Let us stop for a minute to consider Mitch Daniels, the governor of Indiana. 
 
 Bet you didn’t see that one coming. 
 
 Many of you may be unacquainted with Daniels. After all, a lot of Americans go for years on end without ever setting foot in Indiana even though it is a fine state, full of lovely people and some first-class universities, not to mention the RV Hall of Fame, the world’s largest ball of paint and the Dan Quayle museum. 
 
 But about Mitch Daniels. The political world has been abuzz with speculation that he will run for president. Centrist Republicans loved it when he began urging the party to keep its eye on the deficit-reduction prize and stop obsessing about social issues. “Try to concentrate on making ends meet, which Washington obviously has failed to do for a long time, and have other policy debates in other places if you can,” he advised. 
 
 He then went home and announced that he would sign a bill to strip Planned Parenthood of Medicaid financing. 
 
 “He called a truce on social issues, and he was the first to fold,” said Nancy Keenan of NARAL Pro-Choice America. 
 
 “The suggestion I made about trying to set aside other issues was made in the national context,” Daniels said over a lunch with journalists this week in New York. “I was thinking more broadly than some people heard it.” 
 
 Actually, Daniels’s moderate fans thought abortion was precisely the issue he was calling on Republicans to set aside. Right now, the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives can barely talk about anything else. State legislatures are flooded with bills to create “Choose Life” license plates, require women seeking abortions to look at sonograms of the fetus or make it harder for insurance companies to offer policies that cover abortions. 
 
 At one point during an interminable debate on an anti-abortion bill in Florida, the Democrats had an embarrassing squabble between two members that ended when Representative Scott Randolph of Orlando threw his opponent’s commemorative House pen in the trash. He is the same legislator who was privately admonished by the Republican House leadership for saying the word “uterus.” 
 
 Florida is a wreck. This is not something I would normally recommend, but maybe they should all get together and work on naming an official state gun. 
 
 The bill Daniels says he is going to sign in Indiana is a compilation of the anti-abortion movement’s greatest hits. It will make it impossible for Medicaid recipients to make use of the 28 Planned Parenthood clinics in the state and bans abortions for pregnancies that have reached 20 weeks. 
 
 Also, doctors would be required to tell women seeking abortions that “medical evidence shows that a fetus can feel pain at or before 20 weeks,” that human life begins when the egg is fertilized and that having an abortion could cause infertility. 
 
 “Pregnant women in the past might not have been provided with all the information,” Daniels said. 
 
 Possibly because all that information is questionable, theological or totally wrong. 
 
 While Daniels is not a good example of a fiscal conservative who wants to move beyond the social wars, he is a real prototype of the peculiar strain in the political right that trusts people to make their own informed decisions without government intervention except when it comes to the most exquisitely personal choice a woman could ever face. 
 
 In Washington, the new Republican majority’s very first bill of the year, H.R. 1, eliminated both financing for Planned Parenthood and financing for the groundbreaking database of public safety complaints that the Consumer Product Safety Commission was about to put online. The database, Representative Mike Pompeo of Kansas warned, “will drive jobs overseas.” 
 
 Legislatures in states that tend to be less than obsessive about consumers’ right to know are competing to find more things to require that doctors tell or show their patients before they can get abortions. In South Dakota, women have to be told that abortion ends “the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.” A court tossed out another section that required doctors to say that the procedure leads to an increased risk of suicide. 
 
 In his capacity as deficit hawk, Daniels waxes eloquent on his conviction that if Americans have to pay more of their medical bills, they’ll make smart choices about whether that nagging headache really requires the expense of a CAT scan. Doubting that the individual patient can judge whether more tests or medical procedures are required, Daniels said, “demeans the dignity of people.” 
 
 However, women who are seeking an abortion have to be given not only the information they ask for, or the information the doctor thinks they need, but also faux facts that their local lawmakers want to force on them. And dignity be damned. ||||| Mitch Daniels, who's set to decide soon whether he's entering the race for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, said Friday he'll sign a bill that will end Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood for family services — an issue that has attracted national attention. 
 
 The bill bars the state from entering into contracts with abortion providers, making an exception for hospitals and ambulatory centers. Planned Parenthood of Indiana operates 28 clinics in Indiana, eight of which are Title X funded clinics. The group received about $3 million in federal funding last year. 
 
 Late in the day, Daniels issued a statement about HEA 1210, which was approved earlier in the week by the Indiana General Assembly. 
 
 "I will sign HEA 1210 when it reaches my desk a week or so from now. I supported this bill from the outset, and the recent addition of language guarding against the spending of tax dollars to support abortions creates no reason to alter my position," said Daniels, who infuriated conservatives last year with a call for a "truce" on the culture wars that have often dominated politics." 
 
 "The principle involved commands the support of an overwhelming majority of Hoosiers, as reflected in greater than 2:1 bipartisan votes in both legislative chambers," the statement continued. 
 
 Daniels said he "commissioned a careful review of access to services across the state and can confirm that all non-abortion services, whether family planning or basic women's health, will remain readily available in every one of our 92 counties. In addition, I have ordered the Family and Social Services Administration to see that Medicaid recipients receive prompt notice of nearby care options. We will take any actions necessary to ensure that vital medical care is, if anything, more widely available than before." 
 
 "Any organization affected by this provision can resume receiving taxpayer dollars immediately by ceasing or separating its operations that perform abortions," he concluded. 
 
 The move by Daniels met with instant crticism from abortion rights groups. 
 
 Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said, "It’s outrageous that Governor Mitch Daniels has decided to abandon his short-lived truce on social issues to sign a dangerous bill that would have a devastating impact on women’s health and take away health care from thousands of women in Indiana, leaving them at greater risk for undetected cancers, untreated infections and unintended pregnancies." 
 
 She added, "Clearly, Governor Daniels would rather play politics with women’s health than show leadership and fiscal responsibility in rejecting a bill that will ultimately cost the state millions in federal funding. If Governor Daniels chooses to run for president, his decision to sign this bill will make it harder for him to win key women voters.” 
 
 NARAL President Nancy Keenan accused Daniels of putting "his presidential ambitions above thousands of Hoosier women, who, as a result of his actions, will lose access to birth control, cancer screenings and other basic health care." 
 
 "He will also open the door to further political interference in women’s personal, private decisions. With the stroke of a pen, Daniels will declare his truce on social issues to be over," Keenan added. 
 
 A Democratic insider referred to Daniels's past call for a "truce" on social issues and snarked, "Truce broken it appears."
– Two different views today on Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels as a potential presidential candidate: Dana Milbank, Washington Post: He praises Daniels as a "shrewd tactician" who is wisely "portraying himself to moderates as a non-threatening choice" and as the "grown-up in the room" who avoids fringe issues. He's got aw-shucks charm to him and even dares to praise the Obama administration when he sees fit. "So funny, so folksy, and so friendly to the disadvantaged: It is eerily similar to how another Republican governor presented himself to America a dozen springs ago." Gail Collins, New York Times: Forgive her for falling out of her chair. Sure, Daniels famously called for a "truce" on social issues, but he's about to sign into law a bill that "is a compilation of the anti-abortion movement’s greatest hits." Among other things, it strips Planned Parenthood of Medicaid funds and requires doctors to give women information that is "questionable, theological or totally wrong." Daniels "is a real prototype of the peculiar strain in the political right that trusts people to make their own informed decisions without government intervention except when it comes to the most exquisitely personal choice a woman could ever face."