Mitch Daniels Declines, Smug “Centrist” Consultants With Dubious Records Hardest Hit

Move Mitch Daniels into the “No” column.

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels joined the march of would-be GOP presidential hopefuls offstage Sunday in a dead-of-night decision that put his supporters in play and muddled the fight for front-runner status against President Obama.

Mr. Daniels‘ exit, which he said he made at his family’s behest, clears the upcoming news cycle to absorb former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s entry into the race Monday in Iowa.

The Sunday Morning politi-shows were abuzz with all manner of “what does it all mean” commentary from the GOP insider set. A snarkier blogger might note here that neither Matthew Dowd nor Mike Murphy are exactly conservative in their political outlook and that neither of them have exactly put together a string of victories. I, of course, am not such a blogger, but I know someone who is. Take it away, Stacy:

The discomfiture of “Republican insiders” is a very good thing. Can we get a show of hands of anybody who thinks “Republican insiders” (you know, the guys who backed Dede Scozzafava and Charlie Crist) have a clue as to how to win elections? Anybody?

Dowd notably stabbed his boss George Bush in the back in 2008 and quickly found a home as a “centrist” at ABC News. Murphy piloted the Meg Whitman campaign straight into Mount Loser and is best known for trash-talking Sarah Palin two months before the Presidential election. If the Conventional Wisdom could take form and walk the Earth it would do so as a GOP political consultant like one of those guys.

I think the rest of us who aren’t angling for a gig on a 2012 campaign can sit back for a couple months and let events happen as they will. Those who were inclined to vote for Daniels will scatter among the other candidates (most of them to the Pawlenty camp). Most of them won’t stay there long because things change in an election season, often very quickly and without previous warning.

I think Daniels would have been a great addition to the roster of candidates. We could use more smart, conservative people in the race who have a few years of executive experience and who know their way around the business community. But we have what we have and it doesn’t make much sense to sit around and moon over our dream candidate like a teen-aged girl sighing over an issue of  Tiger Beat. We need to test the mettle of the people who are running right now. Every one of them will make at least one mistake and I want to see how they react. I want to know their policy strengths and weaknesses. I want to see who they hire to advise them (Note to candidates: if you hire Matthew Dowd or Mike Murphy, you’re a loser. Don’t be a loser). It makes a lot more sense to do the testing now, at least a year before “crunch time”, than it does to ride a dreamy space unicorn of a candidate into a general election only to find out he (or she) had a few nag-like tendencies.

So Daniels is out. Fine. I wish him well in all his endeavors. Maybe he can help us figure out what we have among the people who are running. If he’s interested in doing that, then he’ll provide us a very valuable service, unlike certain “centrist” strategists.

Tags: 2012 Election, Mitch Daniels