Social Conservative idiots that supported Huckabee also previously supported Bill Clinton, and about asmany of them supported Algore in 2000 as supported GWB.

As I told you then, religious identity is a totally useless measure of electoral predictors. And people who vote based on their religious pretentions are voting from a total lack of principle.

81 posted on 08/10/2010 3:53:30 PM PDT by meadsjn (Sarah 2012, or sooner)
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To: photoguy

Is RomneyCare a fiscal conservative?

Is open borders a fiscally conservative position?

retards


82 posted on 08/10/2010 3:55:06 PM PDT by GeronL (http://libertyfic.proboards.com <--- My Fiction/ Science Fiction Board)
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To: Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus

No, its the right answer and your is the wrong one...FOR THE TIMES WE LIVE IN NOW.

Vote as you please, just don’t come whining when the country is bankrupt. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.


83 posted on 08/10/2010 3:55:44 PM PDT by photoguy
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To: GOPGuide

it seems very clear we are about to win on the social issues and the “peaceful coexistence” is just the RINO way of saying they need space to grow.

Daniels is finished.


84 posted on 08/10/2010 3:56:52 PM PDT by longtermmemmory (VOTE! http://www.senate.gov and http://www.house.gov)
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To: GeronL

Can tou tell me exactly what this has to do with this discussion?


85 posted on 08/10/2010 3:57:12 PM PDT by photoguy
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To: ansel12; meadsjn; All
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?

My guess would be that meadsjn believes in a common misconception in American politics, which is that "SoCon" encompasses any groups that are "religious" (by whatever definition, even erroneous ones). "SoCon" and "religious" are not necessarily contiguous. Blacks are very religious - perhaps the most religious group in America - but when you get right down to how they act w.r.t. abortion, etc., they are one of the most socially liberal groups, and as we all know, they routinely vote Democrat. Blacks are a large part of the reason why the abortion statistics for "Protestants" and "Southerners" are skewed way higher than you would normally expect. It's not that Southern Protestants in general are out there getting all these abortions after they hypocritically got knocked up. It's that blacks contribute so disproportionately to these statistics.

Yet, every comentator out there routinely assumes that blacks are "socially conservative," when in fact they are most definitely not, in either their behaviour or their voting patterns.

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."

86 posted on 08/10/2010 3:58:38 PM PDT by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus (The success of Darwinism was accompanied by a decline in scientific integrity. - Dr. Wm R. Thompson)
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To: photoguy
No, its the right answer and your is the wrong one...FOR THE TIMES WE LIVE IN NOW.

Vote as you please, just don’t come whining when the country is bankrupt. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Ah, I see. You're one of those people who is not smart enough to think about more than one thing at a time.

I plan to vote for conservatives - not libertarians, not RINOs, not fiscal conservatives masquerading as movement conservatives. I plan to vote for conservatives who will defend tradition values while at the same time also supporting fiscal responsibility. I fail to see what is so hard for people to grasp about that.

87 posted on 08/10/2010 4:01:19 PM PDT by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus (The success of Darwinism was accompanied by a decline in scientific integrity. - Dr. Wm R. Thompson)
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To: photoguy

oh right, open borders won’t impact the budget at all...


88 posted on 08/10/2010 4:05:21 PM PDT by GeronL (http://libertyfic.proboards.com <--- My Fiction/ Science Fiction Board)
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To: GOPGuide

I cannot believe that people were pushing Mitch Daniels

Daniels is a brain-dead Globalist....and no fiscal or social conservative. He took a taxpayer funded road (Indian Toll Road....note folks, all toll roads are taxpayer built) and sold it to a foreign company...which means people are being double-taxed.....taxed already for the road....then the extra tax to the foreign company running the road.

Globalists are never social conservatives. People need to wake up to Liberal RINOs like Daniels.


89 posted on 08/10/2010 4:06:09 PM PDT by UCFRoadWarrior (JD for Senate ..... jdforsenate.com. You either voting for JD, or voting for the Liberal...)
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To: photoguy; BenKenobi; GeronL; ansel12
Lets see them win without the middle...never gonna happen.

Ah, the myth of the heroic moderate swing voter.

To the extend that "moderates" respond to anything strongly, it is leadership. Display leadership, and they will vote for you. Waffle and squish, and they will leave you. Reagan, who was obviously socially conservative (much more, in fact, than retrospective libertarians today like to even think about), won the majority of moderates - because he displayed leadership. McCain lost them because he did not, even though McCain was arguably much softer and less vocal on social issues than Reagan was.

The myth that there is this huge majority of "moderate" voters out there in some giant ±1σ central portion of an "ideological bell curve" is just that - a myth. Poll after poll after poll shows that conservatives form a relatively large plurality in this country. As for moderates, well, some of them are right-leaning moderates, and some are left-leaning. If we win even a quarter to a third of moderates, the right-leaning ones, then we win handily.

90 posted on 08/10/2010 4:09:32 PM PDT by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus (The success of Darwinism was accompanied by a decline in scientific integrity. - Dr. Wm R. Thompson)
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To: upsdriver

Ditto’s


91 posted on 08/10/2010 4:22:36 PM PDT by vox_freedom (America is being tested as never before in its history. May God help us.)
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To: photoguy

Dead on.


92 posted on 08/10/2010 4:29:27 PM PDT by nonliberal (Graduate: Curtis E. LeMay School of International Relations)
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To: meadsjn
Regardless, the fact is that either Social Conservatives are irrelevant in national elections, or more than half of them voted for Obama in 2008. Most of the same Social Conservative idiots that supported Huckabee also previously supported Bill Clinton, and about asmany of them supported Algore in 2000 as supported GWB.

You should be able to see that chart in post 51, I can see it. You are just making up your claims which means that you are lying about them, Bill Clinton and Al Gore did not win the social conservative vote, but they did win the vote of your group.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

93 posted on 08/10/2010 4:30:15 PM PDT by ansel12 (Mitt: "I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush")
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To: onyx
Looks too much like B.O'R of Fox news for my taste.

Cheers!

94 posted on 08/10/2010 4:31:51 PM PDT by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
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To: detritus
You are a mindless troll.

Learn some history.

And turn your baseball cap forwards, and then take it off, take a shower, and get a real job.

Tell Cass Sunstein his little infiltration ploy FAILED.

Cheers!

95 posted on 08/10/2010 4:36:55 PM PDT by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
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To: photoguy; nonliberal; Mariner
Social conservatives will not be who elects the next president.
It will be the middle of the roaders....

You lose them you lose.

You guys know nothing about American voters and politics.

Social conservatives are the conservative voters, you lose them and the Republican party ceases to exist.

See post 93.

96 posted on 08/10/2010 4:41:05 PM PDT by ansel12 (Mitt: "I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush")
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To: Altura Ct.
The GOP has been doing that for over 40 years.

Um, no. GWB was the evangelicals choice for President.

How did that work out for you?

97 posted on 08/10/2010 4:47:15 PM PDT by nonliberal (Graduate: Curtis E. LeMay School of International Relations)
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To: Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
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 have a different concept of working class, white Christian conservatives than I do. Frankly I'm not sure just how many categories of Americans that you are vomiting on in that description, southern life must be hell for you.

98 posted on 08/10/2010 4:47:59 PM PDT by ansel12 (Mitt: "I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush")
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To: GOPGuide
I saw Daniels on Fox News Sunday. He did a horrible job. This guy is simply not presidential material. We need a fighter, not another get along to go along feel-good type worrying about what liberals think of him.
99 posted on 08/10/2010 4:49:32 PM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist (Mexico is the U.S. version of Hamas)
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To: RobbyS
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.

They would have invented things too. Some of them could have been outstanding athletes or political leaders.

100 posted on 08/10/2010 4:52:59 PM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist (Mexico is the U.S. version of Hamas)
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