Americans for Mitch

Jim Shella asks why Mitch Daniels is still updating his gubernatorial campaign website:

With all the speculation about Mitch Daniels place in the GOP, the encouragement for him to run for President, and his stated desire to return to private life after 2012, here’s a question: Why does the governor maintain a political website?

mymanmitch.com is up to date with video of speeches, news accounts, lists of accomplishments.. and .. a place to donate money.

It could be that Daniels needs the money to help out other candidates and not himself, maybe candidates for the Indiana House in 2010. He has a huge interest in the battle for control there.

But, could he be leaving a door open?

That's interesting, but what's more interesting is not Mitch's gubernatorial website, but this website, Americans for Mitch.

If it looks familiar, it should. It's registered by Mike O'Brien, one of the people behind the blog Frugal Hoosiers (which, before it was a blog, was a website that ran an effort to "draft" Mitch Daniels in 2003 to run for governor of Indiana).

The "About Us" page pretty much lays it all out there:

Thanks for stopping by Americans for Mitch, the new home of the Draft Mitch movement. In 2003, a reluctant, unlikely Hoosier named Mitch Daniels did something he never thought he would do: run for governor of Indiana. But it didn’t come easy, his fellow citizens had to convince him that he was the right man for the job.

At the time, Indiana government was awash in debt and scandal. The state lost hundreds of thousands of jobs as the nation experienced record levels of prosperity and economic growth.

A small group of self-described Frugal Hoosiers knew we could do better. Raising money $10 at a time from hardworking, every day folks, the group hoped to demonstrate to Mitch that Hoosiers wanted political and governmental change. They knew Indiana could aim higher, and lead instead of follow.

Five years since taking office, Mitch Daniels has led a comeback for Indiana. When Mitch entered office in 2005, Indiana had a $1 billion budget deficit, a $3 billion transportation deficit, and was the model of a government that didn’t work. Today, Indiana has a surplus, recently passed a budget that increased education funding, and Mitch Daniels has been recognized nationally as the public official of the year.

In nearly every measure, Indiana is hailed as the best state to do business, leads the nation in foreign direct investment, and is weathering the national recession not with more spending and higher taxes, but with balanced budgets and the largest tax cut in Indiana history.

During his 2008 campaign, Mitch told a group of supporters in Hendricks County, Indiana, that you couldn’t send him back to Washington at gun point. Well, we’re not taking “you couldn’t send me back to Washington at gun point” for an answer.

So who are we? We’re those Frugal Hoosiers mentioned above, a group of young Republican hacks who aren’t content keeping our governor all to ourselves. Because as much as we’re Frugal Hoosiers, we’re also Frugal Americans.

We hope to use this site as a living diary of the Mitch Daniels’ administration and tell the story of Indiana’s continued comeback. There has been no shortage of pundits and big shots of all kinds who have looked to Governor Mitch Daniels to lead the way to a national comeback for the Republican Party.

It worked once; why not again?

I've gone from being a Mitch for President skeptic to something of a believer. At least, a believer that he'll run, not so much a believer in him as a candidate.

And since I came to that opinion, the potential GOP field has continued to narrow, Mitch's stock has continued to rise, events in Indiana (like the budget showdown) have conspired to elevate the profile of the Governor, and little things like this website continue to show up.

And I don't believe in coincidences.