The Case against Mitch Daniels

The American Thinker ^ | March 19, 2011 | Zbigniew Mazurak

[Scanian]

Currently, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels is being billed as a genuine conservative who can defeat Barack Obama, reform the federal government, and balance the budget. Yet a close examination of the governor's record and statements reveals that he is actually a strident liberal who cannot be taken seriously.

It has frequently been said about Mitch Daniels that he "turned deficits into surpluses" as governor. The only problem with this claim is that it's not true. According to the CNBC/Forbes.com, which annually ranks states according to business climate, Indiana has a $1.4-billion budget deficit as of FY2011.

That same CNBC/Forbes.com list ranked Indiana as barely 21st out of 50 states -- i.e. in the middle of the peloton, trailing Democrat-run states such as Massachusetts and Washington. Indiana is 42nd in terms of the quality of its workforce, 44th in quality of life, 26th in access to capital, and 22nd in technology and innovation. In only three categories does Indiana make it to the top ten: the cost of doing business, infrastructure (mostly due to federal infrastructure programs), and business friendliness.

This is how badly Indiana ranked in late 2010, more than five years after Daniels was sworn in as governor. A state that ranks 44th in terms of quality of life? No, thanks.

[AdaGray]

George Will’s Ivy League introduction of Daniels at CPAC was all I needed to know he was not for me.

[bill1952]

>That same CNBC/Forbes.com list ranked Indiana as barely 21st out of 50 states —

Stopped reading right there - waste of time.

Anything citing CNBC polls is not worth my time to consider

[Diogenesis]

Mazurak is a RomneyBOT. (see below)

More endless stench of the malignant Milt this weekend.

“May 27, 2009 ... Zbigniew Mazurak Says: I think, nevertheless,
that, right or wrong, Romney is still the most likely Republican to beat Obama in 2012”

MITT ROMNEY - THE PROVEN BAD GOVERNOR

"As U.S. real output grew 13 percent between 2002 and 2006, Massachusetts trailed at 9 percent.
* Manufacturing employment fell 7 percent nationwide those years, but sank 14 percent under Romney, placing Massachusetts 48th among the states.
* Between fall 2003 and autumn 2006, U.S. job growth averaged 5.4 percent, nearly three times Massachusetts' anemic 1.9 percent pace.
* While 8 million Americans over age 16 found work between 2002 and 2006, the number of employed Massachusetts residents actually declined by 8,500 during those years.
"Massachusetts was the only state to have failed to post any gain in its pool of employed residents," professors Sum and McLaughlin concluded.
In an April 2003 meeting with the Massachusetts congressional delegation in Washington, Romney failed to endorse President Bush's $726 billion tax-cut proposal."
[Cato Institute annual Fiscal Policy Report Card - America's Governors, 2004.]

---

“The Massachusetts Republican Party died last Tuesday.
The cause of death: failed leadership.
The party is survived by a few leftover legislators
and a handful of county officials and grassroots activists
who have been ignored for years.
Services will be public and a mass exodus of taxpayers will follow.
In lieu of flowers, send messages to Republican voters
warning them about a certain presidential candidate named Romney.”
- Boston Herald, 11/12/2006

---

"In 2006, while Romney was chairman of the National Republican
Governors Association - a group dedicated to electing more
Republican governors - his own hand-picked Republican successor
as governor lost badly to the Democrat, despite the fact that Republicans
have held the governorship in Massachusetts since 1990. Romney largely
ignored the Massachusetts elections and spent most of the time
during the campaign out of state building his presidential campaign.
He came back and publicly campaigned for the Republican candidate
the day before the general election!
“Locally, this is a rebuke to Mitt Romney and checking out within six months
after being elected and having accomplished almost nothing,”
[Jim] Rappaport [former chairman of the state Republican Party]."
- Boston Globe, 11/8/2006

---

"Governor Mitt Romney, who touts his conservative credentials to out-of-state Republicans,
has passed over GOP lawyers for three-quarters of the 36 judicial vacancies he has faced,
instead tapping registered Democrats or independents -- including two gay lawyers who
have supported expanded same-sex rights, a Globe review of the nominations has found.
Of the 36 people Romney named to be judges or clerk magistrates, 23 are either registered Democrats
or unenrolled voters who have made multiple contributions to Democratic politicians
or who voted in Democratic primaries, state and local records show.
In all, he has nominated nine registered Republicans, 13 unenrolled voters,
and 14 registered Democrats."
- Boston Globe 7/25/2005

---

Romney Rewards one of the State's Leading Anti-Marriage Attorneys by Making him a Judge
Romney told the U.S. Senate on June 22, 2004, that the "real threat to the States is not the
constitutional amendment process, in which the states participate,
but activist judges who disregard the law and redefine marriage . . ."
Romney sounds tough but yet he had no qualms advancing the legal career of one
of the leading anti-marriage attorneys. He nominated Stephen Abany to a District Court.
Abany has been a key player in the Massachusetts Lesbian and Gay Bar Association which,
in its own words, is "dedicated to ensuring that the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision
on marriage equality is upheld, and that any anti-gay amendment or legislation is defeated."
- U.S. Senate testimony by Gov. Mitt Romney, 6/22/2004 P>

---

"Romney announces he won't fill judicial vacancies before term ends
Despite his rhetoric about judicial activism, Romney announced that
he won't fill all the remaining vacancies during his term - but instead
leave them for his liberal Democrat successor!
Governor Mitt Romney pledged yesterday not to make a flurry of lame-duck
judicial appointments in the final days of his administration . . . David Yas,
editor of Lawyers Weekly, said Romney is "bucking tradition" by resisting the urge to
fill all remaining judgeships. "It is a tradition for governors to use that power to appoint judges
aggressively in the waning moments of their administration," Yas said.
He added that Romney has been criticized for failing to make judicial appointments.
"The legal community has consistently criticized him for not filling open seats quickly enough
and being a little too painstaking in the process and being dismissive of the input of the
Judicial Nominating Commission," Yas said.
- Boston Globe 11/2/2006

[Scanian]

I really don’t mind it when the RINOs expose one another, do you?

[samtheman]

Exactly. Except possibly for RomneyCare there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between Mitch and Mitt.

This article should have been titled:

My RINO Is Better Than Your RINO

[nhwingut]

I don’t get the infatuation with Daniels. At all. The guy has no TV presence, whatsoever. And his speaking style comes off as less than confident, basically a shy squish. Then you look at his fiscal record and its okay... at best.

Where’s the beef?

[BobL]

“I don’t get the infatuation with Daniels...”

Part of the vetting process is getting to know the candidates. Often when that happens we get to find out that our candidates are deeply flawed, even though they looked great at first.

For Romney, we find his Romneycare to be a nightmare...but in 2008, it wasn’t around long enough to really show its problem - and who else was left to run against Obama? Romney’s religion will also hurt him with the base...even if he had a perfect record and positions on issues.

Huckabee sounded great - a Republican Governor from the South...then you see he had this habit of releasing felons from jail early, and was completely OBLIVIOUS to the threat they posed, even when prosecutors begged him not to (this is something you expect to see in a flaming liberal). Not to mention, also, his support of the global warming bunch.

Sarah also seemed perfect - but should have (politely) cut herself loose from McCain after 2008 instead of running commercials in the PRIMARY supporting him. She has done other things that left our heads shaking (can’t really remember though, right now - but a lot of us here were getting tired of explaining what she means when she said so and so).

Daniels faults are explained in the article, he certainly looked like a successful Republican governor - the part of a unilateral surrender on social issues tells me he’s comfortable with the status quo. The surrender on collective bargaining was very, very, telling also and bodes terrible for a person seeking to be president.

Newt has said and done so many weird things that I don’t know where to begin with him.

Haley Barbour, a southern, conservative governor, winds up wanting to cut the military in half...meaning he has no idea that there is a whole big world out there beyond our shores, and like 1941, that world will come to us (and not in a nice way), if we’re not out there projecting our presence.

Those are the announced candidates that I’m most familiar with. Each of them has certainly looked great at the beginning, but each leaves your head shaking and you wondering if this selected candidate can be ‘educated’ enough before taking office. It shouldn’t be that hard to find a candidate that upholds the values on this site (or of the Tea Party), but almost always they walk off in a different direction...on some key issue (or usually, issues).

[Hawthorn]

Daniels certainly isn’t the most conservative guy on the block. He might even be described accurately as a “moderate-leaning” GOPer. But to call him a “strident liberal” is totally absurd. I’d never bother to read the rest of an article that starts out with such a ridiculous assertion.

The American Thinker blog is usually a very thoughtful and reliable source. But in this instance, Thomas Lifson does himself and his readers no favor to publish Zbigniew Mazurak’s overheated rhetoric. Guess I’ll be taking AT less seriously from now on.

[MontaniSemperLiberi]

I don’t for one.

Daniel’s big liability is that he was the errand boy for the Bush deficits. He was the one who said we could afford the Bush tax cuts, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, No Child Left Behind, the Medicare Drug Plan, etc. etc. and not ruin our country’s financial position.

I bet Obama Co. can’t wait to display Daniel’s record to the Tea Party.

[BfloGuy]

This is how badly Indiana ranked in late 2010, more than five years after Daniels was sworn in as governor.

What ridiculous nonsense.

No single person is going to turn a basket case like Indiana into Texas in five years. This is the trouble with "American Thinker". They're so desperate for content, they fill their site with tripe like this.

[driftless2]

The two biggest issues for me are national defense and the economy or protection of the free-enterprise system. But social issues are not unimportant. If a particular candidate says they are, that candidate will have a tough time getting my vote.

[GreyFriar]

Any thoughts?

[zot]

At present, I don’t see a viable conservative candidate for POTUS.

[sauropod]

mark

[x]

I don’t get the infatuation with Daniels. At all. The guy has no TV presence, whatsoever. And his speaking style comes off as less than confident, basically a shy squish. Then you look at his fiscal record and its okay... at best.

When all you know about the guy is that he rides a motorcycle he looks pretty good ...

[x]

A state that ranks 44th in terms of quality of life? No, thanks.

Whether the rest of the article is true or not, that part's a cheap shot.

"Quality of life" is pretty nebulous and hard to define. The older industrial "rust belt" states tend to have low ratings and it's not something that a governor could turn around in 4 or 6 or 8 years.

Abuse Daniels if you like if his state's finances aren't in good shape, but he doesn't deserve to be blamed because his state doesn't fit in with the criteria some magazine has for "quality of life."

[samtheman]

Interesting that in your brief listing of the shortcomings of each of the potential R candidates you can only come up with one shortcoming for Palin: that she paid back a political debt.

Maybe she was misguided in paying that debt back. Maybe she paid it back “too much”. I don’t know.

That’s still what she did: paid back a political debt.

Oh yeah. You do mention “and other things”.

WTF???

None of your other candidates get an “and other things”.

Are you angling for a job at NPR?

All Sarah’s Other Things Considered.

At least name them, twit.