Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels spoke at CPAC on Friday. He is a second term governor and former Bush administration budget director. He may also be a 2012 Republican presidential candidate.
He opened his speech with a warning. The thing we have to fear, he said, is the growing Red Menace.
“In our nation, in our time, the friends of freedom have an assignment, as great as those of the 1860s, or the 1940s, or the long twilight of the Cold War,” he said. “As in those days, the American project is menaced by a survival-level threat.”
“I refer, of course, to the debts our nation has amassed for itself over decades of indulgence,” he added. “It is the new Red Menace, this time consisting of ink.” He then launched into a speech about the ways America’s finances, as they stand today, will crush the nation into oblivion.
Governor Daniels believes that social issues need to take a back seat until the budget gets balanced. He is also calling for a broad, civil, and conservative coalition.
He said, “We must display a heart for every American, and a special passion for those still on the first rung of life’s ladder.”
“When one of us – I confess sometimes it was yours truly – got a little hotheaded, President Reagan would admonish us, ‘Remember, we have no enemies, only opponents,’ ” Daniels said. “Good advice, then and now.”
“With apologies for the banality, I would submit that as we ask Americans to join us on such a boldly different course, it would help if they liked us just a bit.”
You can find the full text of Governor Daniels’ speech here.
