After going through Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, Joe the Plumber, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Michael Steele, and others hoping to find somebody to renew energy and enthusiasm in America for dead Republican ideas, is it possible the key to solving Republican woes lies somewhere in the Midwest with Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels who just may be able to use the four letter word that begins with a "j" (jobs) with the same gusto and gravitas like the Obama Administration has been doing?

 

Republicans have drudged their way through the first months of Obama’s presidency shifting from one personality to the next looking for someone to make the party seem legitimate in the eyes of the American people again, hoping to halt the decline in America of those who claim to be Republican.

 

The GOP had Mitch Daniels deliver a weekly address recently where he came out against the Waxman-Markey legislation (the Obama Administration’s and Congress’ answer to concerns over global warming). He condemned the establishment of a cap-and-trade system, characterized the legislation as “a poster child for government that cannot work,” and went on to discuss what would happen to jobs in the Midwest and Midwesterners if passed.

 

 

 

 

Daniels said,

 

“Even if one believes the administration’s own computer models, which they claim can predict temperatures 50 years away, the CO2 reductions from their bill could not budge the world thermometer by a tenth of a degree. It has become clear that the Pelosi bill has little to do with a cooler planet and everything to do with raising money for the out-of-control federal spending now underway in Washington. Please, excuse us Midwesterners for feeling a bit like the targets of an imperialistic policy, devised in places like California and New York and Massachusetts for their benefit and our expense.”

 

Mitch Daniels, who has been elected governor in Indiana twice now thanks to his “My Man Mitch” campaign where he travels around with a Winnebago and talks to Hoosiers one-on-one about how he will make government work for them, was the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director during George W. Bush’s first term as president.

 

He may be against cap-and-trade now, but on November 15, 2007, States News Service reported that Mitch Daniels was one of ten Midwestern leaders to sign a greenhouse gas reduction accord, an accord which aimed to “develop a market-based and multi-sector cap-and-trade mechanism to help achieve those reduction targets” and more. 

 

Daniels led the charge against federal regulations and consumer and environmental protections that Clinton hoped to implement in his final weeks in office.

 

Digital Journal reported on Nov 2, 2008, the Sunday after Bush’s Inauguration Daniels told the Bush Administration, “'Let's pull back as many of these as we can.” This was part of Chief of Staff Andrew Card’s and others’ plan to modify or scrap last-minute regulations that did not wholly reflect Republican policy and some of the regulations scrapped addressed issues concerning airline safety, immigration, and indoor air pollutants along with other environmental issues as well.

 

Daniels was also worked to make it possible for the Bush Administration to pass their tax cuts for the richest 1% in 2001.

 

In Ron Suskind’s The Price of Loyalty, Suskind wrote of how Daniels, in the midst of Senate and House Republican cries for deeper tax cuts including capital gains tax cuts, helped make the tax cuts deeper:

 

“…Mitch Daniels in an internal memo he sent to [Sec. of Treasury Paul O’Neill] and others in mid-February he sent to O’Neill and others in mid-February, had written that “there are large opportunities and contingencies that could expand the surpluses over ten years,” above the current projection of $5.6 trillion. This assessment, which O’Neill argued in various internal meetings was analytically specious, was leaked to senators and strengthened talk of deeper cuts and various additions from child credits to marriage credits to the repeal of the estate tax.” (p. 31)

 

Daniels appeared on CNN’s Evans, Novak, Hunt & Shields on March 17, 2001, he spoke about the tax cuts but he also took questions on the issue of global warming and the administration’s plans to deal with carbon dioxide.

NOVAK: Mr. Daniels, the paper this week have been fully of reports of the president pulling back from a campaign commitment allegedly to treat carbon dioxide emissions as a pollutant. And this has an effect of course on the question of global warming. There's been a lot of turmoil inside the administration on this. But can you tell was whether or not this administration considers global warming a serious problem or considers it an overheated claim by the environmentalists?

DANIELS: I think that the president believes that there are problems that demand close inspection. And he's commissioned people to do that. Science is not 100 percent clear in the judgment of the administration on most people. And we've got a lot yet to learn about this, but he's certainly committed to and committed his administration to working on it hard.

NOVAK: Can we say that when the president and his speech of last September in Saginaw, Michigan talked about treating carbon dioxide as a pollutant which a lot of conservatives think is echo extremism. That that was something the staffers put in and it really wasn't fully stamped out by this administration?

DANIELS: I don't know. I was not part of the campaign. I would just simply say that it was a statement that was ambiguous, needed to be clarified. The president did it. He did it decisively and clearly in the face of what he new would be a criticism. And now the administration position is clear we think it's consistent with the world in which as current circumstances demonstrate we need more energy if we're going to have economic growth. And without that we won't have a clean environment.

Daniels was a part of the National Energy Policy Development Group and insight into Daniels’ involvement in an administration that made it difficult for regulations to be implemented and enforced can be found here on OMB Watch, which published a report on “The Bush Legacy.”

In an administration filled top-to-bottom with industry representatives, you would expect corporate lobbyists and CEOs of regulated industries to have easy access to government officials. Easy, however, doesn’t begin to describe the level of intimacy that existed between industry and the Bush administration. Even nonpartisan critics used far harsher terms. In 2006, a former Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security told The New York Times that during his tenure, he witnessed relationships he considered “almost incestuous.”¹⁴⁷

One of the most illustrative – and flagrant – examples of how these improper relationships worked was the National Energy Policy Development Group, headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. Formed in the first weeks of the Bush administration, the Energy Task Force (as it was informally known) was charged with developing a comprehensive policy to “promote dependable, affordable, and environmentally sound production and distribution of energy for the future.”¹⁴⁸ That may have been its official mission statement, said environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., “but it behaved more like a band of pirates divvying up the booty.”

Somehow, Daniels has managed to govern without having to answer for any of the actions he took as a member of the Bush Administration. That may be because Democratic opposition to Republican policies in Indiana is weak and spineless or it may be that Daniels has distanced himself from his Bush years (after all there is little mention in his biography of his work as OMB Director).

http://www.mymanmitch.com/about_mitch.html

 

This may be why the Republicans have given Daniels the task of being the figurehead who leads the charge against the Waxman-Markey legislation that may or may not be deliberated over on Capitol Hill soon.

 

Indiana gets 95% of its electricity from coal-fired power plants. So, some of what Daniels has to say about jobs and utility costs rising might be true.

Gannett News Service found in March of 2007 that the impact on Indiana could be severe, but that is because Indiana from 1960-2001 had the sixth highest increase in carbon dioxide emissions among the states and was seventh in 2001 among states with the most carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion.

TheCLEAN.org and the Civil Society Institute have conducted surveys showing support for a “shift from coal and nuclear power” to a promotion of “wind and solar energy, enhanced energy efficiency, hybrids and other highly fuel-efficient cars.”

 

Despite Daniels’ thinking that Midwesterners may fall victim to imperialism, the report on how severe the impact on Indiana would be if Congress attacked greenhouse gases did include these quotes from him:

"There's an interesting thing about southern Indiana, where there was once a lot of oil and natural gas and coal. We've got a very excellent substructure for sequestering CO2," said Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels. "As you move to electrical generation and other processes that throw off CO2, and there's either a requirement or market or both for burying the stuff, we are well situated."

"But I don't think it's a cause of panic," he said. "And if it becomes national policy, then we just have to find smart ways to adapt to it."

Which means, whatever this legislation does or does not do (and that needs to be further explored), those in the Midwest will survive.