Four months after he decided against jumping into the Republican presidential race, Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana says that he has occasionally been frustrated by the discourse in the campaign and that the field could benefit from at least one more contender whose candidacy was rooted in a message of fiscal discipline.
Mr. Daniels said his party's candidates had a responsibility to conduct a “more candid and honest” conversation about the nation's financial burdens, particularly Social Security and Medicare.
“Somebody else could still enter and have a competitive chance,” Mr. Daniels said in a weekend interview. “The candidate I could get instantly excited about is someone who is willing to level with the American people and assume they are prepared to listen to the mathematical facts and agree that whatever other disagreements we have aren't as important.”
Somebody asked me this morning whom I liked best in the Republican field, and I started ticking off the drawbacks I see in each -- Perry's softness on illegal immigration, Romney's health care plan, Bachmann's antio-vaccination hysteria and on and on. Like Daniels, I'm not seeing that one candidate who really excites me with no reservations, and the biggest disappoinment so far is their apparent unwillingness to go into that uncomfotable entitlement territory. A candidate who came along and did that would rise right to the top for me. Perry tried it, then backed off, so all we're left with is incendiary "Ponzi scheme" rhetoric with no fix-it plans to back it up.
I think Daniels is right about the reason for this, too. There is every possibility that the GOP candidate can win just by "not being Obama" (sort of how Obama got in as "not Bush"). So we have candidates running just to win office. They should campagin to govern, not just to win. Otherwise, the big things that need doing will go undone by another Republican administration.
