Colwell: 'Our Man Mitch' moves on

Mitch Daniels would have gone to the Senate to govern, not to fight.

And that’s why Daniels isn’t going to the Senate.

We know now that the former two-term governor, who went on to serve as Purdue president for a decade, with acclaim in both challenging positions, won’t run for an open Senate seat next year.

If Daniels had run in the state where he was so popular, a favorite of Hoosier Republicans for president, would he have won the GOP nomination for the Senate?

Doubtful. But maybe, after a bruising fight in which Daniels would have been unarmed if he continued as he did in his governor races to disdain negative campaigning.

Our man Mitch wouldn’t go to Washington to fight the way Marjorie Taylor Greene did during the State of the Union address.

Since his days of such popularity as governor, of stressing what government should do rather than what he could do to destroy the rival political tribe, Indiana has become Trumpiana. Donald Trump won the state twice. Big. And he still has solid support among the Indiana Republicans who vote in primaries.

That base wants a real Trumpster for the Senate, not somebody like Daniels, who back in 2010 actually suggested a truce for “a little while” in fighting over social issues in order to focus on the budget. He is a traditional fiscal conservative, something Trump was not as president.

Attacks on Daniels began as soon as he started to ponder a Senate race.

Donald Trump Jr. sent this salvo, replicated all over social media: “The establishment is trying to recruit weak RINO (Republican in name only) Mitch Daniels to run for US Senate in Indiana. The same Mitch Daniels who agreed with Joe Biden that millions of MAGA Republicans are supposedly a danger to the country & trying to ‘subvert democracy.’ He would be Mitt Romney 2.0.”

The Club for Growth, which allocates large funding for conservative Republican candidates, joined in, calling Daniels an “old guard Republican clinging to the old ways of the bad old days.”

The organization promised to spend whatever it took to keep Daniels from winning the Senate nomination.

The choice of former President Trump and the Club for Growth is Congressman Jim Banks from Indiana’s 3rd District.

As columnist Niki Kelly wrote in the Indiana Capital Chronicle, “You can’t run to the right of Banks.” Impossible to get farther right.

And Banks fits the bill for a fighter, combative in support of the former president and stressing that he would go to the Senate to “fight back against radical Democratic policies.” He told the Associated Press that Republican primary voters want “a conservative fighter, someone to go to Washington and fight for Hoosier family values and against the radical, socialist and woke agenda that Democrats are pushing in Washington.” He does lack the style in the spotlight of Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Column:Taking a preemptive swing at Mitch Daniels

After meetings with senators in Washington, Daniels told Politico, “I’m not the least bit worried, honestly, about losing an election. I’m worried about winning it and regretting it for six years.”

His career in business, government and academe involved action jobs, he noted, “with at least the chance to do useful things every day.” He worried whether he was well-suited for the Senate, where seniority remains important. And stalemate and fighting top the agenda.

So, he will do something other than engaging in an ugly primary fight for the right to spend six years in Washington, with stalemate and fighting on the agenda.

Banks appears almost certain now to win the Republican nomination and then the Senate seat.

Could Daniels have won? We’ll never know. But Mitch made the right decision for him. He moves on, with a solid place in state history, with integrity intact and with useful service ahead somewhere.

Jack Colwell is a columnist for The Tribune. Write to him in care of The Tribune or by email at jcolwell@comcast.net.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Mitch Daniels, former Indiana governor, won’t run for open Senate seat.