The GOP's front runners: Bad and worse (George Will pegs Huntsman as most principled conservative).

Washington Post ^ | December 2, 2011 | George Will

[St. Louis Conservative]

(snip)

Jon Huntsman inexplicably chose to debut as the Republican for people who rather dislike Republicans, but his program is the most conservative. He endorses Paul Ryan’s budget and entitlement reforms. (Gingrich denounced Ryan’s Medicare reform as “right-wing social engineering.”) Huntsman would privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (Gingrich’s benefactor). Huntsman would end double taxation on investment by eliminating taxes on capital gains and dividends. (Romney would eliminate them only for people earning less than $200,000, who currently pay just 9.3 percent of them.) Huntsman’s thorough opposition to corporate welfare includes farm subsidies. (Romney has justified them as national security measures — food security, somehow threatened. Gingrich says opponents of ethanol subsidies are “big-city” people hostile to farmers.) Huntsman considers No Child Left Behind, the semi-nationalization of primary and secondary education, “an unmitigated disaster.” (Romney and Gingrich support it. Gingrich has endorsed a national curriculum.) Between Ron Paul’s isolationism and the faintly variant bellicosities of the other six candidates stands Huntsman’s conservative foreign policy, skeptically nuanced about America’s need or ability to control many distant developments.

Romney might not be a Dewey. Gingrich might stop being (as Churchill said of John Foster Dulles) a bull who carries his own china shop around with him. But both are too risky to anoint today.

[9YearLurker]

It’s certainly better than increasing taxes and debt and general mismanagement. But budget increases result from growing the size of government, and we have too many GOP pols who are ‘big government conservatives’.

[nathanbedford]

Look, I do care that you disagree with me I object to your snarky tone. It doesn't advance the discussion and it doesn't become you.

You started off by saying:

"ROFLOL! "

And not satisfied with that, after you were referred to polls, you repeated,"ROFLOL! " without any effort or decency on your part to set forth your position. If you had a legitimate difference about the meaning of the word you could've pointed it out but you didn't do that you reverted to snarkiness one more time. Now you want to be heard self righteously complaining about an attack?

Finally, you compound your snarkiness in your last reply and reveal yourself to be a hypocrite by even more childish name-calling: "jerk!."

If you want to take issue with what I say do so like a humanoid, if you cannot act like a conservative, and you will be respectfully treated.

Come on like a sophomore or an offensive drunk and you will be rebuked.

[lonestar]

Huntsman has a Dewey problem-people just don't like him.

Reading that, what would you think it meant?...knowing that people didn't like Dewey...er, ah...people weren't fond of Dewey?

You started the trash talk. I said "ROFLOL" because I was LOL at the thought of people "liking" Newt or Mitt.

I plead guilty in that I thought you knew what you were talking about when you used the word "like."

Now you accuse me of being "snarky" while calling me sophmoric or drunk!

IOW, you need a vocabulary adjustment to express yourself more clearly... and it's my fault!

You're a piece of work!

[erlayman]

Huntsman is a libertarian-leading states rights federalist. I think he will beat Obama without a doubt but it could be closer than we think as he is much more radical than many erstwhile Democrats and Independents realize.

[9YearLurker]

My biggest issue with Huntsman is illegal immigration.

His biggest issues if he were the nominee would probably be his punk rich kid sneer and his need to convince the base that he wasn’t a Democrat in GOP drag. He’d probably need Palin on his ticket to deal with both the likability issue and the latter point, but she brings her own controversies, of course.

[Mr Rogers]

George Will hasn’t written something worth reading since about 1990. Pity.

The idea that Huntsman is suddenly going to capture conservative hearts and minds in mind-numbing stupid.

[nathanbedford]

Huntsman has a Dewey problem-people just don't like him.

Reading that, what would you think it meant?...knowing that people didn't like Dewey...er, ah...people weren't fond of Dewey?

No I thought that George Will meant that the people did not like Dewey in the sense that they would not vote for him and that is why he lost the 1948 election.

I don't know whether you actually read the article or not but George Will goes on to observe:

Tom Dewey. Confident that Truman was unelectable, Republicans nominated New York’s chilly governor, whose virtues of experience and steadiness were vitiated by one fact: Voters disliked him. Before settling for Romney, conservatives should reconsider two candidates who stumbled early on.

The author then goes on to suggest that perhaps we should support Jon Huntsman.

Jon Huntsman has a likability problem as well hence he cannot be elected either.

The whole discussion and the whole point made by George Will as well as myself is that likability translates into electability, or the reverse. My subsequent reference to polls subsequent replies indicate that both Gingrich and Romney have electability.

My entire original reply reads as follows:

Huntsman has a Dewey problem-people just don't like him.

The choice is between Gingrich and Romney and George Wills' frustration does not change that reality one millimeter. By focusing his solution on a fringe candidate, George Will squandered whatever opportunity he sought in this column to influence conservatives' choice.

I did not assert that people "like" Gingrich or Romney in the sense that they have affection for them but that they are prepared to vote for them to the exclusion of other candidates. And the polls bear that out.

Maybe you don't "like" these two individuals but the world evidently is prepared to vote for them over the other Republican candidates and over Obama; perhaps you might consider that solipsism is the opposite of humility and that what strikes your fancy is not important to the rest of the world.

If you have a point to make, go ahead and make it but do it decently.

[Sonny M]

The only actual gripe I have with him (other then his remark, he also said something on twitter, something like "i believe in science, call me crazy"), was that spending went up with his as governor. However, I do like alot of his ideas, and (to my surprise) it turns out a couple of my inlaws actually know him, and like him (unfortunately, one of them is a Romney supporter, lol).

Personally, I would rather see him as a CofS, since he excells management wise, and I think thats his best place. I'm not to keen on beating up on conservatives (it was in an actual interview that he referred to himself as center-right and right of center) just to get ahead. I'll give him a look, but I don't think his chances are honestly that good.

[ex-snook]

Gingrich is more likeable than Huntsman. That’s kidding, right?

[nathanbedford]

Gingrich is more electable than Huntsman. That's a given, right?

[erlayman]

The reason Huntsman comes across as a moderate with the potential for widespread support is that he’s thoughtful, intelligent, seems like a genuinely good, squeaky clean person and he has integrity. He’s respectful towards others who disagree with him and willing to listen to and work with them.

Issues do matter to some extent, but I think most voters tend to vote on whether they like the guy and whether they get the sense that he will do the right thing in crisis situations. Being a diplomat and making on the spot decisions in unforeseeable situations might not get him the nomination but it would be right down his alley in a general election. He would be considered a liberal Mormon if such a faith category existed in the LDS Church, but the religion question is probably his biggest stumbling block. IMO.

[Sonny M]

Huntsman has tried to eschew the moderate label. He isn’t too keen on any ‘label’ that the media might bestow. If anything, he is trying to portray himself (accurately as his record shows) as a consistent conservative. Have a look at the ads his campaign have created against Romney’s flip-flops, and the ad that his Super PAC broadcast in New Hampshire. They’re all about being a conservative.

I didn't come up with the moderate label, he did, on CBS, he called himself, at various points, "right of center" and "center right", he embraced being characterized as a moderate, and seems to have referred to himself as such at least once.

That said, I don't dislike the guy, my inlays (to my surprise, know him), and speak positively and highly of him (downside, one of them is a Romney supporter, lol). I think he could make a good CofS, and he is apparently close friends with Rick Perry, he also comes from a very wealthy family. That said, I'll look at him, but he needs to back off on this global warming crapola, and attacking people who don't drink the climate change kool-aid, either way, his campaign isn't looking to good either, but I won't rule him out.

FWIW, I don't hold working as an ambassador to china under Obama against him, if anything, it probably helped give him an inside look at the administration, and I do prefer someone who puts their country first and foremost. Its also easier to safeguard and watch your countries interest on the inside then on the outside.

[ex-snook]

‘Gingrich is more electable than Huntsman. That’s a given, right?’

---

Unfortunately.

[RightCenter]

Which of his positions on his site are non-conservative? Most seem fine.

[erlayman]

Suddenly he will look very conservative compared to Mitt and Newt as the same mainstream media outlets that adored him this summer start in about how his tax-plan is “radically right-wing,” and how he has pushed an “extreme anti-choice” agenda. lol

Labels are inherently relative depending on your perspective and it was a very different race this summer. There was no way Huntsman was going to “out-conservative” Bachmann, Santorum, Perry, Cain et al and it wouldn’t have been believable at that point anyway. The media simply thrives on conflict and will spin any contrast among the candidates to fit their prevailing storyline. It doesn’t in any way, shape, or form imply that Huntsman doesn’t “like” conservatives or that he has been unavailable to the conservative press. How anyone can make the case that he is more risky than Gingrich or Romney is beyond me.

[Sonny M]

How anyone can make the case that he is more risky than Gingrich or Romney is beyond me.

Off the bat, his immigration plan (and also his record) is to the left of everyone, from Perry to Newt to Romney. That makes him a nonstarter to most (I'm not to keen on anyones immigrations plans in this race, but going further to the left isn't going to help, if I can't get Tancredo like, I'll take Tancredo lite, or the closest thing I can see).

He also said, and this is a direct quote, he found a "border fence repulsive", there isn't to many ways to spin that. He believes that the country needs more immigration (he actually said this in a debate), things like that add up to the moderate label. Yes, he is good on taxes, and he is pro-life, but he also likes to spend money, believes in climate change (and did commercials for a liberal environmental group), supports gay unions, and is on the left on immigration.

No one is perfect, I respect that, but he is a bit to far away from where I want the candidates to be for me to feel comfortable.

[Tribune7]

One of the first things Huntsman did is offend those of us who point out that it is impossible for everything to have come about solely by random events by calling us anti-science.

I'll stick with the Ricks.

[erlayman]

Huntsman may hate the thought of a fence on the border but also believes is a necessity for the country to get a handle on its illegal immigration problem. I don’t know enough about his immigration amnesty program to comment but I also don’t trust the needle threading, flip flopping approach of Gingrich (....and Romney who will change positions within a single debate to whatever gets the most applause).

[OddLane]

These people are starting to remind me of the Moonies.

Will, Michael Brendan Dougherty, Douthat.

It's like these Obama acolytes in the media who tried to convince us that Michelle Obama is "sexy."

Either the people doing this are completely in the tank for Hunstman, on his payroll, or delusional.

None of which I mind, just don't ask me to come along for the ride.

[HiTech RedNeck]

I think they’ve at the least bought Huntsman’s official sales pitch without looking at the back story.

Huntsman and Romney are both Mormon, but if I had to guess which one is more sincere about the tenets of his faith, I think Huntsman would edge out Romney. That could be good or bad.