Why Do So Many Conservatives Like Mitch Daniels?
Mitch Daniels presents something of an enigma for conservatives.
On more than one occasion, Mr. Daniels, Indiana’s Republican governor and a potential 2012 presidential candidate, has rejected conservative orthodoxy. As governor, he has raised Indiana’s sales tax. He has mentioned the possibility that the federal government may need to adopt a national sales tax to close the deficit. He has even suggested that Republicans have paid too much attention to social issues.
Why, then, are so many conservatives – George Will, for instance – so fond of Mr. Daniels?
His success in cutting government in Indiana, the subject of my Economic Scene column this week, is probably the main reason. But there is another reason, too.
Mr. Daniels often talks a lot like a libertarian. And it does not appear to be an act. He genuinely seems to believe that government should be kept as small as possible (even if he does not oppose every single tax increase to close a deficit).
“I believe that there’s zero-sum relationship between government growth and freedom,” he said in an interview. “I think that the promotion and protection of liberty is the center of our project in this country. My preference is for confining government to those things it clearly must do.”
I asked him whether he really believed that the relationship was zero-sum — that more government always led to less freedom. Knowing that the police are keeping the streets safe would seem to make people feel more free. So might knowing that they can take economic risks and still have a safety net to protect them from destitution.
“It’s too broad a statement, I guess,” Mr. Daniels said, adding that he said it without thinking it fully through. “But I would hope you’d agree that an enormous amount of what government does now — it may not limit freedom directly, but it doesn’t promote it in any meaningful way,” he said. “Each time we take a tax dollar from a free citizen, we do diminish their freedom.”
In a similar vein, Mr. Daniels said that he would prefer a a long-term budget plan even more conservative than the one written by Representative Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who will be the chairman of the House Budget Committee. Mr. Ryan calls for major changes to Medicare — turning it into a voucher program, rather than a guaranteed benefit — in order to keep taxes equal to 19 percent of gross domestic product in coming decades.
Most Republicans have declined to endorse Mr. Ryan’s far-reaching plan.
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