Republicans 2012: A little Huntsman for the morning coffee

Well, my "morning" coffee, at least.  Up late working on behind the scenes web infrastructure.

A couple links and clips devoted to my project to publish every thing I notice and have time to publish on Huntsman...  Great appearance by Hunstman on Colbert earlier this week... Here's hoping he gets his bump.

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Jon Huntsman on the tea party, the polls, and his hair: the Yahoo News interview | The Ticket - Yahoo! News:
He spoke of compromise and working with Democrats in order to "get things done."
"I hate the divide in this country because being divided as Americans is not natural. It's un-American," Huntsman said. "It's not consistent with who we are as blue-sky optimists. We're problem-solving people." 

This has been Huntsman's pitch all along: He's the guy who can "do things," even if it means working with, (or, in his case as Obama's ambassador to China, for) liberals.
But the pitch isn't selling.

It's not for a lack of conservative ideas. Huntsman's loophole-slashing tax reform plan, which would create three income tax brackets of 8 percent, 14 percent and 23 percent, received glowing reviews from the Wall Street Journal editorial board and FreedomWorks, a Washington, D.C.-based tea party group.

But his tax plan hasn't been enough to get Huntsman out of the basement tier of long-shot 2012 candidates, and Huntsman knows it.

...

"Inevitably, people will insist that the work of the country gets done," Huntsman said in his interview with Yahoo News. "You've got to have candidates who will run and say, I'm going to get the work of the country done, I'm not going to sell out for right or left."
"People are going to say, Hallelujah! We've been waiting for this moment to finally get people in there who can deal with debt, with tax reform, energy independence, our wars abroad," he said. "We can only go on like this for long." 

He pointed to the summer debate over the debt ceiling, a process that eventually culminated in an 11th hour deal, but only after months of negotiations, threats of default and countless Capitol Hill media stunts. A few days later, Standard & Poor's downgraded the nation's credit rating anyway.

"If that wasn't an embarrassment, I don't know what is," Huntsman said. "You had a whole class of my party saying, basically, Go ahead and default. Default?! ...We should have had the 'doer class' who stood up at that point and be willing to say, No, we're not going to let nonsense stand in the way of getting to work.'"
That's the role Huntsman wants to play, but at this point, Republican voters aren't trying to cast that part. In New Hampshire, where Huntsman moved his campaign headquarters a few weeks ago and where he spends most of his time, he's polling at less than 5 percent. 

New Hampshire residents aren't even donating to his campaign. In the last quarter, Huntsman's campaign reported just two donors in the entire state who gave a combined $1,000. 

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Huntsman boycotts Nevada debate in protest of date

Just because I've decided to web log everything I see on Huntsman...

AP News | AccessNorthGa.com: Huntsman's decision is not a huge surprise. His rival Mitt Romney has strong political support in Nevada. And Huntsman has staked his political future on New Hampshire
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Huntsman outlines foreign policy views - AP

Just because I've decided to web log everything I see on Huntsman...

Associated Press - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper:

Republican presidential contender Jon Huntsman says the United States cannot show its strength on the international stage when it is weak domestically.

The former diplomat and Utah governor on Monday told a New Hampshire audience that the United States needs to scale back its role in Afghanistan and to focus on rebuilding the U.S. economy. He is highlighting his foreign policy experience that, so far, hasn't been a deciding factor in the race.

The campaign has been dominated by domestic issues, especially jobs and the economy. Huntsman says a shifted U.S. foreign policy could help put Americans back to work.

...

In a speech planned for Monday in this early nominating state, he called for a scaled-back U.S. role in international engagements, such as Afghanistan, and called for spending cuts at the Pentagon.

"Simply put, we are risking American blood and treasure in parts of the world where our strategy needs to be rethought," Huntsman said in remarks prepared for delivery.

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Freaks and, uh, more freaks... Republicans in 2012

A few excerpts below, but this one is really worth a read.  Don't know if it makes me laugh or cry or both.  One of the worst pitfalls of modern American politics is the pervading feeling among the majority of voters that we are left choosing between the lesser of two evils.  Unless a miracle happens, 2012 will be no different for most voters.

While I have yet, in my voting life, to actually pull the elephant lever for President, I always root for them to have a serious, competent candidate for the job.  I would argue this happened in 1992 (in hind sight), 1996, and (questionably) in 2008.  While this current freak show of a Republican field might be "good" for the Democrats a year from now, it is BAD for our country.

And, make no mistake, my money says that Herman Cain will get the nomination before Romney.  The primary voters will vote black before Mormon.  That is the dirty little not-so-secret secret of the 2012 election so far.  And if he does get the nomination, expect many on the wacko right to stay home in November.

Who knows, maybe Huntsman can pull it together?  I do not know too much about him yet, but he seems the least vile of the bunch.  Romney wasn't too bad until his swerve to the far right, past the nicely trimmed lawns of Conservative Lane into the tall razor wire fences surrounding the armed compounds in Crazy Town.  Unfortunately, Huntsman also suffers from Romney's small L.D.S. problem.

Blah...

The GOP's sad, intolerant 2012 field - Yahoo! News: "At the weekend's Values Voters Summit, Republican presidential candidates and conservative kingmakers proved that bigotry is among their chief values

There's a good reason for the otherwise inexplicable reality that in most surveys President Obama, despite his currently desiccated job approval ratings, leads all but one of his Republican rivals — and even against him, the president nonetheless runs neck and neck.

And there's a deeper reason, beyond the inchoate, predictable, and perennial yearning to find an alternative, why so many of the GOP's smartest strategists and most prodigious fundraisers fought so hard to broaden their field of candidates. They sought someone else, anyone both serious and authentic — from Indiana's diminutive but economically literate Gov. Mitch Daniels, who once committed the conservative capital offense of contemplating a tax increase, to New Jersey's blunt, at times bullying, and comprehensively heavyweight Gov. Chris Christie, who believes in the heresy of global warming.

What's unfolding in the Republican arena is not a campaign but a spectacle that repels mainstream voters and rejects or infects mainstream conservative candidates.

...

Huntsman, as Tish Durkin argued, has qualities that ought to recommend him — among them, that: "He's not Romney... He's not crazy... He's not swearing on a stack of Bibles." Yet these very qualities are disqualifying in today's Republican Party. Huntsman doesn't want, or can't get, a séance with Donald Trump, who's become the grinning Joker of today's GOP. And Huntsman won't get a second look or a second chance — not this time around.

Instead the party marches to the tin drums of ideological extremism and angry fantasy, while its stiff and fragile frontrunner compliantly frog-marches to the right. Mitt Romney isn't setting the pace; he's trying to do just enough to placate a party where crazy now flourishes in many forms."

...

There's persistent resistance to Romney — on the shameful ground of religious bigotry and on the defensible ground of doubts about his sincerity, his personality, and his principles. The result: The extremism and pratfalls of his opponents, which should benefit the Mitt-man by making him seem relatively sensible and reasonable, have generated a miasma that's enveloping the Romney campaign. Not only has he toed a bright right line on social issues; he's adopted the GOP habit of fact-free argument — almost certainly the easy reaction of someone who's already treated his public life as record-free.

...

Even in an economy where the congressional GOP has intentionally and successfully stalled jobs and growth, the party's nominee may prove to be as vulnerable as the Christie-imploring Republicans calculated. It's clear that the president won't let 2012 be cast as a referendum; he's now setting out the basic choice: Who's on your side? Romney will call this class warfare, but people are coming to understand that we've already had a decade of class warfare — against the middle-class. That's what Occupy Wall Street is all about. And that's why Barack Obama should and will go the next step — and week after week, month after month, challenge Wall Street and vested interests across the board.


Mitt Romney will be ill-prepared for this contest. He will enter the general election burdened by the craziness to which he's had to kowtow. The primaries are also stripping away the strands of his already threadbare character. And they're leaving him on the wrong side of the great dividing line of 2012 — for the privileged, not ordinary people."

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