Free Republic

For all the bluster a statewide smoking ban sparked at the beginning of the 2012 legislative session, the version Indiana lawmakers may end up approving seems little more than a wisp of smoke. The Senate approved a statewide ban Wednesday for the first time in its history, with 13 Democrats joining 16 Republicans for a 29-21 vote. But the proposal passed hardly resembles the one the House has approved six times in recent years.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) kept the speculation about a possible brokered GOP convention alive this week when he was asked whether Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels could still become a last-minute presidential candidate. DeMint spoke highly of Daniels when asked at a meeting of the Aiken Republican Club in Aiken, S.C., on Tuesday night. “He’s the only one who could make it happen,” DeMint said, according to a report published by the Augusta Chronicle, a local paper. “But I don’t think his wife will let it happen.” In a Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was chosen as...

Like strong solid bookends on either side of a couple of trashy dog-eared paperbacks, two men that represent the best of what the Republican Party offers made speeches this week. Between them, another accusation-filled debate between the contenders for the GOP presidential nomination. On Tuesday, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels gave the party's response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address. Not only did he clearly articulate how runaway government spending and an unaffordable national debt is the root of our ongoing economic crisis, he proposed common sense and unity where the president has advocated for already failed policies...

The official Republican response to the President’s State of the Union Address was fine—as far as it went. But Gov. Mitch Daniels missed a golden opportunity to put before the American people a better vision of family, faith, and freedom.   Interestingly, the only mention of family in Gov. Daniels’ response was his praise for President Obama’s own family. Let me stipulate: The Obama family is a model family, apparently devoted to one another. The president even lives happily under the same roof with his mother-in-law. Now, that’s devotion.   But Gov. Daniels could have noted that the policies of the Obama...

I can't blame anyone for dreaming about a late entrant to the Republican presidential field -- Mitt Romney is tone deaf, Newt Gingrich is insufferable, Rick Santorum seems unable to catch fire, and Ron Paul, well, is Ron Paul. The likelihood of beating Barack Obama with any of these guys is uncertain at best, and the desire for someone more conservative, competent, and capable is hard to deny.A sizeable slice of the conservative commentariat seems to think drafting Mitch Daniels is the answer. The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol declares the Indiana Governor the winner of a debate he didn't...

Americans Don't Want a 'Truce' on Social Issues Gov. Mitch Daniels is misinterpreting the voting public. By RICHARD LAND Indiana governor and likely Republican presidential candidate Mitch Daniels has suggested that Americans call a "truce" on divisive social issues until our precarious financial house is back in order. Many pundits have praised the idea, typically thrilled that a Republican leader seems willing to jettison, even temporarily, strong positions on abortion or gay marriage. But social conservatives are mad, and rightly so. Throughout the 1980s and '90s, social conservatives were the foot soldiers for Republican victories—only to see their issues bargained...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: You know, the response to the State of the Union last night is getting more positive reaction than the State of the Union speech itself. Mitch Daniels. And I have to tell you, other than his opening when he started, I said, "Oh, no, no, no, please." Then I started thanking God that nobody was watching 'cause it's a response that's, you know, 15 minutes after the State of the Union speech. But after he got through the open, it was good. It was really, really good. Mitch Daniels was really, really good in his response last...

As Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich continue to throw millions of dollars and hundreds of sarcastic barbs at each other, their constant attempts to prove they are the best at gotcha politics is wearing thin. Of course every primary process includes some of what is politely called "contrasting" (in reality it is highlighting the negative aspects of an opponents record), but getting lost in all the mud slinging and chest thumping is the most important issue in the country today. In the GOP response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address last night, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels clearly...

Via Daniel Halper at the Standard, where Bill Kristol’s umpteen-thousandth plea for Daniels to jump in and rescue the party was published this morning. This isn’t a campaign ad, just an (unusually long and polished) RGA promo keyed to Daniels’s SOTU rebuttal tonight. But let’s face it: If he does well, the “second look at Mitch?” murmurs will be deafening tomorrow and this video will operate effectively as a campaign ad, and the RGA surely knows it. Just as Daniels himself surely knew that his spotlight turn tonight, starring the great what-might-have-been of 2012 positioned opposite Obama on national TV...

"I talked to a top Romney adviser tonight who said, 'Look, if Mitt Romney cannot win in Florida then we're going to have to try to reinvent the smoke-filled room which has been democratized by all these primaries. And we're going to have try to come with someone as an alternative to Newt Gingrich who could be Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels, someone.' VIDEO AT SOURCE

Debate Winner: Mitch Daniels JAN 23, 2012 BY WILLIAM KRISTOL I’ve got to think Monday night’s debate further swelled the groundswell of support for Mitch Daniels. The liveliest part of the debate was at the beginning, when Mitt went after Newt—and Republicans all over America watched with fascinated horror at the thought that these are the two GOP frontrunners. The only spectacle in American politics more off-putting than Newt Gingrich in self-righteous defense mode is Mitt Romney in self-righteous attack mode. I thought Mitt’s attacks were somewhat more dishonest than Newt’s defenses were disingenuous, but it was good to move...

Big Labor: Indiana unions, opposed to becoming the first right-to-work state in the Rust Belt, may disrupt Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis. Their unnecessary roughness will cost the Hoosiers needed jobs. On Friday, as the Indiana Senate was scheduled to take up legislation supported by Gov. Mitch Daniels to make Indiana the 23rd right-to-work state, Indiana unions considered copying the disruptive and coercive tactics of Occupy Wall Street to disrupt arguably America's premier sporting event, the Super Bowl, to be held in Indianapolis on Feb. 5. As in Wisconsin, where embattled GOP Gov. Scott Walker faces a recall election over...

In case there was any doubt, the results of Saturday's South Carolina primary proved there's a proxy war going on in the Republican Party. While casual observers may see a battle between former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, the real fight is between a party establishment that believes only a moderate can win in November and conservatives who want to block a moderate from winning the nomination. After the first three official contests, three different candidates have scored a victory and the fourth showed well enough to stay in the fight. Far from...

This morning, the Republican leadership on the Hill announced that Indiana governor Mitch Daniels would deliver the GOP response Tuesday night to President Obama’s State of the Union Address. An hour ago, a dark lady mysteriously appeared at our offices and dropped off an envelope before vanishing down the stairwell. We can’t vouch for the authenticity of the document the envelope contained, of course. But it appears to be a draft of a section—the final section, apparently—of Daniels’s speech text. On the first page of the section is typed, in capital letters, “DO NOT CIRCULATE WITH THE REST OF THE...

INDIANAPOLIS -- Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a popular fiscal conservative who flirted with a presidential bid, will deliver the Republican response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced the selection of Daniels in a statement Thursday in which they praised his "solid record of effective government and fiscal responsibility." Daniels provides the GOP with a one-time potential White House hopeful as a counterpoint to Obama in an election year heavily focused on the nation's economic outlook. He also governs a state that Obama...

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels says he will push for a statewide smoking ban and mild local government reforms in the 2012 legislative session. Those are among the priorities Daniels, a Republican who will begin his last year in office in January, plans to outline in a noon speech Friday at the downtown Skyline Club for the Kiwanis Club of Indianapolis. In an interview Thursday, he also hinted that he would support a proposal seeking legislative approval to let voters decide whether to increase local income taxes to expand mass transit in Marion County and surrounding counties. “My attitude is the...

INDIANAPOLIS -- There was positive economic news for Indiana on two fronts Tuesday, including some found money that could eventually result in a tax refund. State revenue is still pacing well ahead of projections, and the state found $300 million that it didn't know it had, RTV6's Norman Cox reported. The state collected about $10 million more than revenue projections in November, Gov. Mitch Daniels said. Tax collection was about $42 million higher than the same period last year. Daniels said corporate income taxes paid by e-check were mistakenly put into a holding account and weren't credited to the General...

Last May, when Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels was pondering a White House bid, Jason Sorens of the University of Buffalo wrote a commentary that went largely unnoticed. Wanting to "take a look at Jon Huntsman," who has been "widely viewed as a 'moderate' Republican, but whose" policies "stake out a position that may be more libertarian than Daniels'," Sorens concluded that after former Gov. Gary Johnson and Texas Congressman Ron Paul, Huntsman offered the most libertarian credentials — besting even Daniels. Sorens's views deserve recognition in New Hampshire, a generally conservative state with decisively libertarian leanings, as our first-in-the-nation presidential...

Mike Pence, Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush — conservatives all year long have been wishing, yearning, even begging people who aren’t in the presidential race to enter the fray and save them from what seems like a frighteningly uninspiring field of candidates. Yet could it be that the sharpest, most accomplished, most campaign-savvy, and most full-spectrum conservative in a quarter-century of presidential contests has been in the contest all along, working harder than anybody, making at least as much intellectual sense as anybody, never blowing a debate, and never failing to stand on...

Republican candidates for president have been busy for weeks now, laboring strenuously to give the 2012 nomination to Mitt Romney. And he keeps trying to give it back. The former Massachusetts governor could walk to next year's GOP convention without touching the ground, treading exclusively on the bodies of rivals who have fallen on their faces. He's the equivalent of the Alabama Crimson Tide, playing a schedule heavy on Southeastern Louisiana and Middle Tennessee State. He should be running up the score every week. Instead, he keeps finding ways to keep his opponents in the game. Look at the opposition....