And then, he says, the next president, whoever he is, “would have to call a truce on the so-called social issues. We’re going to just have to agree to get along for a little while,” until the economic issues are resolved. Daniels is pro-life himself, and he gets high marks from conservative religious groups in his state. He serves as an elder at the Tabernacle Presbyterian Church, in inner-city Indianapolis, which he’s attended for 50 years. In 1998, with a few other couples from Tabernacle and a nearby Baptist congregation, he and his wife founded a “Christ-centered” school, The Oaks Academy, in a downtown neighborhood the local cops called “Dodge City.” It’s flourishing now with 315 mostly poor kids who pursue a classical education: Latin from third grade on, logic in middle school, rhetoric in eighth grade, an emphasis throughout on the treasures of Western Civilization. “It’s the most important thing I’ve ever been involved in,” he told me. His social-conservative credentials are solid.
But about that truce . . .
“He might be one guy who could get away with it,” said Curt Smith, head of the Indiana Family Institute, who’s known Daniels since the 1980s. “He has a deep faith, he’s totally pro-life, and he walks the talk. And in an acute situation, like the one we’re in now with the debt, he might get away with a truce for a year or two. But to be successful in office he’s going to have to show those folks he shares their vision.”
This week, Daniels just lined his truce against the wall and shot it.
Republican Governor Mitch Daniels released a statement Friday afternoon saying he will sign legislation stripping federal funds from Planned Parenthood in Indiana, the first state to make such a move.
Some truce. Not even the most vile GOP governors have gone this far. Rick Scott of Florida, Rick Perry of Texas, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Rick Snyder of Michigan, John Kasich of Ohio...not even these hard right class-warriors have decided to punish their state's poor women and take away their health care options.
But unlike any of them, Mitch Daniels wants to be President. And to be the GOP candidate in 2012, you have to declare war on your own constituents to be considered "serious".
Once he signs the bill, it will go into effect immediately, and would bar Planned Parenthood from receiving any public dollars -- including Medicaid payments, which are crucial to the group's patient population.
"We do around 500 pap tests a week," Indiana Planned Parenthood President Betty Cockrum told TPM in an interview earlier on Friday. "We will be making phone calls to Medicaid patients all over the state and telling them, either you have to pay for that pap test out of pocket, or you need to find someone else who can take you as a Medicaid patient. We can't do it anymore."
There are 28 Planned Parenthood centers in the state. Almost 60 percent of patients seen last year were living under the poverty line.
The announcement was met shock by Planned Parenthood in Indiana, who had earlier expressed confidence that Daniels would weigh the bill's consequences carefully before signing.
"The signing of HB 1210 into law is unconscionable and unspeakable. We will now suffer the consequences of lawmakers who have no regard for fact-based decision making and sound public health policy," said Cockrum in a statement.
"As many as 22,000 low-income Hoosiers will lose their medical home. Countless patients will find themselves without access to lifesaving tests to avoid the tragic outcomes of cervical and breast cancer and epidemic sexually transmitted disease here in Indiana."
She said Planned Parenthood would be filing an injunction immediately to try to halt "this alarming erosion of public health policy" in Indiana.
But they're all evil harlot sluts, right? So it's okay to single them out and make them pay, and restrict their basic health care. That's what being a "compassionate Republican moderate" is all about.
In the end, they are all wingnuts.
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