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It’s too soon for my Mitch Daniels diary but I can’t help it

By: Change Jar Conservative (Diary)  |  June 8th, 2010 at 01:09 PM  | 

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A brief history

I am a full slated conservative* and proud of it.

I have given money and time over the years like many hear and I have argued that we should react to every diary about a potential 2012 candidate with boilerplate attacks (though some will do it here).

My political history goes something like this:

1982 — Register Democrat to drive my (California) redneck father crazy.

1984 — Vote for Reagan, but be proud of being one of ten Democrats on my conservative Christian university.

1988 — Work for Al Gore on the final pro-life Democratic presidential campaign.

1990 — Register Republican and vote but do little else.

1998 — Get my second taste of campaigning but not too much.

2000 — Give several thousand dollars and probably 400 hours of time for Bush and GOP Senators.

mid 2001 — Be completely embarrassed by the largess of the Republicans.

2002 — Contribute to a few more GOP Senate candidates.

2004 — Turn into an occasional Redstate poster but pretty much lose respect for 90% of the party and watch my conservative independent friends say that they can’t tell the difference between the two parties any more.

2008 — Volunteer for Fred for about 2 hours in South Carolina and then drive back to Georgia, discouraged that best candidate can’t seem to decide if he wants to run or not and then watch George Bush fall for the TARP and the independents show the GOP what they thought of that (to their own demise).

Shortly afterwards, I wrote a diary here with one simple principle — this is our last shot.  The people will hand the reigns back to us and if we don’t fix things, we can pretty much look for a new party.

2010

Barring stupidity or the discovery of nuclear fusion, I believe that the GOP will do well in these elections.  Are we capable of screwing it up?  Of course we are — we’re Republicans.

However, when the dust clears in Novemeber, I expect at a minimum, GOP control of the house and a +5 in the Senate.  At a maximum, the GOP will gain 65 seats and go +11 in the Senate.  No, I’m not joking.

Mitch

I have to admit that I have been ambivalent about our current mentioned crop of 2012 contenders.

There are plenty of diaries that attack other candidates and I’m not even going to mention the candidates here lest someone start a fight in the comments seciton.  All human beings have failings and so it is with all candidates.

Mitch Daniels has sold me due to one great article in the American Standard http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/ride-along-mitch

Here are the two money quotes:

Daniels gathered his agency heads on his first day and told them they were henceforth to pursue a single organizational goal—all successful businesses unite their efforts behind a goal, he said. His was this: “We will do everything we can to raise the net disposable income of individual Hoosiers.

And the second one:

The number of state employees has fallen from 35,000 to under 30,000, back where it was in 1982.

That’s impressive.

As I read the article, I actually wondered if Mitch was wearing a WWAD (that’s what would Art do … http://www.redstate.com/achance/2010/04/01/personnel-is-policy-the-house-rules/ ) bracelet.

Read the seven pages.  Tell me that this not the kind of person that you want in the White House during our time of economic implosion.

Wouldn’t it be refreshing to have someone run the federal government whose motto was “What can we do today to increase the net worth of every American?”

Someone who is willing to talk back to the Unions (read the article), make every supervisor justify replacement employees in government (read the article), and someone who has SHOWN (not talked about) A CONSISTENT COMMITMENT TO SMALLER GOVERNMENT AND ACTUALLY ACOMPLISHED IT.

The negatives

Rather than have them show up in the comment section, I’ll just hit the two negatives on Mitch that I have heard and one of which turned me off early on.

#1) He will not take a no new tax pledge and he raised taxes temporarily at the beginning of his term in Indiana.  It happened and he doesn’t apologize for it.  His first goal was to balance the budget and his secondary goal was to reduce the size of government.  He has now done both and is running a surplus on a regular basis.

#2) He is a five foot seven inch tall bundle of knowledge but not a TV personality.  He is the anti-Obama.  It may be a plus with some people but it will turn off others.

He is the man we need

Daniels might not be the person for President at any time in history, but he is the one we need this time around.   We are in serious fiscal crap and Daniels has run a budget surplus, increased jobs and investment spending, and cut the number of government employees through attrition and justification requirements.

One more quote that shows how Daniels has implemented responsibility:

Every line item in the state budget has at least one objective formula attached to it to indicate how well each service is being delivered.

My wallet has been on the sidelines for four years when it comes to politics, but today, I’m starting a jar.  It may not be thousands but it will at least have hundreds by the time 2012 rolls around and it is money that I will send with a clear conscience and a warm heart to Mitch Daniels.

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  • The_Fastest_Squirrel

    Thanks!

  • roscopico

    And if he ends up the nominee in ’12, then good for us. I’ve got my fingers crossed.

    Nice post, by the way.

  • red_oakster

    Thanks for the assessment. Daniels is impressive in many respects, especially when it comes to taking on the size of state government.

    If you read the article closely, there is a lot to suggest Daniels won’t pull the trigger on a presidential candidacy. His wife wants no part of it. And like any other candidate, he has to do well in either Iowa or New Hampshire. In Iowa, he will have several social conservatives blocking his way. And unless he does well in Iowa, it is hard to see how he generates a challenge to Romney in New Hampshire.

    But if Daniels does run, he has issues that will concern primary voters. First, his bent is libertarian and the article makes clear he wants the GOP to de-emphasize social issues. While there is nothing wrong with pushing economic issues to the forefront, social conservatives will see this kind of statement as denigrating. Social conservatives expect you to fight the fight, not take a timeout. (you’ll notice that a lot of the Washington GOP who are hosting the Daniels dinner are the pro-choice anti-Reagan types). It’s hard to win a GOP presidential nomination without alienating social conservatives. Daniels has given the Huckabees, Palins, and Pences etc. some running room. That’s an unforced error which also suggests to me that a shrewd operator like Daniels isn’t going to run.

    Finally, Daniels is weak on foreign policy. He is a Lugar guy when it comes to foreign policy. His libertarian streak again pushes him towards non-intervention, a problem when the US is at war with terror states and after four years of an Obama-led decline in American power. Daniels also is bad on Israel. He has ties to some virulently anti-Israel Arab-American groups. We would be getting the James Baker policy all over again. So no matter how effective he has been as a governor, I would worry about the foreign policies of a Daniels administration.

    Bottom line: Daniels is far from an ideal candidate because he is weak on several key components of the conservative agenda.

  • Oz

    However, all of the candidates are weak IMHO in some area and I’d take his economic policies and skills given the current state of things.

    I doubt that he would put social moderates into judgeships given his limited view of government, but I haven’t done any research into those areas.

    The next question is do we have any candidates that would make a good foreign policy candidate?

    They are all weak in experience whatever they might believe.

  • red_oakster

    I share your optimism about the shift in Congress. After 2012, there are going to be big GOP majorities in both houses and a lot of impetus for government diets and tax-cutting. But frankly, I see most of the potential candidates with the exception of Huckabee capable of riding that wave. Romney, Pawlenty, Barbour, Palin, and Giuliani all would lead a willing Congress in that direction. And some of the aforementioned would be more resolute about tax-cutting than Daniels.

    Social conservatism is not just about judges. There’s a lot of harm a morally unguided Leviathan can do. Make no mistake. Daniels regards the social conservative agenda to be a big pain. Candidates who can draw social conservatives on board are critical to governing. We can do a lot better than Daniels on this score.

    Finally, your statement that all candidates are “weak in experience whatever they might believe” is very much off the mark. What they believe is where everything starts. Daniels has troubling ideas and associations and I don’t want someone with those views responsible for America’s national security. After Obama, we need a president who can reassert American leadership in the world. I fear Daniels would be bad news on this score.

  • aesthete

    That said, foreign policy changes when one is in office. Bush’s foreign policy was famously isolationist, and at odds with McCain’s interventionist streak, and he was still considered acceptable to conservatives. More importantly, he changed his foreign policy (partly at the behest of the UK’s PM, Tony Blair). I’ll also note that Bush was rather ambivalent on the issue of Israel, and had a clutch of anti-Israel ties, as well. Truth of the matter is, if Mitch is interested in getting experts to run the State and Defense departments (and his technocratic inclinations would lead me to believe that that is so), there aren’t a whole lot of choices in the anti-Israel and isolationist camps. My guess is that the fusion of his own views and the Republican party’s foreign policy resources would lead to a moderately realist and utilitarian foreign policy. I’m alright with that, TBH.

    Concerning social issues, I don’t think that they’ll be a big deal. Iowa will be a challenge, but not an insurmountable one, IMO. I guess the specifics would depend on the field of candidates. Concerning social conservatives and governance, I don’t share your philosophical qualms on the “morally unguided” Leviathan. “Public morality” (everyone deserves retirement money, everyone deserves a safety net, etc.) has a lot to do with the federal government’s size, and the social conservative picks (Mike Huckabee, George Bush) certainly haven’t been bashful about outsized budgets.

    The main expenditures in government are defense, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. With respect, I doubt Romney, Palin, and Pawlenty’s commitment to giving those programs the axe, or to drastic reform. Palin and Romney just don’t have the record to show that they’re committed to government in any way but the abstract, and Pawlenty’s too much of a milquetoast to get his agenda pushed through. Giuliani and Barbour I’m less concerned about, but in Giuliani’s case, I can easily see cutting government taking a back seat to a vigorous foreign policy and law and order initiatives (plus, he also has several problems with the social conservative wing). I like Barbour, but oddly enough, he seems very polarizing on the Republican side (34% view him favorably, 37% unfavorably). I’m not sure what the source of this dislike is, but methinks that that will be an even higher hurdle to jump for him than Mitch’s.

  • http://www.2010blog.net jsanzone

    But 1. Supposedly he’s definitely not running, and 2. Rival campaigns would absolutely destroy him over the raising taxes thing, even if it quickly led to a balanced budget and overall ‘increased net disposable income.’

    Oh well, I hope he reconsiders and decides to run. He’d make a good VP candidate, I guess, but a much better President than most of the others they’re talking about.