Most of the previous speakers offered the crowd varying portions of red meat - and attacks on President Obama - designed to evoke applause. Daniels instead gave it a sobering speech on a sobering topic. He talked about what he called the "new red menace," the sea of red ink in Washington that he argued is the greatest threat to the United States' future.
Daniels is trying to rouse his party, and then perhaps the whole country, to confront this looming problem. Other speakers at the conference have discussed the deficit and debt. Others have talked about the importance of reducing spending. But none has done it with as much power and seriousness as Daniels, who described the threat in apocalyptic terms.
"We face an enemy, lethal to liberty, and even more implacable than those America has defeated before," he said. "We cannot deter it; there is no countervailing danger we can pose. We cannot negotiate with it, any more than with an iceberg or a Great White."
He argued that Social Security and Medicare would require dramatic changes for the generations not yet enrolled - changes that would mean lower benefits for at least some people. "These programs should reserve their funds for those most in need of them," he said. "They should be updated to catch up to Americans' increasing longevity and good health. They should protect benefits against inflation but not overprotect them."
Medicare, he argued, should give older Americans more choice in how to select their health-care coverage, "entrusting and empowering citizens to choose their own insurance and, inevitably, pay for more of their routine care like the discerning, autonomous customers we know them to be."
Daniels said an "obese federal government" needs bariatric surgery, not just behavior modification. He dismissed the focus in Washington on eliminating earmarks as necessary but wholly inadequate - "a trifle," he called it. "Talking much more about [earmarks] or 'waste, fraud and abuse' trivializes what needs to be done and misleads our fellow citizens to believe that easy answers are available to us," he said.
He also argued that solving the debt and deficit issue will require policies to spur economic growth, and here he laid out policies long favored by conservatives: a flatter tax system, fewer regulations and an energy policy geared toward more domestic production.
The Indiana governor had another message for his party. "It is up to us to show, specifically, the best way back to greatness and to argue for it with all the passion of our patriotism," he said. "But should the best way be blocked, while the enemy draws nearer, then someone will need to find the second-best way. Or the third, because the nation's survival requires it."
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