Gov. Mitch Daniels is still dealing with fallout from his suggestion that conservatives agree to a national truce on social issues and focus on finances.Yeah, I would say he is sounding more and more like a presidential candidate.
But now he’s going on the offensive to prove his conservative credentials.
During a radio interview last week with conservative talk-show host Laura Ingraham, he said his administration “has been, without question, the most pro-life administration in our state’s history. We haven’t just talked about it, we have advanced the right to life.”
But Daniels hasn’t had a pro-life item on his legislative agenda in seven years.
He has never talked about right-to-life issues in his State of the State Address.
And Planned Parenthood had a fundraiser at the governor’s residence early in Daniels’ tenure.
To back up his claim, he points to the signing of several bills that the legislature approved. They include a measure that requires health care professionals to provide a pregnant woman with the options of obtaining an ultrasound and of listening to the fetus’ heartbeat before performing an abortion.
And he signed a bill requiring abortion clinics to abide by the same safety and health standards as other outpatient surgical clinics.
Within his administration, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles also authorized a “Choose Life” license plate.
Most pro-life in Indiana history? You decide.
Sunday, February 06, 2011
Daniels Must Be Running For President, He's Touting A Pro-Life Record
The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette's Political Notebook picks up on comments Gov. Mitch Daniels made to conservative radio talk show host Laura Ingraham touting his pro-life record as governor. Political Notebook reacts with surprise to Daniels' claim that his administration has been the most pro-life administration in the state's history since he has essentially adhered to the admonishment he made last year to Republicans to steer clear of social issues throughout his six years as governor.
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The D.C. boys know Mitch is good for their business. The man is a walking embodiment of the marriage of corporate need to state power.
If the field starts to look like it has too many social conservatives in it who don't care first about corporate profits, the corporate boys will put up Mitch to keep their interests at the front.
I firmly believe there's a network of big law firms who run the country. Locally, we have B&T, which is a Triple-A team in the larger scheme. Above them are the major leagues in D.C. and New York. People like Ballard are allowed to be run locally, while bigger fish like Mitch are run from the East Coast by the big hitters.
If Mitch should get elected, look out below! He'll sell everything in the country and say he balanced the books.
P.S. Don't expect a Republican who doesn't care about social issues to go far in this election. The Tea Partiers are interested solely in social issues.
I beg to differ, Cato. Tea party activists are primarily concerned about bread and butter issues like how much is the government taxing, regulating and otherwise depriving them of individual freedoms than they are social issues.
I listened to that interview on the Laura Ingraham show. Daniels began by referring to her as "Doctor", teasing her as if she is "Dr. Laura". Ingraham went right after his truce comments, and that is when Mitch explained his pro-life credentials. He then explained that if a foreign army were on the Canadian border, we would focus all our efforts on confronting that threat. So it is with the debt and financial problems our country faces. We need to focus our energies on THAT, not putting aside our disagreements, but not letting them distract us from the necessity of dealing with the financial crisis.
He was very strong about the need to reduce the size and scope of the federal government.
I agree that he will run. Pence declining to do so pretty much signaled that Daniels is running.
Daniels will have my maximum legally allowable $upport once he declares.
If Mitch Daniels is going to run for President, he will deeply regret having made that "truce" comment. It's a killer. Like them or not, social conservatives are essential part of any winning coalition, not just in the primary but also in the general election.
AI,
I would agree that social issues are not really the Tea Party's cup of tea. They're focused and motivated more by the issues you describe.
Paul, There is a serious flaw in your analysis. Social conservatives are not united behind a single candidate and are unlikely to be by the time the first caucuses and primaries take place. Who would have thought John McCain would get the nomination when the race got underway? He was flat broke and skipped the Iowa caucus. The more conservative candidates split up the vote in New Hampshire and McCain soared to victory after Huckabee upset Romney in Iowa. One of Romney's biggest social conservative organizers was Terre Haute's Jim Bopp, who has a good relationship with Daniels. I suspect Bopp will support Daniels over Romney this time around if he decides to run. Throw Palin and Pawlenty into the mix and things really get split up among social conservatives. There is also talk among Utah's former governor running as well, who should take a slice of the Mormon money that helped finance Romney in 2008. I suspect Daniels is banking on a McCain-type approach to winning the nomination.
Daniels will have no problem with social conservatives. Any of them he loses he will make up tenfold in social moderates and independents who are freaking out over the nation's fiscal mess.
And it IS a mess, thanks to Obama, Pelosi, Reid, et al.
Let him run -- and let the whole country see he is fiscally fraudulent when his fiscal prowess is what he touts about himself the most. Let them see how he is really balancing the books in Indiana to make us "in the black"; let them see he has not been creating as many jobs as he says he has; let them see he has raised taxes, even though he says he has not; let them see the FSSA privatization mess; let them see the destruction of the unemployment program through his fiscal mismanagement at the expense of taxpayers and Indiana businesses which will take decades to repair, if it ever will be fixed; let them see how he fired/forced-out years of institutional knowledge from his executive agencies and then expanded and created new positions in the upper-level positions in those agencies for the benefit of his political cronies (far worse than the Democrats have done here in the past); let them see his closeness with big utilities and lax ethics problems allowed by his "Inspector General's Office"; let them see it all.
And if he survives his re-invention of himself, suddenly, as a social conservative, then his opponents will hit him where it hurts him, and where he has spent the better part of six years now spreading to the state and the country as one giant lie that all is well here in the Hoosier State -- start talking about his real fiscal conservative record and how false that is.
AI writes that Tea Partists are worried about "how much is the government...depriving them of individual freedoms".
How much more could a group deprive individual women of their freedom than forbidding them personal control over their own bodies?
Cognitive dissonance on display here!
I hope he has a back-up plan.
If Daniels wants us to believe that he's worthy of the pro-life vote, then he needs to publicly get behind SB 116, SB 522, HB 1205, HB 1258, HB 522. I'd like to hear his endorsement on these bills via a press conference.
Ellen, You are displaying your ignorance here. The tea party movement has nothing to do with the pro-life issue. You will find people on both sides of that issue within the tea party movement. Melyssa Donaghy is a perfect example of a pro-choice woman who also identifies with many of the tea party concerns. What freedom does anyone have if the government taxes us into servitude, controls industry and starves off the free enterprise system?
Amen Bradley,
The lies and darned lies will come home to haunt the GOP in Indiana if they step into the water.
State leaders in state agencies have quietly let their employees know about the conversation of unpaid furlows if it gets any worse.
Sounds like California to me!
Cato...I have not seen the social issues come up with tea party folks I know. All I hear them talk about is cut spending and obey the constitution.
Gary, you are right that I am pro choice, but if a decision to abort is going to be made, it needs to be done in the first trimester.
Also, while I am pro-choice, I don't want a dime of my tax dollars spent on abortion. Conversely, I have no problem helping low income citizens prevent conception.
Mitch Daniels would be my second choice for president. My number one choice is Ron Paul.
If the money were even, with a choice between President Obama and Governor Daniels, I'd guess Daniels has a shot based on the current magnitude of problems and the President's approach to them. However, I don't see a path out of the primaries unless he's the compromise choice. Plus, if he doesn't make education reform encompass administration as well as teachers and unions, he'll be demonized on a national scale. He'll never get an even shake from national media.
He's got work to do on both fronts, but this side of Obama's left and Palin's right- who doesn't? Maybe what makes any of this possible is that our President has lowered the bar. The middle is apt to listen to alternatives in 2012.
I haven't met a "Tea Party person" who puts social concerns before fiscal sanity. I've seen anti-abortion folks who I wouldn't necessarily call Tea Partiers by virture of the magnitude of their focus on that issue. However, that's my opinion and it's all just convenient labels anyway. How much difference is their between Tea Partiers and Libertarians? Lots of shades and permutations.
HFFT,
Do you realize that your first trimester opinion on abortion puts you completely at odds with Roe v. Wade?
You're a lot closer to the pro-life side than the pro-choice side with that position. I actually think a compromise in that area (the first trimester) makes sense.
Ellen says: "How much more could a group deprive individual women of their freedom than forbidding them personal control over their own bodies?"
I agree with AI that social issues (like abortion) are not big issues for tea partiers. Nonetheless, this statement is so incredibly disingenous. Obviously abortion isn't just about women "controlling their own bodies." You have to ignore medical science to ignore the other human life involved in an abortion. Regardless of how one comes down on abortion, people should at least be honest that it's a difficult decision involving a woman and the life of an unborn human being. It is a lot more complicated than what one person does with her own body.
Mitch Daniels has an op-ed in today's WSJ blasting Obamacare....
Yeah I'd say he is running.
And quite the abortion talk. This is what Daniels is talking about. And he is 100% right. Knock it off.
Gary and Paul, you guys crack me up with what you think the Tea Party is and isn't.
This isn't the Ron Paul Tea Party of 2007. The 2008-onward Tea Party are those bitter clingers Obama noted. The Tea Party may give some economic gloss to their mission, but they're angry about social change, and they're driven by social issues.
Have you ever been to a Tea Party rally? It's about 45 minutes of prayers and salutes to the troops before the speakers ever come out, at which point they give more prayers and troop salutes.
It's time for those Republicans with shined shoes to admit who else is with them.
Here's your Tea Party:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhMepzqJvIw&feature=player_embedded
Cato:
Maybe I need a recalibration. I think of social issues as things like abortion, immigration (I think economic- but I'm outvoted), capital punishment, controversial stuff like that. I think of doing prayers, flag salutes, military gratitude, and singing songs are part of the customs we had as children, still practiced in America to an extent in civic gatherings.
When you get outside of rallies and demonstrations and on to fundamental policy and voting, I still agree with Melyssa that limited government as exemplified by reduced spending and Constitutional adherence are the "main planks" of Tea Party U.S.A. But- their's no emperor who speaks for them. They've acknowledged that they can't agree on much of anything besides what's associated with limited government.
But, hey- knock yourself out.
Until the professionalization of medicine in the late 19th century, women's issues were, ummm, women's issues.
Once men -- physicians, for example -- got involved, they brought in the state to enforce what they thought was best.
There is absolutely no justification for a government to insert itself into such personal decisions.
To "force" women to remain pregnant is darn close to involuntary servitude.
Abortion has always existed, and always will, despite what men think.
Crutch,
The Tea Party is not for limited government or limited spending. They stand for traditional conservative social advocacy of putting prayer in school, keeping creationism out, having more wars, saluting the troops, keeping cops in lots of power, keeping drugs and all vice crimes illegal, keeping blue laws in place. In other words, all the big-government meddling the conservative base loves to use the government for to tell you what to do. There's no limited government in that bunch.
The 2007 Tea Party was overrun by the bitter clingers in 2008.
Tea Party is just a term the very conservative people have begun to use to tell the Republican Party that they'd better not run more Olympia Snowes, Lindsay Grahams, Lincoln Chafees, etc.
P.S., if you think 45 minutes of prayer and government worship are American customs that receive regular practice, you really need to visit more blue states.
And here is a typical, well mannered, non-violent DEMOCRAT protest.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=DEMOCRAT+PROTESTers&aq=f
Cato:
We agree to disagree on this one. I imagine the Blue and every other state of designated color doesn't care a whit about our observations. But, thank you for your definitive stances and particularly your apt characterization of local "power elite".
I(t is both disappointing and alarming to see some lawmakers returning to the culture wars of the past and trying to restrict access to health care for women across this country.
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