Flap’s Links and Comments for May 20th on 13:58

These are my links for May 20th from 13:58 to 14:29:

• Building up to a possible campaign, Mitch Daniels is in stitches – Hit by Door – It simply hasn't been a good week to be a Republican presidential hopeful.

  The latest: Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels received 16 stitches to his forehead Friday after what his office described as a "post-workout accident."

  "As he concluded a workout at about 1:30 p.m., he was standing near a door. The door suddenly swung open and struck the governor in the forehead," a statement from Daniels' office reads.

  Daniels' security detail brought him to Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, where he was treated and released. He's now recovering at home, his office says.

  The incident comes amid frenzied speculation in GOP circles about whether the two-term Hoosier State governor and former George W. Bush budget director will enter the presidential sweepstakes.

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  I won't delay anything…..

• Mitch Daniels Is the Tea Party’s Dream Candidate – Alternatively, the talk radio right (and neocons who want to expand America's global footprint no matter the cost) might succeed in keeping Mitch Daniels out of the race, and elevating a Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann — candidates who flatter them, make them feel important, and calm their intellectual insecurity at every opportunity. The irony is that this time, if the conservative movement prevails over the establishment, it won't be to put a more substantively conservative candidate before the people — what they'll have succeeded at is the most absurd elevation of style over substance in memory, and the nominee that results will likely be less reliably conservative and alienating in a way that makes them less likely to actually beat Barack Obama.   

  Thus your choice, GOP primary voter: Do you want a nominee who'll zealously shrink the size of government and address the deficit if elected? Or a nominee whose verbal attacks on liberals feel cathartic? "The underlying theory behind the talk radio critique of Daniels is basically that you can't trust a man who disarms liberals with his seeming reasonability, and what you need instead is somebody who takes the fight to the left at every opportunity," Ross Douthat writes. "This is an excellent description of the qualities required … to be a good talk radio host. But when applied to the presidential scene, it amounts to a kind of politics of schadenfreude, in which actual conservative accomplishments count for nothing, the ability to woo undecided voters is downgraded or dismissed, and all that matters is how much a prospective candidate irritates liberals."

  Put another way, today's conservative entertainers are selling out their professed beliefs for an emotional high and a ratings boost — and perhaps with the realization that effective conservative governance, achieved without intellectually dishonest bombast, is an implicit repudiation of their whole worldview. Tea partiers, many of whom revere talk radio, are being misled into thinking that Daniels isn't a desirable conservative candidate. If they are earnest in what they say about America's fiscal situation, however, a Daniels Administration is the best triumph for which they can reasonably hope.

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  But, the carping has already begun against Daniels but who will the hard Right coalesce behind?

  Cain, Bachmann or Palin?

  And. when they lose to Romney and Daniels, then who?