COMETH THE MOMENT...:

Mitch Daniels' Moment (David Shribman, 3/06/11, RCP)

Daniels has already told the big annual convention of conservatives that nothing matters so much as the deficit and entitlements. And he's already told Republicans they've gone too far with the cultural wars on social issues -- which means he's already had yet another kind of moment, a Sister Souljah moment, long before many people have started to pay attention.

A Sister Souljah moment? That's when a politician tells his best friends, or potential supporters, to buzz off and quiet down. It derives from Gov. Bill Clinton's (altogether calculated but nonetheless brilliant) 1992 repudiation of the hip-hop artist who suggested killing white people. Daniels also used his SS moment to signal that he was a centrist, not an extremist.

The man may have views congenial to the NRA, but he has the soul of a CPA. His radio isn't constantly tuned to conservative talk radio and Rush Limbaugh's fellow travelers.

More than the Democratic Party, the Republican Party is a constantly changing organism, with a constantly shifting profile.

Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio looked positively horrified cradling a red rooster in a Life magazine photo published shortly before the 1952 New Hampshire primary. Daniels looks positively at ease in a much-distributed Associated Press photograph of him riding his Harley Davidson down an Indiana highway.

Do you suppose Taft (or the 1960 GOP nominee, Richard M. Nixon, who in starched shirts strayed far from his Yorba Linda childhood) would wax positively eloquent about a Coney Island hot dog and a butterscotch milkshake at a soda shop in Vincennes?

Maybe Daniels, whose greatest asset is that he is normal, is what the Republicans need.

The better comparison is the way W attacked the congressional GOP for its extremism, which helped position him as a moderate and reasonable alternative to Al Gore and Newt Gingrich.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 6, 2011 10:07 AM