When Rick Perry joined the Republican presidential race in August, the Texas governor was billed as a potential savior, the candidate who would finally satisfy the members of the party who were unhappy with the 2012 field.
But Perry’s late entrance hasn’t pleased everybody. Mitch Daniels, the Indiana governor who decided against a presidential campaign earlier this year, tells the New York Times’ Jeff Zeleny that he’s not thrilled about the focus and “discourse” of the primary race. Daniels insists there’s still time for someone else to get into the race. Daniels says he’s tried to recruit “three or four people” to run for the Republican presidential nomination—though he declined to say who. Why is Daniels unhappy? He says the field isn’t talking enough about financial struggles facing the country, including how to pay for entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security. “Somebody else could still enter and have a competitive chance,” Daniels tells Zeleny. “The candidate I could get instantly excited about is someone who is willing to level with the American people and assume they are prepared to listen to the mathematical facts and agree that whatever other disagreements we have aren’t as important.”
