What changed is, he isn’t running for governor again:
When Mitch Daniels first ran for governor in 2004 he wrote a letter to a union leader expressing his belief that there was no need to adopt a right to work law in Indiana. That union is now financing television ads that attack the governor and other Republicans for pursuing right to work legislation.
The TV ads are paid for by a political action committee that calls itself Lunchpail Republicans. It’s backed by the International Union of Operating Engineers, a union that supported Mitch Daniels as a candidate in both 2004 and 2008.
The governor sent a letter to one of its leaders in 2004 citing the union’s opposition to right to work and writing “I’m in agreement.”
“I feel disappointed,” says Lunchpail Republican founder David Fagan. “I think he clearly understood the issue well in 2004 when he made the commitment.”
Democrats have picked up their cause, accusing the governor being dishonest. On Indiana Week in Review, Democrat Ann DeLaney said of Daniels, “He looked the union right in the eye, shook their hands, and said I won’t touch this. That’s not a change in position. That’s breaking your word.”
Mitch Daniels is giving the response to Obama’s State of the Union address, and we’re going to be told, yet again, that he’s a reasonable Republican and a moderate.
That isn’t true. Anywhere you care to look, from voter suppression to abortion to privatization to anti-worker policies and practices, Daniels is more extreme than Walker or Kasich. Daniels is simply a better and more media savvy liar.
This is the moderate who kicked off the GOP voter suppression campaign, way back in 2005. This is the moderate who made national headlines calling for a “truce” on social issues, and then went back to Indiana and quietly promoted an absolutely brutal law effectively closing Planned Parenthood clinics. This moderate gutted public employee collective bargaining rights by executive order. This moderate lied to private sector union members to secure their support, then launched a full-out war to destroy their unions because he doesn’t need their votes anymore.
We’re also going to be told he’s a “job creator”. That’s a lie, too. This is the unemployment rate for Indiana. Mitch Daniels has put each and every conservative “job-creating” idea in place in Indiana, for years, and Indiana is no better off for it. He’s been telling them for years that all of these draconian measures would create jobs, and the promised jobs haven’t appeared. Any year now.
“As governor, he has turned deficits into surplus, reformed government from top to bottom, and created a better environment for private-sector job creation,” Boehner said.
“Created a better environment” means “the promised jobs never appeared”. He’s different than Kasich and Walker. That part is true. He’s much further Right.
Interesting choice, by national Republicans. Mitch Daniels is right in the middle of a pitched battle with working people in his state, and national Republican leaders think he’s the best spokesperson for their Party, when this is the response he gets in his own state:
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels’ final State of the State address may be remembered more for the reaction than the words: protesters booing in the Statehouse hallways and empty chairs where Democrats should have been sitting.
It likely was a scene never before witnessed in Indiana.
The cause: The state’s controversial “right to work” legislation. The proposal has bitterly divided Republicans and Democrats in the General Assembly. It has galvanized labor union members who see it as a threat, while businesses consider it an economic-development tool.
I don’t think they can say “screw you” any louder than trotting out Daniels right now. Is this the deal with Republicans now? They’re full-on opposed to unions and unionized workers? Because that hasn’t been the case up to now. They managed to retain a crucial share of the union vote in places like Indiana, while demonizing unions at the national level. Are they abandoning any attempt to retain or increase that vote?
The Moar You Know
He’s an evil dwarf, and what’s worse, a well-spoken, believable one.
Like Reagan, but smaller.
Villago Delenda Est
Another piece of shit that in a more civilized country would have long ago been given a tumbrel ride out of public life.
Cat Lady
Reasonable and moderate = not a stone cold idiot (Perry) or a dangerous whackaloon (Bachmann, Paul). It’s finally come to that low bar for repukes.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
He’s reasonable and moderate because he hasn’t called out the National Guard yet.
Maude
@Villago Delenda Est:
We could start a business making super SUV sized tumbrels. All we need is a catchy name.
Xecky Gilchrist
All we need is a catchy name.
Hummbrels?
burnspbesq
I get an email every morning with the table of contents of the Federal Register and links to all of the content. It’s listed alphabetically by agency.
I normally just skim right on down to the IRS section, but this morning, something caught my eye: a listing for “Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.” Don’t think I’ve seen that before. Glad to see that they are finally getting their feet on the ground.
Violet
Yes. They just don’t say it that way. They say things like, “workers paying their fair share” and “government workers stealing from taxpayers”.
I disagree that it hasn’t been the case. They’re against unions but they use code words to convey the information in a less threatening way. Union members voting Republican is hardly surprising. People have voted against their self-interest for a long time. Republicans are pros at demonizing the “other” to gain votes. Union members scared of “others” taking over their neighborhoods or schools will happily vote Republican if that’s what their main motivator is.
If the unions get small enough they don’t need to make any attempts to keep or increase the vote. They want to destroy the unions so Dems don’t get money from them.
Maude
@Xecky Gilchrist:
FTW
kay
@Violet:
I can’t prove it, and it’s anecdotal, but I think it’s different than “voting against their interests”. I don’t think they saw it that way. I think they saw it as “they won’t go after us”.
I watched Bush very closely in 2004, and listened to him in Ohio, and he simply didn’t do that. He didn’t go after unions directly.
I think it’s a change. More aggressive. More overt.
I’m really curious is if it’s going to be a big enough shift to show up in national numbers. In some midwestern states, Republicans get 40% of the union vote. I know all of those voters aren’t going to flee, but I’m dying to know of that group thins out, in any national way that matters.
We’ll see, I guess.
Linnaeus
Hell, yes, they are. Organized labor is one of the few remaining institutional blocks that the American liberal-left has to keep the right wing dream of neofeudalism in check. The GOP is seeing its chance and going for it.
Bob
Republicans are evil lying scumbags I’d put a period after scumbags but for the fact that so many more derogatory adjectives could be added. Truly vile folk those Republicans.
kay
@Violet:
I also sort of disagree with this. I think it avoids the real push to destroy unions because they’re unions, not because they’re Democratic donors.
I honestly think conservatives do not want any labor organizing, at all. They want that whole concept gone.
piratedan
a reasonable Republican is someone who agrees in screwing over minorities, the poor and the elderly in the abstract because they would just as soon those people “go away”.
Villago Delenda Est
@kay:
They want a return to serfdom. A bunch of natural serfs called Teabaggers are fully on board with doing that.
Linda Featheringill
I sort of agree with everybody about Republican attitudes towards unions PLUS:
I think they honestly think that Citizens United has guaranteed they will win elections. They think they no longer need boots on the ground.
Just like they honestly think that Obama can’t talk without a teleprompter.
kindness
This post would be better if we could force the morans that repeatedly voted for Daniels to read it.
Reminds me of liberals who continue to donate to NPR and claim they aren’t the problem.
Violet
@kay:
It’s scary but seems to be true that George W. Bush was a much better politician than most of the Republicans out there today. He knew better than to make statements like that.
Also, by today’s standards he seems like a leftist. He was coming out of his dad’s camp, and don’t forget his dad was VP under Reagan, who famously said he supported unions. I think W. was influenced enough by his dad and his family’s “tradition of public service” that he wasn’t going to go full wingnut-wet-dream with his policies.
I can’t believe I just typed the above sentence. It doesn’t seem like it can even be true, and yet it seems like it is.
General Stuck
I’m going to go out on a limb and predict a major pol shift in this country that began in 2006 and 2008, backslid some in 2010, but is back on course. And the GOP will get crushed by it, if they don’t moderate their worldview some, which ain’t gonna happen anytime soon.
Many democrats in office are getting it, and refinding a spine that Reagan removed in 1980, and realize they have the upper hand now and are standing pat. The SOPA PIPA drama playing out has been a good example of the shifting tide, with some dems and repubs getting the news that people are mad as hell and not gonna take it any more.
The Citizens United campaign is going to leave us all with the vapors at the level of spending and hatred, and wake some more people up. With Ma and Pa Kettle asking themselves why dint we see this coming.
Corps and all republicans and some democrats will react the way they always do with pouring more and more cash into the system to influence it, to elect more right wing stooges like Daniels, et al, and it will cycle the same way only more so, and the ugly truth of how far we’ve drifted into the belly of the corporate beast with a bought governing system. Then we either fix it, or grab the cannonball and roll over to the depths of dystopia.
Obama will rock and roll Romngrinch with small donations mostly, and an even better campaign effort than last time, riding the mup with long Unicorn coat tails for all the others. And we live happily ever after in the OZ.
Or it could all turn to shit and we can live on chocolate covered ants, if we’re the lucky .
kay
@Villago Delenda Est:
To clarify, I think putting it in the frame of “unions donate to Democrats, so the GOP guts unions” is arguing on their field, and blurring what’s really going on here. The conservative argument is “union thugs electing Democrats”.
Conservatives oppose workers organizing. That’s what they oppose. That unions also donate to Democrats is just a side benefit they gain from that ideological stance. Talking about who donates to whom just muddles the issue.
Republican union members hear that as “anti-Democrat” NOT “anti-union”. I think that’s deliberate, on the part of Republicans, using that framing. We never reach the real issue, which is not Democrats, but unions.
geg6
In a word, Kay, yes. They have gone all in on the class war they accuse us of wanting. Only instead of the 1%, their enemy is the poor and working classes. I don’t know when these idiots are gonna finally get it. If you aren’t in the 1% as of this minute, they want you begging in the streets and you and your family feeling lucky to have a cardboard box to lay down in for the night. And I really don’t feel I’m indulging in hyperbole at all by saying that. Everything they say and do points to the fact that I am right.
Violet
@kay:
I don’t think one is separate from the other. I completely agree that Republicans want to destroy unions because they don’t want labor organizing. The sooner we return to a feudalistic society where most of us are serfs, the happier they’ll be.
But that doesn’t preclude the fact that they want to destroy unions because they’re major donors to Dems. I’ve heard right wing talk show hosts on the radio go on and on about that very issue, but national hosts (like Limbaugh and Hannity) and local guys in my area. They keep beating the drum about unions donating to and organizing for Dems and how that’s where union money goes and it’s wrong and listeners phone in to agree with them.
I think Republicans want unions gone for many reasons, including but not limited to wanting to keep workers from organizing and eliminating unions as a source for donations and organizing for Dems.
KG
A few years back, I remember someone spokeshole on one of the chatterbox channels say something like “what about the Reagan Democrats?” and the other spokeshole said something like “there aren’t any Reagan Democrats anymore, they all Republicans now.” I think the same thing is happening to the few remaining moderate Republicans, they’re either independents now or Democrats.
So, what’s left is the harder and harder right. The socons who dream of a life that never existed. The southern reconstructionists. The big money business types who want to crush unions and end consumer protections. The last group has found a way to convince the other two groups that they can get their imagined dream worlds if the unions (made up of all “those people”) are wiped out. They’ve also convinced them that all those pesky regulations are standing in the way of jobs and lower cost goods, and whatnot.
Y’all can tar and feather me all you want (digitally please), but this sure as hell ain’t the GOP I grew up in. There’s something very disturbing about it, actually.
Villago Delenda Est
@kay:
Absolutely agree. They loathe the idea of workers organizing and asserting themselves in the market.
Well, in reality, they loathe the idea of an actual free market in general.
Because then the motherfuckers would actually have to work for a living.
Maude
@Violet:
Limbaugh and Hannity belong to AFTRA. A union.
They don’t mention that.
shortstop
Unless they think the myth of Daniels’ moderation is still pretty prevalent. Then it’s a twofer: they get to say “screw you” and most of the people who get it are the ones doing the screwing.
It was four years ago, but when we were doing GOTV work in Indy right before the election, we couldn’t get over how many yards sported both Obama and Daniels signs. Ticket splitting just doesn’t happen in Chicago ;) and we didn’t know what to make of it. I haven’t seen any recent polls on Daniels’ popularity, so I don’t know what the current sitch is.
kay
@Violet:
Right, Violet, but if you’re a union member who votes for Republicans, how do you hear that?
You hear that as Republicans oppose Democrats. That benefits Republicans, who don’t want to reach the issue, which is that they oppose unions.
If I want to reach a union member who has been voting Republican, I want to talk about unions, not Democrats. He’s going to knee jerk reject “Democrats”. I want to talk about his issue, which is not Democratic campaign funds, or lack thereof, but his job.
I think what you’re saying is true, but I also think that benefits Republicans, by making this Republicans versus Democrats.
This is Republicans versus union members.
jim filyaw
two things about unions. first, they asked for it (good example–patco/they supported reagan). secondly, they got fat, dumb, and irritating. when i was in college, the face of organized labor was george meany, a good man, but dick cheney had a better public persona. as often as not when unions made the news, it was related to mafia connections. when and if the public face of organized returns to walter reuther and woody guthrie, the working stiffs may start believing their dues are well spent again.
Tony J
More and more I’m coming to the conclusion that Republicans are so very certain that 2012 is going to be a disaster for them that they’ve given up on ‘the mushy middle’ entirely, and are concentrating on getting the 40ish% they know will – always – vote for a Republican to the polls next November. Mitt as the nominee certainly won’t do it, but turning the Election into a Rourke’s Drift Redux scenario might stir up enough of a reaction in the foes of ‘nearness’ to get them to the polls where they can cast their votes – against – Obama.
Martyrdom is pretty popular on the Right, or so they always keep showing me.
Roger Moore
@Violet:
I think that’s backward. The Unions support the Democrats because the Republicans want to destroy them. Big Business has been targeting unions at least since the Gilded Age, and the Republican attacks on them are part of the same program. Unions support the Democrats because the Democrats are their only friends.
Violet
@kay:
This is very true. I think you can reach the Republican union voter but you have to figure out why they are voting Republican. And then you you have to find a way to make economic/union issues more important to them than whatever makes them vote Republican.
I agree it’s essential to frame the discussion as Republicans vs. unions. As we all know, Republicans are very good at message framing.
Perhaps I’ve bought into their framing with my argument that it’s about unions giving money to Dems. I think that’s an issue for them, but everyone is right that arguing in that manner makes it about Dems vs. Republicans. That’s not as advantageous as making it Republicans vs. unions.
kindness
@jim filyaw: Let me guess…You’ve never been represented by a Union, have you?
KG
@Maude: Limbaugh’s done enough TV work he’s probably also a member of SAG, you know, those evil Hollywood Liberals
kay
Violet, it’s why I was writing here during Issue Two that I didn’t want Obama to ‘put on his walking shoes”or whatever.
Republicans want this to be about Republicans versus Democrats, because these GOP voters.
They win if it’s phrased like that.
It’s their whole argument. They have nothing else to bring to their union voters.
If we leave Democrats out of it, we reach the issue.
They don’t want to reach the issue.
General Stuck
Direct assault on liberal institutions like unions, is not a sign of confidence by the GOP. It is a sign of desperation, signaling they know somewhere deep down, that they are losing the war on all fronts. Cultural and economic, so they are launching full frontal hammer and anvil ops, but don’t realize the anvil usually includes a lot of their own voters.
The only way I see out of the right’s conundrum is to split their party from the 27 percenters, and build a moderate conservative new party, re energizing the Rockefeller republicans and siphon off some of dems more conservative members. Sort of like they are feebly trying to do with the third way stuff. It will take some more drubbings at the polls to get onboard the GOP braintrust to make it happen, because attacking unions and other collective social nets, takes out too many of their own, and pisses the sleeping giant dem party to quit sucking its thumb and do something. It is a total loser in the long run, and short run. Some of them know it, but not enough, yet.
Violet
@kay:
I think you were exactly right–and Obama was smart–that he should stay out of the Issue Two stuff. Letting the Republicans hang themselves is the best thing to do.
hhex65
@jim filyaw: Wow, that is dumb.
KG
@General Stuck: the problem is, that 27% ain’t going to like being left alone and powerless (though I suspect they’ll do well enough in pockets to have some representation in state or federal offices for a while). It’ll latch on somewhere else because it’s mostly interested in power, and if it can’t have power, it’s going to shit on everyone’s day.
Though ultimately I agree with you, the conservative movement is fucked if it doesn’t move back towards the center.
Judas Escargot
@Violet:
In hindsight, GWB was also strong enough to stand up to the rest of his party, and to keep at least some of the extremism in check. In a sense, GWB did “keep us safe”… from ultra-extremists like Dick Cheney.
What makes me nervous about a potential Romney administration is that it wouldn’t be strong enough to stand up to a GOP Congress: If anything, Mitt-bot would probably go out of his way to prove just how manly and un-moderate he was, in an attempt to appease them.
Rome Again
Even funnier, Freepers have linked to a rumor that Mitch Daniels might reconsider running for president. The money quote:
The kicker:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2835049/posts
Now they’re on that thread arguing over whether he’s a conservative or a RINO. LOL
I want to know how he’s going to manage to get on the ballots of states where it’s too late to apply? Or is he hoping to be the one in a brokered convention?
General Stuck
@KG:
Some of them will get the memo and stay on board biting their tongues. The rest can build an ArK and shove off to OozeBeckistan. :)
Chris
@KG:
That’s not our biggest concern right this minute because obviously the 27% are far from being out of power… but it’s also a concern of mine. Even if demographics or their increasing crazification does finally force the public to turn against them… what are they going to do, just sit back and take it? Last time the country was this divided and the conservative side was electorally doomed, they outright started a civil war.
KG
@General Stuck: I like the way you think
Yutsano
@hhex65: A one-and-done hitjob. Good little ratfucker. Here’s your moldy cheese biscuit. Scurry along now.
Hill Dweller
OT: Apparently Willard snapped at a person in the rope line today, after he/she had the temerity to ask about helping the 99%.
Also, too, the Romney and Santorum camps are having a cat fight over the Iowa results, and a reported telephone call Willard made to
concedecongratulate Man on Dog for his IowaVICTORYtie!kay
I just watched a clip of Mitt Romney snapping at a voter.
He’s nasty, and he’s losing his shit.
Compare that clip with Obama having a reasonable, polite discussion with the incredibly rude and stupid Joe the “plumber”.
Romney is not good at this.
gaz
@kay: I agree – I think part of the reason Wisconsin was at least arguably successful was because Obama did not get directly involved. I mean, the union busting still happened, but Walker is toast and with any luck they’ll probably get their legislature back. =)
I’m not sure it would have been different had Obama been involved, but I tend to think it was more effective because he wasn’t.
gaz
@KG: smells a bit like fascism maybe?
Dr. Squid
Maybe now the Democrats can fix the damage caused by purity troll Gary Hart 40 years ago.
mai naem
As long as the Repubs can get their evangelical maroons with deh gays, duh blacks and abortion!baby killer! crap they will get their twenty seven percent.
CambridgeChuck
Scott Brown is about to kick off his reelection campaign. A great response to that is to contribute to Elizabeth Warren’s moneybomb. So far today she’s raised $899,340 — it’d be awesome to hit $1 million.
arguingwithsignposts
Speaking of truth vigilantes, i wish someone in the media would call these laws what they are instead of falling for that anti-union “right to work” frame.
Schlemizel
I have been saying this since the days of Poppy Bush: Our masters will not be happy until we accept the level of wages, worker safety and environment that the Chinese have. The GOP is the instrument to make that happen. They have become so insane that our masters have bought a large number of Dems simply because a wholly owned Dem appears better than the Rep so they can.
Violet
@kay:
Both Romney and Gingrich are very flawed candidates. I think they’d both be terrible in the general election. Romney would turn off the Republican base. Gingrich would scare Independents a lot and completely lose women’s votes. I don’t think there’s a good option left for the GOP.
I’m not sad about that at all.
Chris
@gaz:
I’m pretty sure fascist comparisons to conservatism are legit and not at all inaccurate. If not before the Tea Party Movement, certainly now.
elmo
My whole family is pretty far right; we were raised on discussions of how McCarthy was right, and Goldwater was a hero, and Nixon was brought down by “them.” We idolized Reagan in my house, growing up. I’m the only one who’s thrown that off.
My brother, on the other hand, remains firmly in that camp. And we were talking politics the other day, and he is horrified at the anti-union stuff coming from his party. He’s a union member and a government employee, and he has pre-existing conditions that make him completely uninsurable in the private market, and this is the first time that he’s even blinked at anything coming from his party.
Dr. Loveless
Anyone have a link to that video of Mittens losing his shit on the ropeline? Me wanna see …
He also did that BSOD thing of his at a guy with muscular dystrophy back in 2007.
General Stuck
@elmo:
Because before, the attacks were calculated politically and made piecemeal by the goopers. Mostly targeting Union leadership spending big bucks on the dem party, and stuff like that. It has been a while since they went for the union/dem jugular in a existential way. From a standing start and not in response to a strike or holdout, like with the air traffic controllers and Reagan’s move on that one.
xian
he was Bush’s budget director. why do we have to go beyond that?
Schlemizel
@elmo:
There are a couple of things you can count on from conservatives & one of the most consistent is they are against it unless it helps them.
Gays? Hell NO! – until it turns out my daughter is in which case its OK.
Unions? All bad! – well except for my union, they do me a lot of good.
Its like sociopathy
AA+ Bonds
@kay:
Except if that happens, it discourages people from realigning as Democrats
Origuy
My dad is a retired member of the IBOE in Indiana. He is very proud of the union and its medical coverage and pension. Although he’s a lifelong Republican, if the union went against the GOP, he’d probably follow them, at least at the state level.
The Other Chuck
We need to stop calling it “Right To Work” for starters. Who doesn’t want the right to work after all? “Right To Freeload” is more accurate.
timb
@kay: Sorry, Kay, but you’re giving them too much credit. As a Hoosier, I can assure you the motivation is to destroy unions as a funding source.
Amen. For instance, turns out Indiana owes the Federal Government 2 billion for unemployment insurance. ‘Course, that’s off books, because otherwise it turns surplus into deficits.
For instance, my taxes have gone up three times in the last 8 years, yet Mitch tells he didn’t raise taxes.
For instance, Mitch claims the private sector can do any public job, yet his crony connection contract with IBM collapsed with such a heavy thud and with enough of his personal involvement that the Indiana Supreme Court is still trying to decide if he has to testify in the lawsuit.
For instance, Mitch claims to run efficient govt. Really? Then how did his freaking Treasurer lose and then find 300 million dollars recently? Why is his Secretary of State under criminal indictment for voter fraud (pretty much the only case of voter fraud any Republican has ever shown is possible)? Why did one of his utility regulators resign over asking for a job with the utility in the midst of contract negotiations?
Mitch is everything Republicans promise to bring us: a bonanza for the rich, corrupt, incompetent leaders running govt into the ground, and a nose in every bedroom. He is a fraud.
kay
@AA+ Bonds:
I don’t agree. If they’re voting Republican, the first step is the issue. What’s the issue? Unions and wages. Why are we talking about Democrats and campaign funds?
If we say (and this is what newspapers said, in Ohio, because Republicans fed them the line) “Republicans want to weaken unions because Republicans want to weaken Democratic fundraising” who is left out of that sentence? How does a Republican voter who is a union member respond to that? He or she isn’t even in the discussion. It’s Republican politicians versus Democratic politicians. If I’m a Republican politician, I love that, because now I can start screaming about food stamps and Nancy Pelosi and gay people, and we’re off the subject of the union member standing in front of me.
kay
@timb:
I followed that, and I was sure it was going to be huge, and for some reason, it wasn’t.
It’s such an enormous fuck up. Just a disaster. One would think it would be occasionally mentioned, because he’s supposedly Mr. Competent, but it isn’t.
joes527
@Dr. Loveless: That counts as loosing his shit?
That was a canned response that TEAM ROMNEY(TM) put together and loaded into the Romney-tron for an occasion just like this.
The fact that he delivered his lines so badly spoiled the effect that he was shooting for, but that didn’t look anything like an actual person losing their actual shit.
John McCain on the other hand … now THERE was an unexploded bomb with a sputtering fuse.
RickyRoma
Lunchpail Republicans sound like a group filled with almost as much self-loathing as Logcabin Republicans.
Chuck Butcher
Why blue collar workers vote counter to their economic interests (perhaps?) would make for several large publications. An element of conservatism is engendered by living in what is perceived as a risky environment; and if one paycheck is the difference between getting along and disaster that qualifies. Change involves risk. For example: gays getting married involves change – economic risks are minimal as are reality based threats to “conventional” marriage. It still is change.
The GOPers may have crossed that line between perceived risk of social change and the real risk of economice policy.
(perhaps?) well, measured in outcomes the line between the two Parties has been pretty blurry.
kay
@RickyRoma:
Their website makes me sad because it’s all about how Republicans used to support unions.
Republicans have been slowly but surely destroying unions my entire adult life.
It’s like how 25 year old Republicans say constantly that Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act.
All of those Republicans are dead. They’re not coming back. For God’s sake get over it and move on.