JoeChalupa
12-02-2011, 05:47 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stanley-weiss/jon-huntsman-2012_b_1126205.html
WASHINGTON -- Watching the Republican primary race is a lot like being at a carnival. There's the roller coaster of polling numbers, the kind that has Herman Cain surging to the top one week, then collapsing as Newt Gingrich rises. Then there's the candidates themselves, who sometimes seem more like sideshow acts -- each trying to top the next with a more outrageous statement -- than actual contenders to be the next president of the United States.
I'm not sure which statement stands out the most -- Michele Bachmann's assertion that the American Civil Liberties Union runs the Central Intelligence Agency; Cain trying to name the president of "Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan"; Gingrich claiming that a luxury cruise around the Aegean gave him experience to deal with Greece's foreign debt crisis; Rick Santorum stating that he wants to go to war with China; or Mitt Romney asserting that if Barack Obama is re-elected, "Iran will have a nuclear weapon," but if Romney is elected, "They will not have a nuclear weapon." My favorite is Bachmann (again) telling an Iowa crowd that if she is elected, she will close the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Only one problem: the U.S. hasn't had an embassy in Iran since 1980, when 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days -- something you would expect Bachmann, a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, to know.
This spectacle has not gone unnoticed by Republican primary voters. Yet many continue to entertain the Gingriches of the race out of a refusal to believe that someone like Romney could really be their only option, even as others seem convinced that Romney's electability in a general election should earn him the nomination.
I tend to side with those who argue that someone who seems devoid of core principles isn't electable, particularly after viewing a devastating video released this week of his many flip-flops. Lest we forget, it was Mitt Romney who published an op-ed in the New Hampshire Union Leader suggesting the Obama Recovery Act was the largest expenditure ever during peacetime. I know of no definition of "peacetime" that involves fighting two wars at once. It was also Romney, just a few weeks ago, who called for privatizing veteran care, then reneged days later.
When you also consider Romney's close connections to Wall Street at a time when left and right alike are ready to storm the castle, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to imagine Romney winning states like Michigan. Ohio might have been feasible had he not full-throatedly flip-flopped to support the anti-collective bargaining referendum, which Ohio voters rejected by a nearly two-to-one margin. And with Romney suggesting we let the housing market hit bottom as a solution to the housing crisis, it's hard to imagine victory in places like Nevada, where more than 1 in 10 families with children have lost their homes.
That leaves the Republican Party in a quandary. If Romney isn't actually electable, who is? Gingrich may be attractive to Republican primary voters, but with his own flip-flops, off-putting marital history, and decades' worth of outrageous statements, he may be the least electable Republican in a general election since Barry Goldwater. While occasionally brilliant, it's hard to imagine America electing a man whose most pronounced character trait is bullying. Given how Bill Clinton played him during the 1995 government shutdown, it's scary to think what the Chinese might do with him.
So, what's the answer? I believe it is staring Republicans in the face: Jon Huntsman. He's not just the most experienced candidate -- he's also the most electable Republican.
Huntsman has been dismissed from the start -- largely because he worked for "the enemy," as Obama's first ambassador to China. Yet Huntsman is no less a conservative than Mitt Romney. He is pro-life, pro-business, and deeply religious; he even favors Congressman Paul Ryan's budget plan. He still holds that global warming is real, a position Romney has retracted.
Unlike Romney, however, Huntsman has the chops to be president. An ambassador three times over, a wildly popular two-time governor who cut taxes while creating jobs, and a global businessman, Huntsman is the only one standing who can negotiate with the Chinese. As Joe Klein recently observed, his ideas are resolutely conservative, and his economic vision "is the closest any candidate has come to diagnosing the real problems at the heart of the Great Recession -- and proposing a reasonable path forward."
I concur. Huntsman gets my vote hands down.
WASHINGTON -- Watching the Republican primary race is a lot like being at a carnival. There's the roller coaster of polling numbers, the kind that has Herman Cain surging to the top one week, then collapsing as Newt Gingrich rises. Then there's the candidates themselves, who sometimes seem more like sideshow acts -- each trying to top the next with a more outrageous statement -- than actual contenders to be the next president of the United States.
I'm not sure which statement stands out the most -- Michele Bachmann's assertion that the American Civil Liberties Union runs the Central Intelligence Agency; Cain trying to name the president of "Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan"; Gingrich claiming that a luxury cruise around the Aegean gave him experience to deal with Greece's foreign debt crisis; Rick Santorum stating that he wants to go to war with China; or Mitt Romney asserting that if Barack Obama is re-elected, "Iran will have a nuclear weapon," but if Romney is elected, "They will not have a nuclear weapon." My favorite is Bachmann (again) telling an Iowa crowd that if she is elected, she will close the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Only one problem: the U.S. hasn't had an embassy in Iran since 1980, when 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days -- something you would expect Bachmann, a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, to know.
This spectacle has not gone unnoticed by Republican primary voters. Yet many continue to entertain the Gingriches of the race out of a refusal to believe that someone like Romney could really be their only option, even as others seem convinced that Romney's electability in a general election should earn him the nomination.
I tend to side with those who argue that someone who seems devoid of core principles isn't electable, particularly after viewing a devastating video released this week of his many flip-flops. Lest we forget, it was Mitt Romney who published an op-ed in the New Hampshire Union Leader suggesting the Obama Recovery Act was the largest expenditure ever during peacetime. I know of no definition of "peacetime" that involves fighting two wars at once. It was also Romney, just a few weeks ago, who called for privatizing veteran care, then reneged days later.
When you also consider Romney's close connections to Wall Street at a time when left and right alike are ready to storm the castle, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to imagine Romney winning states like Michigan. Ohio might have been feasible had he not full-throatedly flip-flopped to support the anti-collective bargaining referendum, which Ohio voters rejected by a nearly two-to-one margin. And with Romney suggesting we let the housing market hit bottom as a solution to the housing crisis, it's hard to imagine victory in places like Nevada, where more than 1 in 10 families with children have lost their homes.
That leaves the Republican Party in a quandary. If Romney isn't actually electable, who is? Gingrich may be attractive to Republican primary voters, but with his own flip-flops, off-putting marital history, and decades' worth of outrageous statements, he may be the least electable Republican in a general election since Barry Goldwater. While occasionally brilliant, it's hard to imagine America electing a man whose most pronounced character trait is bullying. Given how Bill Clinton played him during the 1995 government shutdown, it's scary to think what the Chinese might do with him.
So, what's the answer? I believe it is staring Republicans in the face: Jon Huntsman. He's not just the most experienced candidate -- he's also the most electable Republican.
Huntsman has been dismissed from the start -- largely because he worked for "the enemy," as Obama's first ambassador to China. Yet Huntsman is no less a conservative than Mitt Romney. He is pro-life, pro-business, and deeply religious; he even favors Congressman Paul Ryan's budget plan. He still holds that global warming is real, a position Romney has retracted.
Unlike Romney, however, Huntsman has the chops to be president. An ambassador three times over, a wildly popular two-time governor who cut taxes while creating jobs, and a global businessman, Huntsman is the only one standing who can negotiate with the Chinese. As Joe Klein recently observed, his ideas are resolutely conservative, and his economic vision "is the closest any candidate has come to diagnosing the real problems at the heart of the Great Recession -- and proposing a reasonable path forward."
I concur. Huntsman gets my vote hands down.