Is Mitt Romney the best of all possible GOP candidates?

Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White can no longer serve in that position after he was found guilty of felony voter fraud charges. The verdict was delivered at 2:20am this morning.

Tonight the President will deliver the State of the Union Address, at the beginning of his run for re-election. Unlike Obama’s other addresses to a joint session of Congress, I wouldn’t expect this one to produce much in the way of a legislative blueprint. It’s an election year, and most of the major issues will be determined by the outcome of that election. The President will instead try to set the agenda for the fall campaign with this speech, and the early excerpts show his focus on an economy “built to last.” Not unlike a Ford truck.

During the labor protests of early 2011, Indiana Democrats walked out of the state, denying the legislature a quorum, to protest several bills, among them an education voucher law and legislation making Indiana a “right-to-work” state. Daniels immediately disavowed the latter bill, saying it wasn’t something he wanted to take up; then he was running for President. Now that’s over, and Daniels, going back on his earlier word, supports the right-to-work legislation.

I caught the last half of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels explaining his new budget math to CNN’s Candy Crowley. Daniels is trying to pitch himself and his book with the idea that the federal deficits and long-run debt pose an existential threat to the Republic. It’s just arithmetic, he says. But which numbers matter?

Math can be hard, but it’s impossible for those who ignore the relevant numbers.

This is a hostage situation as much as other Republican gambits. The penalty for non-compliance is a cancellation of Medicaid funds. That doesn’t hurt Mitch Daniels so much as it hurts poor people in Indiana. But if you impose no penalty, you’ve let Indiana restrict health care choices for Medicaid recipients, and allowed them to target an organization that also happens to perform abortions. And you’ve given other states the tacit approval to do the same thing.

Newt Gingrich is in the midst of the worst Presidential campaign rollout in history.

In normal times, someone who held a key leadership role on George W. Bush’s economic team wouldn’t be taken seriously as a presidential candidate. It’s hard to imagine, for example, Andrew Mellon or Ogden Mills running against FDR in 1936. These aren’t normal times, however, and the Republican field is a mess — so Indiana governor Mitch Daniels is the flavor of the month. But aside from the stink of economic failure of the Bush administration on him, he’s got other skeletons in his closet.

It’s important to remember that Republican governors like Scott Walker (R-WI) aren’t just targeting unions when they go after teachers — they’re targeting public schools. Why? Because conservatives hate them.

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, who suggested that conservatives should engage in a truce on social issues and focus on deficits, will sign legislation that will ban state funding for Planned Parenthood.