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Mitch Daniels has decided not to run for the Senate seat vacated by Mike Braun but has already been victimized by a vicious attack ad.
This smear is made all the worse because its content is so blatantly misleading as to render the whole thing false. For example, the ad states that Mitch Daniels caved in to big spending Republicans when he was the head of the Office of Management and Budget. The opposite is true. His boss, President George W. Bush, nicknamed him “the Blade” because Daniels was notorious for trying to cut everything he saw—notorious and successful.
The Hoosier behind this assault is David McIntosh, president of The Club for Growth.
His gang of Republicans is respooling the events of a decade ago when the tea party wing of our Republican Party supported “foot in mouth Mourdock” and unseated in the primary an extraordinary statesman, Richard Lugar.
Lugar would have been a lock to win in the general election. What did Indiana Republicans reap for this assassination? Joe Donnelly, a Democrat.
McIntosh, like his predecessors in the Mourdock affair, wished to sabotage the candidacy of an extraordinary public servant. One hardly needs to list the achievements of Mitch Daniels, a Lugar disciple, but it bears mentioning that he served two conservative presidents. As Indiana governor, he was reelected by the greatest plurality in the history of the state and just recently completed a 10-year term as president of Purdue University. Daniels also wrote 35 books, made a billion dollars and quarterbacked the Princeton football team. (That last sentence was Santosian.)
The offensive ad was an attempt to intimidate Daniels from running for national office under the perception that the strategy worked when Daniels was considering a run for president in 2012. McIntosh made it clear if Daniels decided to run, the Club would have spent whatever it took to defeat him. (Given his propensity for garbage attacks, I wonder what kind of ads he had in mind.) Even so, seasoned political pros say Mitch would have thumped the Club’s candidate. His popularity remains stratospheric. His financial backing would have dwarfed his opponent.
Fellow Hoosiers, we need to rise above attack ads whether published by Republicans or Democrats. We need to condemn the perpetrators of half-truths, untruths and innuendos emanating from either party.
Let’s support centrists of our parties who understand the value of compromise.
Stridency paralyzes solutions and keeps us at each other’s throats. Let’s force our candidates to attack issues not each other and reject the McIntosh version of Indiana politics.•
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Maurer is a shareholder in IBJ Corp.
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What has David McIntosh ever done for the benefit of Hoosiers? He needs to shut up and disappear. If this was Montana, he would be on his way to the train station.
Thank you Mickey for being one of a shrinking group of people able and willing to deliver some common sense advice about who should be running our government.
I was routing for Mitch to run for the Senate. He is a very smart man and the type of person we need for this position. Common sense plus smarts of good for all of us. Please reconsider, Mitch!
Mitch Daniel’s is a great Hoosier and American. Mr. McIntosh is what’s wrong with our political system. The sooner we can run him out of our state politics the better we will be regardless of our party affiliation.
As long as Hoosier Republicans keep rewarding Dave McIntosh’s candidates with Primary election successes, McIntosh will continue these same-old, same-old attacks.
Lobbyist David Martin McIntosh once considered running for Congress in 2012 until my research revealed that he actually lived in Virginia, held a Virginia driver’s license, his wife held a Virginia driver’s license, and his children attended Virginia schools. His Indiana residency was via a rented Indiana home where he had never slept. His other home was $1+ million in Florida. Lobbysi McIntosh probably would disavow apple pie if he was hired to do so.
Mitch Daniels would have been exactly what the Senate needs – common sense and experience. This is a loss to the people of Indiana.
We need Mitch to run for Indiana governor. If not, maybe, if a Republican became President, Mitch could become Secretary of Education. It is a swamp that needs a new broom.