Flap’s Links and Comments for May 5th on 09:03

These are my links for May 5th from 09:03 to 09:22:

• Mitch Daniels: He’d call Dick Lugar! But Wait Jennifer Rubin….. – Strike two: Liberals are comforted by the notion that he is “if not a one-issue candidate, certainly a one-theme candidate” and is more than happy to take the meat ax to defense spending. Why, sort of a penny-pinching Obama!

  And then there is this:

  On foreign policy, he said that he’s a “water’s edge” kind of guy. He is sure that the President is in a position to know a lot more about what’s needed in Afghanistan than he is. He said he didn’t think Obama had “made the case” for the Libya intervention, though this doesn’t mean there is no case. Pressed to say something critical about Obama’s foreign policy, he said that he was “uncomfortable” with the President’s “apology tours.” But he didn’t look comfortable saying it.

  Jamie Rubin asked him a clever question, right out of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”: if he had just one phone call to make about some foreign policy issue and he could call either Richard Lugar or John McCain, which would it be? After a little hemming and hawing, he said that he is “always comfortable” talking with Lugar. Though of course he respects McCain, too, he hastened to add. Maybe he was just being nice about his state’s senior senator, but I hope he was expressing a preference for diplomacy (Lugar’s M.O.) over warmongering (McCain’s).

  That’d be strike three. Relying on the Senate Republican most despised by the conservative base (who’s sure to be primaried) and who has run interference for President Obama on foreign policy issues such as START and a Russian reset will set alarm bells ringing on the right. If personnel is policy, then a Daniels administration would seem to be to the left of George H.W. Bush.

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  Read it all.

  In three strikes Jennifer (Jamie) Rubin outs Mich Daniels as a liberal squish who either knows nothing about foreign policy or knows too much.

  Not a friend of the Indiana Governor, in post after post, she dissects his foibles while ignoring his successes and history.

  She whines that Daniel's spokesman does not call her back and then sets him up with a Hobson's choice question.

  Every pundit knows Daniel's connection to Senator Richard Lugar. It goes back decades.

  But, a choice between McCain and Lugar? I mean, please.

  Remember Mitch Daniels was Ronald Reagan's political director in the White House as well as George W. Bush's OMB Director. He is decidely pro-life and his conservative agenda which has made it into Indiana law is a record everyone can evaluate.

  Oh yeah and Indiana looking and speaking Daniel's grandfather came from Syria in the early 1900's.

  I wish we could see some balance from jennifer Rubin in her writings but since we won't I suppose I will have to continue to provide some counter-weight.

• President 2012: ‘Probably not’ ready: Mitch Daniels on foreign policy – Conservative elites swoon over Mitch Daniels' fiscal conservative bona fides, but the Indiana governor says he's "probably not" ready for a foreign policy debate with President Barack Obama.

  Continue Reading
  Daniels passed on a chance to criticize Obama's Afghanistan troop surge Tuesday, telling reporters in New York that the commander-in-chief is privy to top secret information he does not have. The comments came as he's on a three-day East Coast swing, with a major education speech at the American Enterprise Institute set for Wednesday afternoon in Washington.

  The group of reporters included National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru, who reported Daniels' frank "probably not" response to the question of if he could engage Obama in a foreign policy debate at the moment.

  "His foreign-policy details are TBD," Ponnuru wrote.

  "Daniels said that 'it cannot be illegitimate to ask' if some of the country’s military commitments should be unwound,' but he has not yet reached any conclusions about which should be — or, at least, any he is willing to share," Ponnuru reported. "On Afghanistan he refuses to second-guess the decisions of the president, to whose greater access to information he defers. On Libya he says only that he has not seen the case for intervention made. One gets the impression of someone who is much more cautious about foreign intervention than Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty, but also cautious about saying so. He was asked if he were ready to debate President Obama on foreign policy. 'Probably not.' (He is candid.)."

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  Daniels is candid and terribly non-spin – almost to a fault. This will play well in any Presidential or Vice Presidential debates.