Why I kind of like Mitch Daniels

As far as Republicans go.  From Daniel Larison, this mainly:

One thing that makes it harder to estimate the strength of a candidate for the nomination is the ease with which a relative handful of activists can effectively tar a candidate as compromised or tainted very early on. As we are seeing with the treatment of Mitch Daniels, activists from one faction or another will savage a broadly acceptable candidate with no obvious, serious liabilities simply because he does not give their issues the priority that they think he should. This isn’t a matter of single-issue activists objecting to a candidate because of real disagreements on policy. No one can actually point to anything Daniels has said on foreign policy or social issues that would put him substantively at odds with the broad majority of Republicans, but social conservatives and foreign policy hawks interpret a lack of statements on their issues as something close to betrayal. Arguably, Daniels’ main weakness, if we want to call it that, is his consistent refusal to pander to these activists by talking up their issues.

Daniels is convinced that our attention must be focused on the government’s enormous fiscal predicament, and he sees everything else as subordinate or secondary to that. As far as domestic policy is concerned, that’s a very sound position to be taking. It isn’t going too far to say that Daniels is just about the only prospective 2012 candidate making an argument for a governing agenda. He seems to be paying all of his attention to the area of policy he knows best at a time when many conservatives are at least claiming that they take the problem of mounting debt seriously. Since he has not spent a lot of time governing as a social conservative firebrand, it doesn’t make sense for him to campaign as one, and as a governor he isn’t plunging into a foreign policy realm that is less familiar to him. That’s not a bad idea. Unlike certain former governors, he isn’t making the mistake of recycling bad think tank talking points as if they were insights into international affairs.

Also, he's the only Republican I've heard who has mentioned that taxes may have to go up.