Mitch Daniels is a what?

My dear governor, Mitch Daniels, the architect of the Bush budget deficits, is a.... libertarian? What?! So says David Bernstein of the Cato Institute, listing him alongside Ron Paul and Gary Johnson in an article on his blog. I've heard the same thing come from the folks at Reason Magazine.

As a resident of Indiana, I've observed what damage Mitch Daniels has done to my state with his sometimes corporatist policies and sometimes socialist policies. He can by no means be considered a libertarian... in any way, at all and I have no idea why the Cato-Reason crowd seem to think he's any better than a Romney, Huckabee, or Pawlenty. This continuing mentioning of Daniels as if he was some sort of Ron Paul by those within the Kochtopus just continues how shallow their libertarianism is, not that that was ever in question, Rothbard was pointing out their lack of principles decades ago.

I attended a debate in 2008, between Mitch Daniels, Libertarian Andy Horning, and their Democratic opponent Jill Long Thomson. I honestly could not tell the difference in the actual policies of Daniels and the democrat, the only difference was in posturing. Andy was the only candidate presenting a platform of real libertarian change. He was elegant, well-spoken, and most importantly of all unashamed of his principles.

I think if the libertarian standard bearer for president is coming from Indiana, it should be proud libertarian Andy Horning, not crony-capitalist Mitch Daniels. So the next time I hear someone mention Mitch Daniels as anything but a welfare-warfare statist, I'm going to tell them to ask Andy who he thinks the real libertarian is.