The main economic challenges facing conservatives in the next ten years are bringing down federal spending so that we can have a sustainable budget without large, economy damaging tax increases and reforming health care policy so that we get more quality health care for the dollars we spend. Mitch Daniels is the guy to deal with both of these challenges.
Cutting spending down to a sustainable level will be huge political problem. The scale of spending cuts required runs in the trillions of dollars over the next ten years. The raw numbers will seem scary. The Democrats and their media allies will try to make it seem like conservatives want to tear the government down. And the voters we need don’t want the government torn down (nor should they.) Conservatives need avoid being seen as the party of anti-government. They need to be seen as the party of effective government at a reasonable price. Daniels’ record as governor is a huge edge here. He sharply cut spending in his first term as governor of Indiana while maintaining and even improving key government services. This makes for quite a contrast with Obama. Daniels would be in an excellent position to campaign as the candidate of balanced budgets and good government services against an incumbent whose record includes epic deficits, slow economic growth and Solyndra.
Reforming health care policy is just as big a political problem as reducing spending. Actually since so much government spending is on Medicare and Medicaid, cutting spending and reforming health care policy are closely linked. The biggest problem with reforming health care policy is that people like everything about their health care except how much it costs. This means that any major health policy change of Left or Right is going to be met with intense skepticism. The key swing constituency is afraid of a government single-payer system where the government is the only game in town whenever a non-wealthy person wants health care. This same swing constituency would probably be afraid of conservative reformist policies like Health Savings Accounts/Catastrophic Coverage plans and premium support Medicare. Most swing voters have never heard a conservative make an extended argument for any kind of market-oriented health care reform. The conservative health care message most of these voters have heard can be summarized as “socialized medicine is bad + tort reform is good + so anyway, back to more important things like capital gains tax cuts.”
And since most swing voters (and many right-leaning voters) are unfamiliar with the arguments for conservative alternatives to government-run health care, it is tough for conservative politicians to make the case for right-leaning health care reform is any detail. The audience lacks context. Remember when Romney said he liked it that he can fire people who provide him services? He was trying (and mostly failing) to make the point that people would be better of owning their own health insurance and being able to choose between providers. Even when Romney is isn’t putting his foot in his mouth, he is still terrible at explaining how the right-leaning health care reforms he allegedly favors would improve anybody’s life. Romney is much better at explaining why he thinks (pretends to think?) the Massachusetts health insurance purchase mandate was a good idea.
I can think of several advantages that Mitch Daniels has over Mitt Romney when it comes to health care, but I’ll stick to one for now. Daniels has already instituted an optional Health Savings Account/Catastrophic Coverage plan for Indiana state workers. This program has saved Indiana money, and maintained the health care security of Indiana state workers while increasing their take home pay. I strongly suspect that Daniels would be much better than Romney at talking about health care policy, but Daniels would have an advantage that went beyond talk. He would have record. He would be able to contrast his program with the Obamacare’s tax hikes and premium increases.
Run Mitch Run.
