Reports from the the Indiana Daily Student and Brian Howey suggest that Becky Skillman is alluding to a potential run for Governor in 2012.

SKILLMAN ‘LEANING TOWARD RUNNING’ FOR GOVERNOR: The Indiana Lt. Governor has more constitutional and statutory duties than most other state number-twos in the nation (Miller & Ayari, Indiana Daily Student). After spending the past five years addressing responsibilities as Lt. Governor, Republican Becky Skillman said Tuesday she might run for Governor in 2012.

Hoosier Access can confirm that Skillman is preparing a run for Governor. Sources very close to the Lieutenant Governor tell Hoosier Access that Skillman is “preparing for a run”.

Preparing for a run sounds a lot more like running for an office than might be running.

He was in Iowa last year, and will speak at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in April.

Now, he’s going to New Hampshire.

From the Indy Star:

WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Mike Pence, who has left the door open to running for president in 2012, is heading to New Hampshire next month as the keynote speaker for a GOP fundraising dinner.

It will be the Indiana Republican’s first trip to New Hampshire, the state that typically holds the first presidential primary.

“We feel that he’s somebody in politics who is an up-and-coming voice for the Republican Party,” said Steve Stepanek, chairman of the Hillsborough County Republican Committee, which is holding the dinner. “We want to make sure we give our constituents and members of our party the opportunity to meet and converse with all of the important candidates who are coming to New Hampshire.”

Pence, the third-ranking member of the House GOP leadership, has said he is focused for now on helping Republicans in the 2010 elections and will consider other possibilities after that.

Ambinder (taking a break from his usual furious spinning in defense of Obama):

Pence Has Presidential Race On His Mind

The surest sign yet that Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) wants to make the leap from prominent back-bencher to presidential contender? He’s agreed to speak at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in April. Ostensibly a forum for top Republicans, everyone who goes there, from journalists to party activists, knows that it is a presidential convention of sorts. There’s a straw poll, there are private donor events, a chance to compare candidates. The inclusion of Pence — on the periphery of 2012 speculation — means that the SRLC, held in New Orleans, is more than just your average cattle call. If Sen. John Thune, everyone’s favorite dark horse, decides to go, then the attention given to the SRLC will ratchet up by several orders of magnitude. Already, several cable channels are inquiring about how to broadcast live from the event.

I would say that if you’re the #3 Republican in the House of Representatives, you’re something more than a “prominent back-bencher.” And if the Republicans do well this coming November, he’ll be more still.

And this particular Hoosier getting presidential buzz hasn’t raised taxes, has great speaking ability, and appeals to the Tea Party movement because he (as one told me recently) “gets it.”

Oh, and he’s tall and has a full head of hair, too. Just saying. It can’t hurt, right?

(Apologies in advance to Mr. Stevens for my mangling of “The Streak”)

There must be some disturbance here… Pardon me sir, did you see what happened? … “Yeah I Did!!!, I was minding my own business and there it come, Obamacare. I hollered at my Congressman “Don’t Vote for it!” but it was too late. They already did.”

Here it comes, (Boogity Boogity)
There it goes, (Boogity Boogity)

And it’s going leave you with no clothes…

Oh yes they call it Obamacare *whistle* (Boogity Boogity)
Fastest bill on the Hill (Boogity Boogity)
Just as proud as they can be
Of their 2000 pages of dead trees
Reid never wanted us to have a peek….

(Thankfully this video has nothing to do with The Streak or my mangling of it above)

Steve Schmidt, chief campaign strategist for failed Republican Presidential nominee John McCain, declares that Sarah Palin could bring “a catastrophic election result” if she were the Republican nominee in 2012. CBSNews.com blogger Stephanie Condon writes:

Calling Sarah Palin a potentially “catastrophic” choice for the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, John McCain’s former chief campaign strategist Steve Schmidt said today the Republican party needs to look more toward the center.

“I think she has talents, but my honest view is that she would not be a winning candidate for the Republican party in 2012,” he said. “Were she to be the nominee, we could have a catastrophic election result.”

The Republican Party already moved toward the center when it nominated Senator John McCain (R-AZ) in 2008. McCain lost by more than 8 million votes, with 58,343,671 votes to Barack Obama’s 66,882,230 votes. The fact of the matter is that the Republican Party has had two consecutive disastrous elections because the GOP abandoned the core conservative principles that once defined the party. The GOP lost both the House and Senate in 2006 after passing multiple laws that expanded government and failing to control the government spending that created a huge deficit.

(Read more after the leap)

A counterpoint to some of my prior Mitch for President speculation, summed up shortly by Blue County in a Red State:

I’m not drinking Mitch’s cool-aid. He can boast of Indiana’s ranking on business taxes, or that we’re the best in the Midwest, but the fact is that he raised the sales tax to 7%, second highest in the nation. He signed legislation forcing Lake County to implement an income tax.

He is not a tax cutter, he’s a tax raiser.

I want to see Indiana on a road back to a 5% sales tax, and eliminating the income tax entirely, including the county “option” income taxes. Those 11 states that beat us in business taxes often have NO income tax whatsoever, and they all have lower sales taxes than we do.

Mitch boasts of drawing businesses to Indiana, but the fact is that most jobs are created by entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs need low personal income taxes to get started. They’re constantly cash-starved, and every dollar that goes to income taxes is a dollar that’s not available to the business.

Mitch just doesn’t get that.

Mitch also signed the biggest tax increase on business in state history, but I digress.

Speculation is also emerging about former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and Indiana Congressman Mike Pence.

Tensions are already rising between Hammond Mayor Tom McDermott and Lake County Sheriff Roy Dominquez from Lake County, as both are considering a Democratic run for Indiana Governor:

The Lake County sheriff is making public a private rebuke Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. hurled at him for arresting one of the mayor’s allies.The mayor accused Sheriff Rogelio “Roy” Dominguez, his second-in-command and Lake County Prosecutor Bernard Carter of “playing politics” following the Sept. 10 arrest by county sheriff’s police of David Woerpel, 5th District Democratic precinct captain, and a close associate of the mayor, along with three other Woerpel family members on charges they were growing marijuana plants in their backyard.

Dominguez released a voice message he said McDermott Jr., left the following Saturday morning on the sheriff’s cell phone.

(H/T Chicks On The Right)

The Chicks have posted a list of Senators who voted to continue funneling HUD funds to ACORN. The list reads a who’s who of likely suspects and one who benefited directly by ACORN’s work in getting POTUS elected.

The Dirty Seven:

1. Roland “I didn’t buy Obama’s Senate seat. Really. Honest.” Burris (D-IL)
2. Bob Casey (D-PA)
3. Dick “Dirtbin” Durbin (D-IL)
4. Kirsten “Hillary’s Replacement” Gillibrand (D-NY)
5. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
6. Patrick “Leaky” Leahy (D-VT)
7. Bernie “Independently Socialist” Sanders (I-VT)

Mitch Daniels is going to be on This Week with George Stephanopoulos this Sunday morning.

This is obviously no indication of any presidential aspiration because, of course, all of this constant high-profile national stuff is just something he did routinely in his first four years in office.

Oh wait, it wasn’t.

I got a very interesting letter in the mail on Tuesday evening.

It was a fundraising letter from Becky Skillman. I’ve never gotten one from her before (which made it interesting in and of itself) and the letterhead was also something new:

It was the second page that I found to be particularly noteworthy, above and beyond the usual flood of fundraising junk mail that arrives in my mail box each day from every candidate and committee under the sun.

It’s typed up, since the scanner wouldn’t work and the camera on my phone wouldn’t do it justice:

(Read more after the leap)

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:

(Read more after the leap)

Another stop on his visit to Washington, it seems (thank you again, Google Alerts), was to speak to the Board of Directors of the United States Chamber of Commerce.

Read more about Mitch’s remarks to the Chamber board here.