GOP Wonks Lose with Daniels' Exit

The challenge for those on the right who admired Mitch Daniels is to figure out how to get the rest of the party to embrace his pragmatic perspective.

Mitch Daniels’ has exited the GOP presidential field and he leaves a large cadre of unhappy conservative policy wonks in his wake. The sentiments of this group were best expressed by David Brooks who wrote in The New York Times in September of 2010

Flamboyant performers like Sarah Palin get all the attention, but the governing soul of the party is to be found in statehouses where a loose confederation of über-wonks have become militant budget balancers. Just as welfare reformers of the 1990s presaged compassionate conservatism, so the austerity brigades presage the national party’s next chapter.

Mitch Daniels, the governor of Indiana who I think is most likely to win the G.O.P. presidential nomination in 2012, is the spiritual leader. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey is the rising star. Jeb Bush is the eminence. Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Rob Portman, a Senate candidate in Ohio, also fit the mold.

Brooks was wrong about Daniels but he wasn’t wrong with other aspects of his prediction. The Austerity Brigade has come to dominate the GOP in other ways.

The Ryan budget has become sacrosanct within the GOP such that New Gingrich can’t critique it without being chewed how by DC elites. Scott Walker became a Tea-Party hero for his high-profile confrontation with the public sector unions. And in the latest battle line that the austerity brigade has picked is the debate over raising the debt ceiling and toying with default.

So the GOP has become a party that embraces the line-by-line budget cutting of Daniels, but it hasn’t embraced the good government aspects of Daniels. In addition to his “social truce”, Daniels had also gone on the record in support of a value-added tax to simplify the tax code and showed an interest in other good government issues such as reforming the education system in Indiana.

The challenge for those on the right who admired Mitch Daniels is to figure out how to get the rest of the party to embrace the pragmatic perspective and willingness to tackle conservative sacred cows that Daniels did. Simply being the best governor in the nation isn’t enough when the party and its voters can be distracted so easily by Donald Trump and when the austerity measures it advocates lack any sense of compassion, and look set to send the seat in NY-26 to the Democrats.

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