MSNBC.com has posted a set of stories called “The Exit Interviews,” where the site has interviewed nine retiring senators on a full range of issues. During the exit interview with Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH), the senator explained his recent decision to break from his party and support the small business bill written by Senate Democrats. He told the interviewer, “I hate the banks. If I could strangle the banks today, I would, the big banks. I am so upset with them I could kill them” because of the lack of money flowing to consumers:

And you notice in my votes, nobody knows what I’m going to do around here. They don’t. I mean, the recent thing on this bill dealing with loans for small businesses. I hate the banks. If I could strangle the banks today, I would, the big banks. I am so upset with them I could kill them because of what they’re doing in terms of not making money available. So somehow we’ve got to get some money out there to some people that are worthy of getting it.

While Voinovich may be willing to use strong language against the nation’s biggest banks, during his Senate career he repeatedly failed to put his money where his mouth is. In 1999, as the big banks and their lobbyists pushed for a massive deregulation of their industry, Voinovich joined with the majority of the Senate in voting to effectively set the stage for the financial crisis of 2008.

When time came to clean up Wall Street’s mess and place new regulations on the industry, Voinovich decided to stand with the banks instead of the American people. He voted against the Brown-Kauffman amendment that would’ve broken up the nation’s largest banks, successfully killing it. He later proceeded to vote against the final bill, complaining that the “new consumer protection bureau created by [the] bill is too wide in its regulatory scope.”

Voinovich spent his entire Senate career deregulating the nation’s largest banks and shielding from further regulation. If that’s hating them, it would be difficult to imagine what he would see as loving them.

Since President Obama took office, Republican leaders have united behind a phony message of fiscal responsibility that simultaneously demands tax cuts and deficit reduction — two contradictory policy prescriptions. Despite their fear mongering about the size of the deficit, these deficit frauds have refused to even consider letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire, let alone entertain the idea of actual tax increases, which many economists believe are necessary to pay down the debt. Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) even called for a “pledge of your sworn sacred honor” and a “covenant…in blood” from lawmakers to not let the Bush tax cuts expire.

But in a Newsweek profile, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R), a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2012, said he is willing to have a “grown-up conversation” about tax hikes, and that increases should not be taken off the table:

For decades, Republicans have railed against deficits and debt, but they’ve been too afraid of voter backlash to venture beyond marginal measures (“wasteful spending”). Daniels didn’t get the memo.

Let’s raise the retirement age, he says. Let’s reduce Social Security for the rich. And let’s reconsider our military commitments, too. When I ask about taxes—in 2005 Daniels proposed a hike on the $100,000-plus crowd, which his own party promptly torpedoed—he refuses to revert to Republican talking points. “At some stage there could well be a tax increase,” he says with a sigh. “They say we can’t have grown-up conversations anymore. I think we can.”

Daniels, who served as the director of the Office of Management and Buget (OMB) under President Bush, has cultivated an image as a pragmatic, technocratic, fiscal conservative, prompting conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthut to dub Daniels “America’s Best Governor.”

As Newsweek’s Andrew Romano notes, Daniels has won praise as governor by lowering property taxes, creating a budget surplus, and insuring 45,000 low-income residents through a statewide healthcare scheme — but in order to do these things, Daniels had to raise taxes. One of his first acts as governor was to propose a temporary one percent tax hike on anyone earning more than $100,000, a move that was controversial among conservatives at the time.

But while Daniels may be a truer fiscal conservative than many of his GOP colleagues, as OMB director, he was “one of the main designers and defenders of Bush’s $1.35 trillion tax cut,” which are responsible for a significant portion of the current deficit. And as Matt Yglesias notes, Daniels recently-proposed economic stimulus plan is “very much the concatenation of vagueness and bad math” and “wholly unworthy of the kind of praise” some liberal pundits have given it.

In recent months, a number of Republican leaders have endorsed various schemes to once again attempt what President Bush failed to do — privatize all or part of Social Security. Former House Speaker and likely presidential candidate Newt Gingrich recently endorsed Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) plan to privatize Social Security and Medicare; Reps. Dan Lungren (R-CA), Jack Kingston (R-GA), and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) have all touted personal accounts; and, Alaska GOP Senate nominee Joe Miller has suggested that the social safety net programs are unconstitutional.

But in an interview with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto today, Florida GOP Senate nominee Marco Rubio made a stark break with those in his party who want privatize the social safety net, saying explicitly that he is not even “open” to the idea, before explaining why privatization wouldn’t work:

RUBIO: Anyone telling you that we shouldn’t touch [Social Security], they are going to play tricky political games, they’re going to go around saying that I’m in favor of privatizing it, or raising the retirement age on current beneficiaries —

CAVUTO: But you are open to privatizing it, sir?

RUBIO: No, I think for that — no I’m not. That time has come and gone.

CAVUTO: What about for young guys like you who could take some of the money and put it in the market?

RUBIO: The problem is that it takes money — it makes it more difficult to balance the system in the long term.

CAVUTO: Do you’d be against it?

RUBIO: Yeah, I don’t think that’s the solution.

Watch it:

Rubio’s stance is surprising, not just because it conflicts with many of his like-minded conservative peers, but also because it conflicts with his own stated position on Social Security reform. In May, Rubio said he supported Ryan’s “Roadmap,” which would “allow workers to invest a portion of their Social Security payments into a personal retirement account,” something very similar to what Bush proposed. “I’m proud of [Rubio] for doing something bold,” Ryan said in response to news of Rubio’s endorsement. On his website, Rubio also says his position is similar to one “that numerous responsible Republicans have taken including Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).”

Of course, the Rubio of today is correct in saying that privatizing Social Security would put the system in grave danger, and his new stance reflects the view of nearly half of Americans who are “very uncomfortable” with replacing Social Security with private accounts.

Yesterday, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) “opened the door to a compromise” on the Bush-era tax cuts on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday, saying “if the only option I have is to vote for some” tax reductions for families earning less than $250,000, “I’ll vote for them.” But this afternoon, during an appearance on Sean Hannity’s radio show to promote his new book ‘Young Guns‘, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) backed away from Boehner’s concession, insisting that Republicans should not water down their commitments to extending tax cuts for the richest Americans:

HANNITY: [Boehner] said he would vote for extending tax cuts of middle class earners even though it was bad policy to exclude the highest earning Americans, which they pay the greater percentage of income taxes. So I ask you, in that sense, is it wrong to say that you’d even consider you know, not a full complete extension of the Bush tax cuts?

RYAN: No, we are for a full, complete extension of the Bush tax cuts. We do not want to negotiate down. We want to extend all of these things…We should not begin negotiating that down, we should be insisting on preventing this huge tax increase on the most successful small businesses, which is where most of our jobs come from.

Listen:

In fact, a growing number of Republicans are now distancing themselves from Boehner’s remarks. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), announced today that “he will introduce legislation that would ensure that no one pays higher income taxes next year.” Similarly, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) said through a spokesperson that “there should be no tax increase on any job creator next year.”

Earlier in the program, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) — who issued a harsh statement earlier in the day — also seemed to disagree with Boehner’s approach. “John Boehner is a small business person,” he said. “He knows what tax hikes mean to a small business, especially in a recession and I know that all of us are going to work and do everything we can to make sure that we do not allow tax hikes to occur this year.”

Cross-posted on the Wonk Room.