What sort of a compromise on social issues should conservatives accept in order to cut spending? I suggested that Mitch Daniels’s proposed “truce” would be a no-brainer if it meant trading only some rhetoric for installing a real fiscal conservative in the White House. But now I see that Daniels wasn’t proposing as modest a trade-off as I thought. John McCormack: 

I asked Daniels if that meant the next president shouldn’t push issues like stopping taxpayer funding of abortion in Obamacare or reinstating the Mexico City Policy banning federal funds to overseas groups that perform abortions. Daniels replied that we face a “genuine national emergency” regarding the budget and that “maybe these things could be set aside for a while. But this doesn’t mean anybody abandons their position at all. Everybody just stands down for a little while, while we try to save the republic.”

To clarify whether Daniels simply wants to de-emphasize these issues or actually not act on them, I asked if, as presdient, he would issue an executive order to reinstate Reagan’s “Mexico City Policy” his first week in office. (Obama revoked the policy during his first week in office). Daniels replied, “I don’t know.”

Failing to reinstate the Mexico City policy would not be a truce. It would be an unconditional surrender. In recent history a party change in the presidency has meant the automatic reversal of the previous administration’s policy on the Mexico City rule; an incoming Republican would simply be maintaining the status quo by reinstating it.