I thought it was great news yesterday, when I read that Daniels may actually be considering a run for the Presidency. Earlier (at and event here in Chicago, actually) he stated that he wasn’t interested.

It’s good to hear he is reconsidering. Here is why.

Mitch Daniels’ Rules for Republicans

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels has a few ideas – pretty good ones, actually – about how a Republican candidate should run a campaign for the presidency. But guess what? He says he doesn’t intend to run. “I don’t plan to do it, don’t expect to do it, and I really don’t want to do it.” Daniels says.

Daniels, however, has dropped his Shermanesque stance of refusing to consider a presidential bid. Instead, he told the Washington Post recently that he’s been persuaded to leave open the option of running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.

Daniels has two basic ideas for the next Republican presidential candidate. One, the candidate should have a plan for solving the spending, deficit and debt crisis that has “intellectual credibility” and “holds water.” This mean the candidate would “campaign to govern, not merely to win” on what Daniels calls a “survival” issue for the country.

The second idea: The candidate should “speak to Americans in a tone a voice that is unifying and friendly and therefore gives you a chance of unifying around some action.” In his campaigns for governor, Daniels never ran a single negative TV commercial attacking an opponent.

The article is short, and does not provide much information on policy, but Daniels is a policy heavyweight. He’s best shot, given the fewest negatives and the most positives. My second, and quite close, 2nd choice is Pawlenty.

The remaining wannabees are unelectable for one reason or another, and we ought not waste our time on them.

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.
G. K. Chesterton, Heretics (1905)

How uninterested do you have to be to not know in your heart the “1st 3 things you would do as President” with out checking your notes for back up.

I like Sarah Palin, and I’d be happy to support a bid for her to become a Senator for Alaska. She could represent her state well.

I’d also be glad to support any effort for her to become a “conservative Oprah” showcasing stories and candidates trying to make America a better place.

But if you have to look at your hand to see the top three things that you would do, you ought not be running for President. This isn’t about note cards, teleprompters, or facts and figures. It’s about knowing your own heart and mind, and communicating a vision to the American people.

Handlers can give you the occasional factoid on budgets and some spin on a specific issue. That’s their job. But “the first 3 things you’d do if elected?” That should have been from the heart, without hesitation, with back up explanation for every point.

Game over for this cycle. Get out, get a job hosting a TV or Radio Show, and leave the Presidency to people who know their own mind.

Death Panels are back, so, just like Joe Wilson’s impolite and impolitic outburst (You Lie!), she was right.

“Death Panels” Return: House Bill Has Potential Physician-Assisted Suicide Loophole

WASHINGTON, D.C., October 30, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - They’re back. The provisions on advanced-planning directives labeled “death panels” by concerned observers have re-emerged in the final version of the US House of Representatives health-care reform bill. Moreover, the bill also lacks protective language that would prevent reimbursement of physicians counseling assisted suicide as a legitimate “end-of-life” option in states like Washington and Oregon.

Section 240 of H.R. 3962 “Affordable Health Care for America Act” requires insurance companies offering a “qualified health benefits plan” on the health insurance exchange to provide information related to “end-of-life planning” to enrolled individuals.

Let’s step back from the heated “framing” words like Death Panels (no matter how brilliant). Can some well-meaning liberal reading this post please give me a good reason why a) the government has any business “mandating” this, and b) why on earth anyone needs this type of counsel?

Whatever one thinks of Palin and the furor over her “Death Panel” comments, the fact is that she’s right on the specific issue. So are the hard right conservatives who use monikers like “party of death” to describe the Democrats.

If Democrats want to run on heated rhetoric like “Republicans want to poison your water,” then calling Democrats “the party of Death” is fair game as well. For evidence, we can start with former Governor Richard Lamm (and honest man, at least) back in 1984.

GOV. LAMM ASSERTS ELDERLY, IF VERY ILL, HAVE ‘DUTY TO DIE’

[ DISPLAYING ABSTRACT ]Elderly people who are terminally ill have a ”duty to die and get out of the way” instead of trying to prolong their lives by artificial means, Gov. Richard D. Lamm of Colorado said Tuesday. People who die without having life artificially extended are similar to ”leaves falling off …

All the back-pedaling blather about “context” can’t hide the fact the rationing health care for the elderly is one of the few ways to actually “cut costs.” It is no surprise then, that along with promoting Abortion, the left sees throwing Grandma and Grandpa off the bus as a good way to “conserve resources” for their contingent of narcissistic yuppies.

It also exposes their “zero sum” mindset, as it becomes clear that rationing and allocating resources by bureaucrats is far more preferred than allowing a dynamic society create more resources.

Need more proof? Here it is.

The Death Book for Veterans

If President Obama wants to better understand why America’s discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care.

Last year, bureaucrats at the VA’s National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, “Your Life, Your Choices.” It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA’s preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated “Your Life, Your Choices.”

Who is the primary author of this workbook? Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the center, a man who in 1996 advocated for physician-assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing.

“Your Life, Your Choices” presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political “push poll.” For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be “not worth living.”

They think we all have a duty to die. Actually, it is our duty to get mad and electorally destroy these people. Stop calling talk radio and watching Fox. Start organizing your precinct.

Conservative Snobs Are Wrong About Palin

Being listed in fourth place for Time magazine’s “Person of the Year,” as Sarah Palin was for 2008, sounds a little like being awarded the Order of Purity (Fourth Class). But it testifies to something important.

Though regularly pronounced sick, dying, dead, cremated and scattered at sea, Mrs. Palin is still amazingly around. She has survived more media assassination attempts than Fidel Castro has survived real ones (Cuban official figure: 638). In her case, one particular method of assassination is especially popular — namely, the desperate assertion that, in addition to her other handicaps, she is “no Margaret Thatcher.”

The article goes on to compare Thatcher and Palin…

Mrs. Palin has a long way to go to match this. Circumstances may never give her the chance to do so. Even if she gets that chance, she may lack Mrs. Thatcher’s depths of courage, firmness and stamina — we only ever know such things in retrospect.

But she has plenty of time, probably eight years, to analyze America’s problems, recruit her own expert advice, and develop conservative solutions to them. She has obvious intelligence, drive, serious moral character, and a Reaganesque likability. Her likely Republican rivals such as Bobby Jindal and Mitt Romney, not to mention Barack Obama, have most of these same qualities too. But she shares with Mrs. Thatcher a very rare charisma. As Ronnie Millar, the latter’s speechwriter and a successful playwright, used to say in theatrical tones: She may be depressed, ill-dressed and having a bad hair day, but when the curtain rises, out onto the stage she steps looking like a billion dollars. That’s the mark of a star, dear boy. They rise to the big occasions.

Mrs. Palin had four big occasions in the late, doomed Republican campaign: her introduction by John McCain in Ohio, her speech at the GOP convention, her vice-presidential debate with Sen. Joe Biden, and her appearance on Saturday Night Live. With minimal preparation, she rose to all four of them. That’s the mark of a star.

I have no idea whether Sarah Palin can overcome the “PDS” (Palin Derangement Syndrome) that has infected the minds of fevered left and some “Romney Conservatives. I hope she does, though. Nothing would be more sweet than to watch veins popping out of foreheads and heads exploding.