I implore you to look deeper into his record.

Mitch Daniels is not a conservative.

1. Rush Limbaugh took him to task on his speech to a group of conservatives when he said that it’s “time to let Ronald Reagan go.”

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_042108/content/01125111.guest.html

2. Mitch Daniels has done great damage to the state he governs. Every person I know from Indiana (and I know a great deal of them) cannot be more horrified now that they voted him into office the first time. During the last election, many of these conservative voters either refused to vote in that race, or voted for the Independent candidate to avoid his future destruction of the state.

Just one particularly sore spot for these Hoosiers is the loss of autonomy and the gaining of homeland security concerns because of this grand scheme of Mitch Daniels:

“Indiana became the first state to privatize a major highway in 2006, when it handed over the [Indiana] toll road’s operation and profits to an overseas consortium through 2081. The firms, Cintra of Spain and Macquarie of Australia, gave Indiana $3.8 billion, which the state is using for roads.”

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/transportation/stories/101908dnmetindianaroad.3f2e1b8.html

The 3.8 billion? It’s long gone.
The roads? Getting worse.
The tolls? Higher and higher.
Usually privatization deserves a listen, but not when a major transportation artery at the crossroads of the nation is owned by a foreign conglomerate. That’s foolhardy in time of peace (moving commercial loads) or war (moving troops).

3. Finally, Time Magazine has this to say about him:

“[. . . ] pragmatic conservatives like Mitch Daniels in Indiana and Jon Huntsman in Utah have remained popular despite their brand. They all share an aversion to ideological rigidity: Rell signed a bill legalizing same-sex unions, Crist has pushed an ambitious environmental agenda, Daniels proposed a tax increase, and Huntsman has cautioned Republicans not to obsess about social issues.”

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1896588,00.html

Tax increase?
Move past Reagan?
Daniels was corrupted by the Washington beltway mentality when he served too long as a bureaucrat.

Bottom line:
If we conservatives support Mitch Daniels to run for higher elected office, we will lose.

Say no to Mitch Daniels at every opportunity.

People need to understand just how close Mitch Daniels came to political oblivion in Indiana. And it wasn’t because of corruption, or ethics problems, or flip flopping on a campaign promise. No. It was almost entirely because he stuck to his principles.

As a Northern Indiana resident, I watched as Mitch Daniels pushed through reform after reform in this State, many times against enormous public resistance. The most amazing part is that he never wavered. He always stuck to his principles, and now, he is reaping the political benefits.

Perhaps the most notorious of his tough choices (though most Hoosiers now call it ingenious) was his privatization of the Indiana Toll Road. It brought billions of dollars into the State, without raising taxes, and gave the management of an expensive State asset over to a private company. Especially in the norther part of the State, where union presence is strong, this was extremely unpopular. He was berated in the local media and his approval ratings plummeted. However, Indiana is now flush with cash for road construction, something most other States can only dream about.

During this same period, he pushed Indiana onto Daylight Savings Time, so that our State would no longer stick out like a sore thumb. Hoosiers are notorious for their fragility towards “change” (don’t let the 2008 Obama win deceive you), and DST was a major change for us. But Mitch knew it was in the best interest of our businesses to be on the same time as the rest of the country, so, again, he went against the flow of public opinion. Now, most people rarely, if ever, talk about the issue.

Governor Daniels is a major reformer at heart. He is a businessman. He is a CEO. He is a clean cut, no frills, down-to-earth man. In Mitch Daniels, Indiana has received an innovative experimenter, a budget balancer, a money saver, a government reformer, and an all-around decent man (something that we couldn’t say under the previous 16 years of Democrat governors).

The main point to take away from my little anecdote is that Mitch Daniels has stood his ground, even in the face of massive public anxiety. Perhaps more importantly, his difficult decisions have been vindicated almost every time, and now his strong leadership has given him enormous public trust and very high approval numbers.

This lesson (doing the right thing, even when it hurts) needs to be heeded my more Republicans. Perhaps that is why Governor Daniels is getting more and more national attention.

Mitch Daniels has been a great governor. He’s a conservative with great vision. His moderate appeal* comes in large part because he doesn’t waste time on the hot button topics: unlike many self-proclaimed conservatives, there is no drama in him. Mitch is not a rock star; he will never be the personality du jour. He simply stakes out the conservative position on the pocket book issues, never wavers, and wins. And Indiana is a better place for him.

*I wouldn’t call myself a conservative, and I’ve happily voted for him twice.

Not surprisingly, Blago chose his Chicago buddy early.
But guess who else locked in his choice then?

Article on January 23, 2008:

“The endorsement game started early. A year ago, seven governors already had announced their support for candidates, including Indiana’s Mitch Daniels for John McCain, Missouri’s Matt Blunt for Mitt Romney and Illinois’ Rod Blagojevich for Barack Obama.

http://lateline.muzi.net/news/ll/english/10058741.shtml?cc=10009&ccr=39598

More specifically on February 22, 2007:

“ARLINGTON, Va. | U.S. Senator John McCain’s presidential exploratory committee today announced that Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels will support the Arizona Senator should he decide to seek the presidency.”

http://www.thetimesonline.com/articles/2007/02/22/updates/breaking_news/doc45ddedba241e6279890137.txt

So it makes perfect sense why Mitch Daniels told the conservative crowd to let Reagan go; the governor himself had let Reagan go.

Daniels personally and loudly chose John McCain over any other possible conservative presidential candidate, long before most office holders even felt the need to endorse (or perhaps thought it wise to endorse).

In fact, it could be argued that Daniels tried to short-circuit the process of the primaries by endorsing McCain BEFORE he even officially declared his candidacy. We might even assume he was trying to help McCain scare other candidates — conservative ones — out of running for president.

After giving John McCain that kind of devoted support, it seems that Mitch Daniels would be glad to take some credit for McCain winning the Republican nomination.

I’ll give Daniels that credit. And I’ll also give him some responsibility for choosing a moderate candidate (who could not even win the tax cut argument to a liberal) and losing the election — and our country’s future — to Obama.

Mitch Daniels had a platform to make a difference, and he had a choice. He chose McCain.
He didn’t even consider the conservatives.
He married the moderate.

If that doesn’t make an impression on you, I don’t know what else will.

I don’t quite have as positive an opinion about Mitch Daniels as some of the people here, but I’m nowhere near as down on him as toughintn seems to be.

First of all, complaining about the toll road is the hobgoblin of small-minds. This state had crumbling infrastructure for sixteen years. Democrats used a scheme called “Build Indiana” to raid infrastructure and construction money and funnel it to cronies (particularly in Lake County). This was great if you were tied to certain politicians and wanted to buy fur coats; it was not so great if you had to actually drive on the roads.

Major Moves (the toll road lease and the ensuing construction program) solved all of those problems. The Indiana Toll Road is not going anywhere. It can’t be rolled up, put on a ship, and sent to Australia or Spain. The lease has provisions that give the road back to the state in the event of certain shortfalls by the the company leasing it. I also doubt that this country will be going to war against close allies like Spain or Australia any time soon, so spare me the troops thing. The state made more money off of the interest of the toll road in one day than it made off of the entire life of the toll road before then; it lost the state money in terms of tolls versus operating expenses every year since we built it.

Second, John McCain. I can’t say that I liked John McCain, but then I can’t say that I liked any of the rather lackluster ’08 primary field. But I also can’t fault Mitch Daniels for endorsing John McCain, as the two of them have some sort of friendship that goes back many years. I don’t fault Mitch for endorsing John McCain any more than I fault certain individuals for endorsing other candidates. If you want to hold litmus tests based on ’08 candidate endorsements, you’re going to find yourself mighty disappointed in a lot of good people.

And Mitch Daniels loved John McCain so much that his campaign (which won about one Obama voter in four, or thereabouts) did not lift a finger to help the Republican presidential nominee in November of last year. This, as a Republican Party county chairman in Indiana, is something I do fault Mitch Daniels for. He built a mighty campaign organization, and he didn’t lift a finger to help McCain or virtually any other GOP candidate up or down the ballot. Accordingly, he had virtually nonexistent coattails despite his almost twenty percent margin of victory.

Mitch is not a social conservative. He’s very much an establishment conservative first and a fiscal conservative second (and he’s not above raising taxes on cigarettes, for example, and he has also had no problem with raising some taxes in order to lower others). He is a “make government work” and “make government more efficient” and “cut government” kind of governor. That appears to have suited most Hoosiers just fine. He’s got a 70 percent approval rating right now, which means that he is not only popular with the nearly 60 percent of Hoosiers that voted for him, but he has one over one out of very four voters that voted for his opponent, too.

Oh, sure. I wouldn’t disagree with that.

Certainly, Mitch signs the social conservative agenda items when they come across his desk (which they only did in the first two years of his term, when Republicans controlled both houses of the legislature). What he won’t do, however, is advocate for hot button social conservative positions–even if he presumably agrees with them–at all. He gave only weak lip service to the marriage amendment, for example. That’s the same sort of sensibility that you tend to find among Republicans in the donut (the eight “one party” hyper-Republican suburban counties that ring Indianapolis).

Would Mitch motivate that element of the Republican base, though, in the same way as a Huckabee or a Palin? Not even close. But while he doesn’t motivate that element of the Republican base, he clearly doesn’t energize their opposing counterparts in the Democratic base to take arms to fight him either. He is not a culture warrior. If that’s what you’re looking for, he’s not your candidate. In that sense, it’s no mistake that the venues in which you hear him speak (and those folks noting him as presidential material) are associated more with the free market and fiscal conservative aspects of the party and not the social conservative wing.

Right on the money.

Thanks for the well-reasoned response.

Mitch would be a better Chairman of the GOP than a Presidential Candidate. A great organizer and runs things very effectively. His positions are largely in the right place. He can raise money.

I like Mitch a lot, but I like people who have a stronger ideological base than he has for my Presidential candidate.