Well that didn't take very long. After a short blog post this afternoon about how social conservatives and economic conservatives are finding problems with a potential Mitch Daniels presidential run, beltway reporter Jonathan Martin pens an ode to Daniels from the village. Mitch Daniel does have an energetic base and it's located firmly inside elite conservative organizations and magazines.
The Indiana governor has been showered with favorable coverage from political thinkers and analysts in recent months, most of which heaped praise on his thoughtful and principled approach to governing while celebrating his serious yet down-to-earth mien.
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Daniels is hardly the first presidential prospect to be greeted with bouquets from the cognoscenti as the Last Honest Man in politics. There is a long, bipartisan tradition of White House aspirants who play the truth-teller role and they almost invariably receive better reviews in print than at the polls.
Bruce Babbitt, Paul Tsongas, Ross Perot, John Anderson, Lamar Alexander and John McCain in 2000 all won plaudits from elites for their willingness to speak hard truths about the real problems facing the country rather than just pandering to the partisan rabble.
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He went to all the right schools (Bachelors, with honors, at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School and a law degree, with honors, from Georgetown), learned at the knee of a political Wise Man (veteran Sen. Richard Lugar) headed up a think tank (Hudson Institute), was a top executive at a Fortune 500 company (Eli Lilly), and for two terms has been a governor, where, as the mandarins’ formulation goes, all the real policy innovations take place.
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“He is a Republican who had never heard of 9/12, Glenn Beck’s tea-party group, before The Economist mentioned it to him,” exclaimed the traditionally right-leaning British-based magazine, all but giving him the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for their elite, trans-Atlantic audience.
No mention of how George W. Bush's first budget director who oversaw the budget that blew up the deficit during the Bush presidency would run as a budget hawk or how the governor who tried to pass a tax hike for those making over $100k a year would run against Obama's plan to take the top tax rate back to pre-Bush levels. But he is apparently what the conservatives elites want. A contradiction and a muddled argument when extremism and purity reign supreme in the GOP.
Color me skeptical that he can make it through a Republican primary. How can he when even liberals can make arguments against Daniels that would tie conservatives supporting Daniels in knots?