Shorter Mitch Daniels *

MY Man Mitch--Mitch has been My Man for thousands of Hoosiers of the sort he'd never deign to let into his garage, let alone his guest house, since his first campaign-- turned up on NBC's venerated Meet the Press yesterday. Shit, I typed "venerated". I meant "venditive".

Daniels was there in the network's hope that he'd say something dishy about one or more of the Eight Specks of Granite which currently compose the Republican Presidential field. This suggests NBC needs a new booker, or else that the whole operation is a tad cynical. Daniels declined the offer, refused to endorse fellow Randian Spaceman Paul Ryan, waved off the thoughtful offer of a chance to call Rick Perry a doofus (Perry "shouldn't have used That Word"--the word, traitor, never escapes anyone's lips--but then

There's nobody more effective than the president and his allies at vilifying people, challenging their character. )

before insisting that we could raise revenues while lowering taxes provided we started calling "taxes" something else, blaming the Lovely Cheri-with-an-i, yet again, for his not being President, and heading off with whoever was paying for lunch.

Read the transcript (do not risk the voice of Savannah Guthrie unless you have been cleared by a physician). Daniels is a tenth-rate weasel, despite the fact that he's obviously been practicing all his life. He's been brought on because he was the guy who, during his fifteen minutes of campaign enthusiasm, sorta said he would sorta leave social issues on the back burner while he finished fucking up the economy, unless he needed some votes or something. You remember: it was just before he announced his lifelong Christian advocacy nobody'd ever stumbled on before, and a while or two before he outlawed Planned Parenthood. Daniels candidacy was doomed at that moment, though another line of thinking would make that moment the whole purpose of his "campaign", the shot across the bow of the USS Palin which, naturally, landed a little short. Or maybe he just hoped everyone would talk about that, and not his own Record of Economic Achievement. (Mission Accomplished!) The fact that he defended the idea once or twice, after it stopped meaning anything, is apparently taken by network "news" functionaries to mean he might call Michele Bachmann "an idiot" on air, and absolve them of being afraid to do it themselves.

Read the damned thing, if you think wise. During his campaign**, the man used to do an elaborate self-leg-pull routine about his lack of charisma, in an effort to make it seem like the charge was all about his superficial physical shortcomings, sorry. Insufficiencies. Read him. He's even less charismatic on the inside. For cryin' out loud. "The Democrats are being intransigent about Social Security"? Gutting it is the only way there'll ever be a balanced budget, or a fair test of his Supernatural Randianism? Weren't we actually on the road to sensible Federal budgets until the day when--who was it?--Mitch Fucking Daniels took over at OMB? And slashed taxes on the wealthy in the exact amount we're in arrears today? This is the voice of a major Republican thinker? "Let's take all the loopholes out of the tax code". Yeah, right. I wonder why nobody ever thought of that? The Reader is asked to consider that while "Close the loopholes!" sounds like "Tax all those fatcats who use loopholes!" to the average taxpayer unaware it's his mortgage exemption Daniels is after, the helpful Liberal Media Personality, a wholly-owned employee of Fatcat-Universal, has managed to keep her microphone hand from quivering uncontrollably despite the threat to her beloved employer.

Yes, yes. Imagine President Daniels making the tax code fair for the Little Guy. Imagine him turning his anit-charisma ray on a Republican Congress, ushering in the Era of Fair Taxation and Satisfactory Revenues, plus Jobs for All. Fuck it, just imagining that man becoming President rends the curtain of spacetime. Daniels now gets to stand just off to the side, shooting spitballs for the wealthy, while simultaneously pretending that he, and Haley Barbour, his bff aside from Paul Ryan, now, chose not to run, for personal reasons, and not because of the obvious shellacking their "reasonableness" was about to take from actual voters in their own party. This makes Daniels, somehow, the official Republican voice of moderation, in that, as the President nearly two dozen Ivy League underclassmen, and no one else, wanted him to be, he would be so opposed to seeing the poor and the elderly die in the streets he'd be forced to leave a note asking the help to keep the blinds drawn.

It bears repeating: Mitch Daniels and Paul Ryan are now the moderates in the Republican party, according to all the cool kids.

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* I have no explanation for how that took so long.

** Can we stop mincing about with this? The Coy Campaign was a campaign; had Daniels raised enough money from Republicans fearful of a Palin takeover in 2009 he'd be a candidate now, Cheri-with-an-i be damned. Besides, Indiana Republican women are practically dropping like cicadas from Becky Skillman Disease, the lifelong, debilitating syndrome with no symptoms, which takes you, or your mate, conveniently out of politics for a time. My god, you wouldn't even need to fake it; I'm sure the CIA could fix it so Cheri could not be moved outside of Hamilton county, with a prescription for Cosmopolitans and someone to check the mail for talcum in the bargain.

And what, exactly, was she to be called on to do during the two months a "real" Daniels campaign floundered? Anyone heard from Mrs. Dr. Ron Paul? Have you seen Jon Huntsman's wife.? No, really, have you seen Jon Huntsman's wife?