Don’t pretend like you haven’t been part of that conversation.

The tax hike on the rich (which we both agree was a mistake on Daniels’ part) was in the context of an attempt on the part of the Daniels administration to reduce spending and balance the budget (the issue that he campaigned on and got into gubernatorial politics for). Every other thing on that list was conservative (i.e., reduction of spending or a reform of the way government works), the only thing that the IN Senate leader Bosma slapped Daniels’ hand on was the 1% tax on people earning >$100,000. This was well-done on Bosma’s part, but that’s very, very different from the “Daniels the big-spending Republican dragged to austerity by the leg” story that you’re trying to create here.

Right to work was not pushed by Daniels in the interest of getting his education reform bill and township bills passed — both being bills that are conservative in nature. Do you consider Reagan’s emphasis on defense (and subsequent sacrifice of his spending agenda) to be a capitulation? Politics means that not everything you want will be accomplished. Daniels would have signed RTW if it had passed and has made statements in support of it in the past; he just wasn’t going to waste scarce political capital on something he didn’t campaign on and that Dems were going to dig their heels in even more for. Since he actually got something out of it (school choice and township bill), why is this an issue?

I have no idea what is wrong with redistricting in IN, and I’d wager that you don’t, either. If IBJ would like to clue us in on what he found objectionable, I’m willing to hear it out, but let’s not assume that it was a grand betrayal of conservatives before the facts are in. (This one’s especially galling to me since it indicts Speaker Bosma and the rest of the Reps as cowards, as well — something that is completely contradicted by their valiant stands for the pro-life bill, RTW, etc.)

You’re pretty much right about the PP bill. Same thing happened here with Jan Brewer and SB 1070. I’d give him a little credit for it, and it certainly didn’t contradict his principles, but the leg deserves the lion’s share of the credit here.

Such as? On what issues? Based on what?

When ‘becker and I explained that JD Hayworth was a horrible candidate in the AZ Senate primary, we explained exactly how he was and is bad. It’s incumbent on you to do the same, especially since many hoosiers have a favorable view of Daniels at odds with your own that they have explained.

that they would not admit him. I don’t remember if that was Studs or Watts who was not admitted, though.

on these issues, took action on them from his first day in office onwards, and entered electoral politics because of this concern, it’s either a lie (or more benignly, simple misinformation) to pretend that he’s been dragged towards austerity. The Medicaid reform, switch to HSAs, toll road privatization, and the other privatization and reform efforts were initiated by Daniels, not the legislature. All of the changes to employment conditions and costs of the executive branch’s operation have likewise come from Daniels, not the legislature. Likewise, the budgets signed into law originated in Daniels’ executive office, not the legislative body. Far from letting inertia take its course, Daniels has been highly energetic in attaining conservative results for his state, and in getting that comfy R majority in the leg elected. As a fantastic conservative in his own right, I certainly don’t mean to cast Speaker Bosma as a bit player: he has certainly played a role in bringing these efforts to fruition, and was a useful foil to Daniels on the tax issue. They both have a great working relationship, which has been a factor. I also want to make clear, however, that Daniels was not resting on his laurels and that he was, indeed, conservative and active in his state.

History began before 2008, and before the Tea Party was a gleam in Rick Santelli’s eye, Daniels was doing the things in IN that the Tea Party wants politicians to do in Washington DC. The proposed tax hike was not class warfare, since it was justified along accounting and not classist lines. It was a mistake. This is acknowledged by Daniels, was corrected by Bosma, and the rest of Daniels’ tenureship has been characterized by his pursuit of both lower spending *and* lower taxes. It is true that he has focused on spending, but he has in fact lowered the burden of taxation in his state. You’ll look in vain for a statement on Daniels’ part saying that any taxation, much less targeted taxation of the rich, is a good thing, and you’ll find scads characterizing taxation as a form of coercion. (As in this link: http://thebrowser.com/interviews/mitch-daniels-on-how-libertarians-can-govern?nocache=) It’s fine to think that Daniels is ; it’s not so fine to characterize him as a maleficent tax hiker as a result, given that the net result of his tenureship has been a tax reduction.*

You know all of this, Ace. If you just wanted to play cute to get me to waste 5 min of my life regurgitating it in stream-of-consciousness fashion for the benefit of RS readers, all you had to do was ask

*This isn’t specific to you since I don’t know Barbour’s record on taxes (IIRC it was good), but Palin and Huck supporters specifically shouldn’t be quick to jump to tax-hiker argument, given that both candidates actively and successfully agitated for class-based tax hikes, and increased the burden of taxation in their respective states.

generally howl about that one, though? And is not their Speaker a worm with no integrity? Those two factors don’t seem to be the case in IN.

It could be happening, but without proof I just don’t know, and would rather not impugn the reputation of two fantastic conservatives over conjecture.

in the sense of any singular unified group at the heart of the machinations in the Republican party. The problem is the system, not the largely-imaginary group of individuals in smoke-filled rooms. The “true conservatives” in the Republican party have the number to the RNC headquarters, same as the fools who follow McCain’s limp, compromising husk. They have for some time: with few exceptions, they are just as much to blame for our current straits as the current vat of execrable “moderates” festering in DC. It was to laugh to hear “true conservatives” like JD Hayworth rail about government spending in Washington when they voted for all of it, and hawked for it in infomercials.

Palin is establishment, and has her own establishment groupies in the Republican party — you better believe that.

Huckabee is establishment, and has his own bunch on the Hill who would like to see him elected.

Santorum is most definitely establishment, having been at the heart of most of the big government Bush era stuff and supporting Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey.

Almost every politician who has served long is “establishment”. The only ones who aren’t are defective types like Ron Paul. People need to get over it and find records of excellence, not narratives about shadowy elites that absolve the voting public at large of responsibility for the mess that they have tacitly supported at the ballot box for decades.

There’s no establishment in the sense of a group that holds all the cards and which can tell those poor, poor conservatives to jump and how high to do so. There are a few money men who are declining in power, but in large part the doings of the Republican party are more the result of several feuding, self interested factions which simply tend to hate the Democrats more than each other. In that sense, they’re all establishment! Every single person running for President has establishment connections, in the sense of people who are close to money or to power in DC. It’s naive to think that people like Palin are “anti-establishment” when they’ve canvassed the country precisely to expand their contact list of establishment politicians. There is no stark, Manichean dichotomy between “establishment” and “grassroots”, nor is either (loosely defined) camp unified — people like Huckabee can just fake sincerity better than the others.