“This is outside the bounds of acceptable modern Republican thought, and it is only the zone of extremely left-wing Democrats who publicly talk about those things because all Democrats pretending to be moderates wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot poll,” Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist told POLITICO. “Absent some explanation, such as large quantities of crystal meth, this is disqualifying. This is beyond the pale.”…
Even fiscal conservatives who defend Daniels as one of them—at least, for the most part—say it was a boneheaded political move if he’s seriously thinking about jumping into next year’s presidential contest. If he actually meant nothing by it, it’s the kind of amateur mistake that it’s quite hard to envision the real pros, like Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty, making.
“I don’t want to go out and attack him because I think what he was doing was engaging in a thought experiment,” said Max Pappas, the vice president for public policy at tea party-linked FreedomWorks. “The last thing I want to do is encourage politicians to be less thoughtful and just deliver the talking points, like most of them do…It wasn’t a politically astute thing (to say), and unfortunately politics doesn’t always encourage the best approach to trying to find solutions.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member