McCain's problem was his voting record and his behavior with legislation. No one can point to Daniels's record as governor as anything but very conservative. About the most that you can really fault him for is when he first took office, he tried to push through a temporary tax increase to balance the budget. I disagreed with him on that and, after some fallout, he backed off.
But I think that Mitch is a pretty savvy guy and says and does very deliberate things. So he hosted a dinner to score some political points; as long as he's not bringing over hookers to the governor's mansion, I look at his record. And it's good.
For example, lots of people on this board gave Mitch all sorts of grief about his reaction to the Dem legislators fleeing the state--but who got the last laugh? The legislature came back and Mitch got his agenda passed. People here don't seem to realize that the guy just might know what he's doing when he says certain things.
Besides, he’s attracting the Bush team folks, who are clearly not conservative.
Agreed and a fair point. But I'll take Bush and his politics over Obama any day of the week.
But I’m going to work hard against him in the primary in favor of either Cain, Palin, some others perhaps.
I know it's not a particularly popular view on here, but I subscribe to the Buckley rule: I support the most conservative candidate who can win. Like I said upthread, I see three electable candidates from the GOP side. I view Mitch as the most conservative of the three.
You’re not hearing me (us). McCain’s voting record was only half his problem. His mouth was the other half. Daniels certainly has much more conservative actions than McCain but his mouth is almost as meely.
We do not buy into this savvy and deliberate stuff - we know what that means - we know it means he will trash the talk radio crowd or the pro life crowd or the anti Muslim crowd to try and make the liberals feel unthreatened by him. Nor do we buy the fact that “one of the three” stuff as far as who is going to win.
Daniels is going to have to fight this battle for as long as he’s in the race.