links for 2011-02-11

I want to give you the clip because this is, for all intents and purposes, his national political debut and there’s bound to be some curiosity among the readership after all the hype. He told a group of students today that there’s an excellent chance he won’t run, but this doesn’t sound like a speech from a guy who’s considering retirement after his term as governor ends. He plates plenty of red meat about America’s lurch towards socialism, but per Weigel, he stayed away from social issues and attacks on Obama to focus on fiscal catastrophe. Mary Katharine Ham and our Townhall cousin Guy Benson were there in the room and applauded him afterward on Twitter for the gravity of the message and lack of grandstanding. Judge for yourselves: Click the image to watch at CSPAN or scroll down below and read the transcript of his remarks as prepared for delivery.

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A good speech but Sarah Palin hiring a chief of staff, Mitch will probably be frozen out – but VP??

Sarah Palin has added a veteran Republican strategist to serve as chief-of-staff for her political action committee, Sarah PAC, CNN has learned.
Michael Glassner, an attorney and longtime adviser to former Kansas senator and presidential candidate Bob Dole, has signed on to steer the former Alaska governor's political operation as she considers a possible 2012 presidential bid.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Glassner managed vice presidential operations during John McCain's unsuccessful White House bid.

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Guess Palin is going to go…..or at least preparing to do so

I stand by my assertion that Governor Daniels dropped the ball on the most important judicial issue he faced as governor of Indiana when he stated that the Missouri Plan for judicial selection in his state “is a model to be emulated, not discarded. It is not broken; it requires no repair.” Until he retracts that statement or issues a straightforward condemnation of Indiana’s selection method, I will take him at his word.

1. If the reform legislation Daniels vetoed was “little more” than a ploy by liberal Democrats, his veto statement should have said so. Instead, it went the extra mile to say that the Missouri Plan “is a model to be emulated, not discarded. It is not broken; it requires no repair.” By adopting rhetoric that could have been drafted by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor or one of several Soros-funded groups, he indicated willingness to align himself with the liberal legal establishment.

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Is Daniels a judicial conservative?

In an expansion of their political footprint, the billionaire Koch brothers plan to contribute and steer a total of $88 million to conservative causes during the 2012 election cycle, according to sources, funding a new voter micro-targeting initiative, grass-roots organizing efforts and television advertising campaigns.

In fact, as the annual Conservative Political Action Conference meets this week in Washington and conservatives assess the state of their movement, the Koch network of nonprofit groups, once centered on sleepy free-enterprise think tanks, seems to be emerging as a more ideological counterweight to the independent Republican political machine conceived by Bush-era GOP operatives Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie before the 2010 midterm elections.

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