INDIANAPOLIS —This fight over Planned Parenthood funding feels a lot like the mess Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels left behind after he finished playing in the presidential sandbox.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services informed the state that Indiana's effort to block Medicaid funds from going to Planned Parenthood recipients is in violation of federal law.
The move was expected, and the governor surely knew he was courting it. And with it came the evaporation of any lasting possibility that Daniels would play a part in achieving the social issues "truce" for which he called last year.
In a meeting with the Courier & Press editorial board in March, Daniels made clear that his "truce" comments were aimed at the debt-loaded federal government, not the financially stable state of Indiana. "We're not broke here, so I wasn't referring to here," he said. But by signing a measure to defund Planned Parenthood — one that enjoyed support from both Republicans and Democrats in the General Assembly — Daniels has drawn himself into a federal-level fight over a social issue.
The Fox News Channel described its implications well last week, saying: "Indiana could become ground zero for a nasty fight between the federal government and state officials over public funding for Planned Parenthood and other groups that provide abortions."
Daniels is a governor who, weeks ago, when he decided to sign this Planned Parenthood defunding measure into law, was positioned to guide the national discourse if he chose to enter the presidential race.
He has long opposed abortion rights, but it is hard to imagine his decision to support the measure was one made completely free of political considerations.
It's hard to imagine because some of what would come next was clear even then. The Obama administration was going to push back. Planned Parenthood of Indiana was sure to sue. Daniels' own Family and Social Services Administration secretary raised the possibility that Indiana could jeopardize some of its Medicaid dollars.
Still, it gave Daniels a chance to strengthen a spot the "truce" comments had left soft. Had he chosen to run, signing the measure into law would enhance his positioning in a primary, and therefore also his ability to sound the alarm on the central theme of his not-to-be campaign — the debt.
Now that he is not running, this — the effort to defund Planned Parenthood, which he criticized for what he called "aggressive promotion of abortion" — is far and away the highest-profile battle the Republican governor is waging.
His spokeswoman, Jane Jankowski, said she had not heard Daniels express a reaction to the Health and Human Services letter.
"The job of the executive branch is to implement the law, and the state's job right now is to focus on making sure that everyone who is eligible for family planning services receives them," she said.
The silence, as opposed to a full-throated vow to fight for Indiana's law, seems to indicate that Daniels really did want that truce, and that he would prefer to stay out of this one.
Still, those Medicaid recipients who got their family planning services from their local Planned Parenthood locations wouldn't be looking elsewhere if Daniels had not decided to sign it.
He could have driven the discourse toward the debt if he had run for president, but he opted not to. He could have scuttled the Planned Parenthood defunding measure behind the scenes before it passed, or with a veto, but he did not.
This is the fight that Daniels chose.