I don’t fully know what Mitch Daniels had in mind, but I wonder if this is something of it: Government expansion and spending is so untenable right now that getting together to roll that back will likely have the effect of pulling back on some of the social radicalism. So much of it is radical economically and socially. And so if we get together on the big picture first, economically, we’ll have more of a shot of coming to some kind of natural agreement on abortion funding and other issues.

But at a moment in human history when demographically and culturally we’re at many crossroads, I don’t plan to sit out fights that go to the heart of who we are.