Mitch Daniels, governor ® of Indiana, is a name that is popping up more and more as a potential GOP candidate in 2012.
He has tackled Indiana’s budget problems, while increasing funding for schools and promising tax refunds to taxpayers if surpluses exceed a certain amount.
Handicap his chances to get to the general election for POTUS in November 2012.
Has he signed the bill de=funding Planned Parenthood in Indiana? He has a few days to decide. I think if he signs it will help him in the primary but cost him in the general, if he gets that far.
He has publicly called for the GOP to put aside social issues and instead focus on jobs and the economy, which might have the opposite effect.
So if he stands by his pledge to put aside the social issues, and ignores the defunding of PP, his chances of getting the nomination go down?
It depends on how many nutcases show up to vote in the GOP primary. It’s been a long tradition of both parties that candidates run run further to the left or right in primaries to appeal to their base, and then back toward the center to broaden their appeal. But the GOP’s base has moved so far to the right…
He wouldn’t be able to avoid social issues in the Primaries, those are too important to the base. I don’t think that stance would help in a General Election anyway. Moderate to left voters would just see it as lip service, and it would irritate social conservatives.
I think the entire GOP field really has a problem with having to pacify the hard right to get nominated while still maintaining mainstream viability in a General Election.
I don’t think he’s pledged to do that, he just thinks it will be a more successful strategy. Now his own state legislature has handed him a bill which is likely going to be a problem for him if he signs it or not.
Whelp, so much for that. He’s going to sign the bill. Guess that increases the odds he is running, and decreases the odds that he is sincere in calling for a “truce” in social issues.
Well, he just disqualified himself with swing voters. None of these guys ever have the balls to stand up to the religious right. The first Republican who tells the Jesus screamers to get fucked will get a huge amount of support from independents. McCain had the best chance and caved in.
He also raised or wanted to raise various taxes and passed the healthy indiana plan, which offers state subsidized health insurance for working poor adults and like the SCHIP expansion Obama signed is funded by cigarette taxes.
That would hurt him with the conservative base, but not with independents.
The problem is a candidate who strongly appeals to the GOP base (Trump, Palin, Bachmann) is not reacted to well by pretty much everyone else. No idea if defunding planned parenthood will compensate for the tax increases or the HIP health insurance plan.
He was Director of Office of Management Budget under Bush. He was president of Eli Lily drug company. So yes he could appeal to Republican big wheels and get huge funding. He was involved when Bush took down the economy.
The big question this year is whether there is enough fear of the economic situation for that to trump social issues, charisma, etc.
One school of thought is that the public is actually tired of charismatic politicians. Romney’s white teeth and blow-dried hair actually seems to be a strike against him with the electorate right now. Obama is a very charismatic person who gives great speeches, and his popularity is not high - especially with Republicans. Mitch Daniels is the anti-Obama, and it may work for him.
There have been times in America where the public has turned to unassuming, non-charismatic leaders, and this could be one of them. Truman was supposed to be toast against Dewey, but he won. Ross Perot was a little man with annoying habits, and he was doing well until he unleashed the crazy.
There are signs that this is a year where people are looking for substance and are willing to break free of old political habits. Look at Paul Ryan’s budget, and Ryan himself. He’s one of the most popular figures in the GOP right now, and he’s basically a policy wonk. His budget, which features serious reform of entitlements, enjoys the most popularity with seniors, which everyone said would never happen.
So… Maybe this is a year Mitch can do it. We’ll see. His state legislature sure screwed him over by putting that bill in front of him, though. Idiots.
Obama already pulled the economy back from the brink. He inherited this mess, he didn’t create it.
Ryan’s budget is a “fuck the poor” sham, by the way.
I’m not going to argue about it in this thread, but claims like that can’t go unanswered: There’s little evidence that Obama pulled the economy back from the brink, or that his policies did any good at all. And he didn’t just ‘inherit’ the mess - he increased spending dramatically, and not just stimulus spending. He was widely criticized on both sides for focusing on health care instead of jobs. The Democrats failed to even pass a budget last year, leading to this series of continuing resolutions that have created business uncertainty and made it hard to plan.
GDP growth estimates for next year have already been downgraded twice. Last week’s jobless claims unexpectedly rose. The real estate market is still declining. A trillion dollar stimulus vanished into the economy, but now the U.S. is stuck with the interest payments on it forever. The stimulus was improperly targeted and wound up boosting permanent salaries of government employees in many states, helping to exacerbate the poor financial situations of the states.
At some point, you lose the ability to blame George Bush for everything bad, and that point was reached about a year ago.
Sorry. No. Obama saved this country from a depression, but the reason it isn’t recovering as quickly as it should be is because we’re still not raising revenue to anywhere near what it should be. This little corporate dicksuck, Ryan, wants to give away even more money to rich people while simultaneously throwing people off Medicare and Social Security. It’s the epitome of right wing, sociopathic, plutocratic ass-kissing. Moreover. It doesn’t cut the debt. It’s a fraud. No budget that doesn’t have a responsible plan for revenue (i.e. making the billionaires and the corporations pay what they owe) cannot be taken seriously.
Bingo.
Problems with the Ryan budget are it will increase the cost of medicare by about $30 trillion over 75 years because private plans tend to cost more than a public medicare plan (largely because of lower reimbursement for medical procedures and lower overhead in medicare). The extra cost will be passed onto seniors.
And Ryan used economic data from heritage to show that supply side tax cuts will result in massive GDP growth and lower unemployment (he predicted 2.8%, which is far lower than anything since WW2 when there was a labor shortage). However not long after the budget wsa released Heritage removed that data because they predicted the same thing would happen with Bush’s supply side tax cuts, but job creation and deficits were worse than predicted.
All in all I agree with Reagan’s ex budget director, there is nothing courageous or serious about the Ryan plan. It is smoke and mirrors to hide the naked plutocracy. If Ryan had just come out and say ‘this will result in privatized medicare and cutting taxes for the rich because I ideologically support those things’, fine. But to pretend it is about the deficit is an insult.
But on to Mitch Daniels. I still don’t think he’d win a primary since the tea party is becoming such a powerful force. Again, he raised taxes and promoted a heavily subsidized health insurance plan for working poor adults. I don’t know if the tea party (who made up 2/3 of all republican voters in 2010 and are extremely motivated) would support him.
It will be MUCH cheaper, because of all the deaths of those who can’t afford their own treatment.
And that was just during the first year. The stimulus spending was spread out over 2009 and 2010.
Ummm, no. As the second graph at the link shows, other than safety-net spending responding to the particular needs of an economy where several million jobs have gone missing, the rate of Federal spending growth in 2007-2010 was less than for 2000-2007.
True.
Only to the extent that the GOP has decided to turn the budget and debt ceiling votes into a series of hostage negotiations.
You did know, right, that the big-money boys - the finance industry, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and other heavyweights - are trying to get Republicans to pass a straightforward debt-ceiling extension to avoid uncertainty, and the Republicans aren’t interested in doing so, that they are cheerfully adding to business uncertainty and outright fear in order to see if they can win a few ideological battles?
GOP-driven austerity plans may have something to do with that.
And some weeks they unexpectedly drop. They move around quite a bit.
Anyone who uses one week’s new jobless claims number for anything deserves every :rolleyes: they can get.
How does this compare with what’s happened after past real estate bubbles?
A few trillions in war spending and Bush tax cuts have vanished into the economy, but the U.S. is stuck with the interest payments forever.
I’d definitely like to see some evidence of this one.
You’re right, we can’t blame Bush for everything. But he left quite a legacy - two wars, two huge tax cuts, and the Medicare prescription drug benefit, none of which were paid for in the least - and getting rid of that legacy overnight wasn’t exactly an option.
Credit where credit is due. Your man has earned it.
Tough to get a new budget ,with new ideas over a Republican filibuster. That is somehow the Dems fault.
Looks like the state legislators in Indiana really like putting Daniels on the spot. After forcing him to sign a bill defunding Planned Parenthood (hot with the base, not so much with independent women), they passed an illegal immigration bill to him for signature.
From what I can tell the final bill passed was watered down a bit, and the police status checking provisions copied from Arizona were removed. Still can’t imagine Daniels, if he is considering a presidential run, really wants to be hammering on Hispanics right now (although, again, maybe he has to in order to win a GOP primary).