Something that I don’t quite understand about Mitch Daniels’ proposed “truce” on social issues is why he thinks it is necessary. The Iraq war in 2006-07 and then the financial crisis and recession since 2008 sucked up all the political oxygen in the country and they have attracted almost all of the attention of political activists in one way or another for much of the last four years. The standard “hot-button” issues have not been at the center of most of the political debate for some time now. Across most of the country, gay marriage debates have been settled one way or another, and Roe v. Wade has so far not figured prominently in the confirmation battles for Obama’s Supreme Court nominees. A truce is redundant when these issues have receded into the background on their own and seem likely to stay there for some time. The very conditions Daniels invokes as the reason for the truce have made the truce unnecessary.

For that matter, it isn’t clear that the political importance of social issues necessarily distracts from or harms the emphasis on fiscal responsibility. The one time when social issues have become a major point of contention in recent debate was during the health care debate concerning federal funding of insurance policies that would pay for abortion procedures. To the extent that health care legislation was stalled by the resistance of pro-life Democrats on account of this, one could argue that the lack of a “truce” over social issues made it somewhat more difficult for the majority to pass health care legislation, and on the whole fiscal conservatives would regard that as a good thing. Otherwise, it’s hard to see how the two are even related closely enough that a social issues truce will make it easier to reduce the debt and reform entitlements.

Regardless, it is not as if the country has been so roiled by social issues in the last few years that we are in desperate need of a cease-fire. We aren’t failing to tackle the debt and entitlements because we are too consumed by divisions over social issues. We are failing to tackle the debt and entitlements because there are powerful constituencies that will react strongly to any attempt to rein in spending, because there is absolutely no political will to impose fiscal restraint and discipline in Congress, and because the opposition party has become a cynical defender of the entitlement status quo as part of its bid to regain power. Daniels needs to explain the mechanism by which de-emphasizing social issues makes Congressional Republicans less opportunistic and unprincipled in their embrace of Medicare. If he has a way to do that, we would all like to hear about it.

So Daniels’ proposed truce is fairly harmless in its effects, because it isn’t going to change very much in practice. Obviously, what it probably will harm is any Daniels presidential campaign that has to compete seriously in Iowa and South Carolina. The problem for Daniels is not that it will make him seem less credible to social conservative activists, as he has as good a record on their priorities as anyone. If Romney can be taken seriously as a social conservative, Daniels should have no difficulty assuaging any doubts this truce talk might create. Daniels’ problem is that the truce idea will sound like another call for social conservatives to accept that their priorities are going to be relegated to the bottom of the agenda once again. This does not change much in practice, because social conservative priorities have been at the bottom of the Republican agenda forever, but politically it sends another signal to social conservatives that they are expected to support the GOP reliably no matter how little they get for their steadfast support.

It is fitting that it is Huckabee who has already started attacking Daniels’ proposal. It was Huckabee’s presidential campaign in 2007-08 and the reactions it generated among Republican and conservative leaders that taught social conservative activists a lesson about how unwilling party and movement leaders were to have one of the social conservative activists’ own as the nominee and party leader. Were Huckabee to be nominated and were he somehow to win the election in 2012, Huckabee would not govern all that differently than Daniels would with respect to social issues, so this is all just a matter of positioning and image management. It is a rhetorical maneuver, but it is not entirely meaningless. Daniels is presenting himself as the “reasonable” conservative who will say that he wants to put aside culture wars and focus on fiscal and economic problems, which gives the impression of wanting to avoid political divisiveness while actually emphasizing policy priorities that will end up being far more controversial and divisive. Meanwhile, Huckabee is playing to the social conservative activist base that made him a competitor in the primaries last time.

So Daniels seems to be trying to occupy the ground vacated by Jon Huntsman when the latter went to Beijing. If it weren’t associated with political disaster, Daniels’ motto might be, “Competence, not ideology.” His own solid record as a social conservative may make him think that he has the option of appearing less combative on social issues. As a popular and reasonably successful governor, Daniels wants to fill the role of the competent, problem-solving executive that all other potential 2012 contenders have left open. This is the role that some of Mitt Romney’s supporters wished he had tried in 2008 and it is the role that Romney seems dedicated to avoiding with his insipid foreign policy views and his shameless pandering to the base on a bailout he previously supported and a health care bill modeled on legislation he signed. To right-leaning independents Daniels seems to want to say that he is conservative, but not overly zealous, and to rank-and-file Republicans and conservatives he is holding himself out as the sort of candidate Romney would be if the latter had any stable convictions.