Mitch Daniels and the Stupid Party

Via Andrew, Avik Roy explains Mitch Daniels’ decision on the right-to-work legislation in Indiana and Daniels’ record on public-sector unions:

Second, as Katrina Trinko points out, Mitch Daniels decertified all public unions, entirely rescinding their collective-bargaining rights, on his first day in office in 2005. Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, as a reminder, is seeking to limit collective-bargaining rights for most public-sector employees, with notable exceptions for public-safety workers: a reasonable, but much more modest, reform. In other words, Mitch Daniels has already done more on the issue of public-sector unions than Scott Walker is even attempting.

Put more bluntly, the latest round of hysteria over Daniels’ alleged failings is even more baseless than the last. Hardly any of the people excoriating Daniels as unfit today gave a second thought to public-sector unions six years ago when he was first addressing the issue. The right’s new cause celebre is old news to Daniels, and because he made a decision about legislative priorities that showed him to be insufficiently zealous in his desire to weaken private-sector unions he has supposedly failed a critical test of leadership. If anyone wanted a demonstration of why Daniels shouldn’t waste his time seeking the nomination of the Stupid Party, here it is.