About That Republican Response

Watching  the Republican Response to the State of the Union by Gov. Mitch Daniels last night felt like a flash-back to when Gov. Bobby Jindal gave the Republican Response to an earlier Obama State of the Union. There was so much anticipation among conservatives that we were going to see something great -- a break-through performance by a rising Republican star.

And then we watched with horror as Jindal did that deer in the headlights thing, thereby dashing our hopes (and nearly, his career, until the BP Oil Spill gave him a chance to show how to govern under pressure).

Mitch Daniels didn't perform quite as badly as Jindal, last night, but nonetheless was disappointing.  He looked visibly nervous.  It is a hard setting, to be sure:  an empty space in Indiana with no crowd to work, and none of the grandeur of a Joint Session of Congress.

I still wish Daniels was our nominee because of his extraordinary record as governor, not because of this speech.