Why does the Republican Party have such a self-destructive, self-defeating, spineless, squishy mindset? Why does it seem pathologically bent on finding the very worst representatives it can from its ranks to represent, lead, and speak for it?

Former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, whom we’ve never had anything nice to say about, was chosen to deliver the Republican Party’s response to the President’s State of the Union Address, but what were they thinking:

Why the Republicans chose Mitch Daniels—the Indiana governor who once thrilled right-wing pundits as a 2012 hopeful—to deliver a rebuttal to President Obama’s State of the Union address is puzzling. His uninspiring remarks surely killed the Daniels fad, revived lately as Republicans fret over the unappetizing choices available in their primaries.

By shining the spotlight on Daniels, the Republicans risked losing much more than a political rescue fantasy. He isn’t merely a politician who looks like an accountant; he actually was an accountant—or at least he played one during the Bush years, when he served as director of the Office of Management and Budget. Listening to him drone on about fiscal rectitude just might have reminded voters of the true source of our national problems.

“Mitch Daniels … Isn’t he the former Bush budget director who said the Iraq War would cost $50 billion when it ended up costing $3 trillion? The bureaucrat who promoted the Bush tax cuts when we were fighting two wars? The one whose budget projections were so fraudulent that he predicted federal surpluses in 2004 and 2005? Why the hell should we listen to him criticize Obama?”

Wes Messamore,
Editor in Chief, THL
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