Social conservatives and libertarians are united — against Mitch Daniels.
First, a libertarian perspective from Michael Cannon:
Mitch Daniels’s record also bears similarities to Obama’s, and his approach to Obamacare as governor has been an anchor on the repeal movement...Whereas Obamacare requires states to open their Medicaid programs to families of four earning $31,000 (138 percent of the federal poverty level), Daniels expanded Indiana’s Medicaid program to families of four earning $44,000 (200 percent of poverty). From 2008 to 2010, Indiana’s Medicaid enrollment spiked: Adult enrollments grew 21 percent, a rate nearly double the national average. By 2010, Daniels had enrolled another 62,000 Hoosiers in government-run health care...“Why is Governor Daniels,” wrote Pacific Research Institute health-care expert John R. Graham, “extending the hand of peace . . . when Obamacare has been mortally wounded in the courts and the U.S. House of Representatives?”
— Michael F. Cannon is director of health-policy studies at the Cato Institute (a libertarian think tank)
A social conservative speaks (Richard Land):
Most social conservatives are also fiscal conservatives. They recognize that a federal government that borrows more than 40 cents of every dollar it spends is committing generational theft, spending our grandchildren's money and impoverishing their future. Social conservatives also argue that government has such high costs partly because of the broken families, broken communities and broken ethics generated by moral relativism...Perhaps Gov. Daniels interprets the emergence of the tea party as a sign that GOP candidates don't have to depend on social-issues voters as they once did. That seems unlikely...Consider recent polls from the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). They reveal that tea party supporters, while motivated by the fiscal crisis, are also overwhelmingly socially conservative: Sixty-three percent oppose abortion, found PRRI, and 64% oppose same-sex marriage, found Pew.
— Mr. Land is president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
Mitch Daniels has combined right-wing statism with incoherent ambivalence toward socially conservative issues. Somehow that apparently works very well in Indiana. Could it work in the GOP presidential primaries?
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