Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels: Potential Savior or Another RINO?

Mitch Daniels

According to the Drudge Report, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels "wowed 'em" at the CPAC conference in Washington this week.  Daniels is exploring a possible run for the presidency.   I read Daniels' speech here, and it has a lot of good ideas, none of which are especially new, being the staple of the conservative movement for some time:  smaller, more efficient government, the cessation of unnecessary and wasteful spending, paying down the national debt, a vigorous economy as the path to greater opportunity for all.

My antennae went up, however, when Daniels alluded to broad coalitions involving liberals.  Liberalism is the disease, and mixing the disease with the antidote seems a self-defeating strategy for economic recovery.  He said:

Purity in martyrdom is for suicide bombers. King Pyrrhus is remembered, but his nation disappeared. Winston Churchill set aside his lifetime loathing of Communism in order to fight World War II. Challenged as a hypocrite, he said that when the safety of Britain was at stake, his “conscience became a good girl.” We are at such a moment. I for one have no interest in standing in the wreckage of our Republic saying “I told you so” or “You should’ve done it my way.”

Second, Daniels seems to allude to the class warfare strategy and implies we should embrace it, that is, the rich vs poor scenario, where we advance the theory that both cannot prosper simultaneously, or that by looking out for the rights of the successful and productive we somehow undermine those "on the first rung of life's ladder."  He says:

We must display a heart for every American, and a special passion for those still on the first rung of life’s ladder. Upward mobility from the bottom is the crux of the American promise, and the stagnation of the middle class is in fact becoming a problem, on any fair reading of the facts. Our main task is not to see that people of great wealth add to it, but that those without much money have a greater chance to earn some.

The last sentence in this paragraph makes me feel quite uncomfortable.  Daniels appears to be throwing out a sound bite to the mainstream media who love the false dictum that "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer," and that the GOP wrongly supports the former over the latter. I prefer the truism that "a rising tide lifts all boats."