Daniels Continues Pushing Idea of "Truce" on Social Issues, This Time Offering the Analogy For the "Mute" Button

Before rejecting him as a complete RINO, bear in mind he gets high marks for being strongly pro-life. He says that as governor, "he doesn't talk about the pro-life issue, he just advances it.

What's behind this tactic, then?

Well, if he could make it through the primaries and win the nomination, he would be in a golden position to win the actual election, as his entire appeal is on The Issue of the moment (debt, spending, fiscal sanity) and he'd be giving voters very few reasons to disqualify him on other issues.

But the problem is that if. I don't think he can, and the fact that he thinks he can leads me to doubt his judgment. Rudy Giuliani attempted a similar sort of gambit (although he actually was on the liberal side of things), and we all saw how that turned out.

He also seems to believe that the social issues are highly damaging to conservative candidates -- they're really not. The gay marriage issue is a net-winner (even in California) and around 50% of the country now calls itself nominally pro-life so where is the major damage here?

Can Daniels really rely on his basic message of "You know who I am, you know where I stand, based on actions, not talk" even while repeatedly calling for and end to talking about it (and also, implicitly, and end to action on that front)?

His tactic seems more geared to avoiding a massive campaign of recriminations and invective from the Ruling Classes, which in turn would, in theory, leave his negatives on the low side for a conservative candidate; but does he really think that anything a conservative does can possibly avoid the ritualized outpouring of hatred we see every two or four years?

I don't.

So I don't get it. I guess in final analysis I don't think this is politically savvy, which makes me question his feel for things, his instincts. I guess then the only possibility is that He means this; he's arguing for it because he thinks it's the right thing to do, given the fact that America is on the edge of armageddon and must be saved before returning to conventional politics, which is a sentiment I can get behind, but I don't think social conservatives can.

By the Way: Sometimes people claim that anyone injecting the idea of "But can he or she win an election?" is just resorting to RINO obfuscation. As if only RINOs should be interested in critical questions of strategy.

And the suspicion seems to be that this RINO-talk about electability is really just a snow-job, a stealth manner of advancing a moderate/liberal agenda without having the guts to directly advocate it.

But it's not. I do not like moderate/RINO unelectable candidates any more than I like socially con/archlibertarian unelectable candidates. Unelectable is unelectable; doesn't matter which way you swing politically.

I cut Rudy Giuliani loose, who'd I been a supporter of since I was in college (when he was a US Attorney, well before his mayoral years), when he proved himself unelectable by insanely declaring himself pro-choice. I have a lot of respect for Daniels, but can't get behind him, for similar reasons.

The winner of an election will always be a figure who can unite both his base, with at least a fair amount of enthusiasm, and the persuadable independents and moderates. Always. Any candidate whose appeal is to only one side or another is going to lose. Period. Always. (Barring a very weird situation where his rival also has the exact same limitation, in which case I guess it's a toss-up, advantage Democrats, because they control the media.)

My problem with Sarah Palin is not and has never been that she's a strong conservative. My problem with her is that she seems to have no ability to persuade those critical swing voters we can get in a winning year.

That's why I was big on Pence, before he announced he wasn't running; in theory, on paper, he seemed like he could get the conservative base and maybe also get the right-leaning independent voters too.

Any winning candidate has to do both. I grow frustrated by conservatives who encourage candidates to continue pitching their message only to the base. Why? To what end? So that Barack Obama can be reelected?

posted by Ace at 01:23 PM

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