For a man with decades of experience in Iowa government, former Gov. Terry Branstad offered surprisingly few specific ideas for cutting the state’s budget in a Des Moines Register story today.

Tom Beaumont caught up with all of the Republican candidates for governor in 2010, and this is what he found:

Only former Gov. Terry Branstad, the best-known of the GOP prospects, declined to propose specific cuts. Instead, the four-term governor who announced two weeks ago he would “fully explore” running for governor said he would appoint a commission to study reorganizing state government and promote recruiting employers to the state.

All other members of the Republican field urged adoption of a series of cuts, including negotiating with unions to cut salaries, as suggested last spring by Republicans in the House, the body’s minority party.

Branstad’s tack is, as expected, above-the-fray and overly general, because he’s the frontrunner. But next to all of the other GOP candidates’ specific budget-cutting ideas in the Register story, his unwillingness to name specifics is a bit jarring.