Posted on 11/30/2012 2:16:36 PM PST by drewh
Former Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman said Friday that the Republican Party should stress its "libertarian roots" rather than "fringe" social issues as it evaluates its election losses.
“I think the deliberation about the Republican Party that we’re having is a very healthy thing," Huntsman told CNN. "And if we don’t wind up at the end of the exercise with a mission statement that is one sentence long, then we’re toast. That one statement ought to be, ‘Balance the budgets and get out of people’s lives.’ And you ought to build the party around that because we have strong libertarian roots that go way back to the early days of the Republican Party.
Huntsman went on to warn that the party was occasionally consumed by such "fringe issues, and it gets us stuck in the alleyways of life that take our focus away from what is really important for the American people, and that is individual freedom and that is getting the budgets balanced so people can get on with their lives.”
Huntsman, who was the former U.S. Ambassador to China under President Obama, also urged Republicans to cool their rhetoric surrounding the terrorist attack in Benghazi.
"What I'm saying about the Benghazi incident is let's lower the politics," Huntsman said. "Let's let the experts collect the information."
He also downplayed any suggestion that he could serve as Secretary of State, with Hillary Clinton planning to leave the job at the end of the president's first term — although seemingly indicated he would accept the job, if asked.
"I don't play the hypothetical game," Huntsman said. "We have moved on. My history has always spoken to putting my country first, and if I didn't, my two sons at the U.S. Naval Academy would never forgive me."
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
The destruction of marriage and babies is a fringe issue? If social conservatives abandon the field, the Bolshevik liberals will take away our freedom of religion and assembly in every square inch of society.
Were you hibernating during the last election? In 2012 America, this would be the fast track to oblivion. Obama was elected by idiots who couldn't care less about the budget but who were desperately afraid their nanny-state government under Romney would "stay out of" their lives. This proposal is precisely 180 degrees opposite of what the electorate cared about.
First of all, this is the commie Hill that worships Lenin, so nobody should believe a word from these poodle-loving gay boys.
The entire article should be banned on FR and thrown in the garbage.
Let’s start setting standards and zapping the leftist bad guys.
Someone remind me of how many straw polls, caucuses, or primaries this asswipe won.
“How?”
Well, we need candidates who can sell our message to the public, since that is the only way we’ll get enough support to accomplish it. The most important candidate is our Presidential candidate, he’s the one who has the best chance of getting into American’s living rooms and talking to them without the media filter, and getting them to pay attention.
If we run another moderate, who avoids the issue, the public has no chance to be swayed to our viewpoint, and even if we win, we’ll have no mandate to pursue any pro-life agenda. The moderate would be too worried about trying to get re-elected to try anyway.
Really, us conservatives, in places like FR, the Tea Parties, and everywhere else, need to settle our differences and pick one candidate to back soon, before the primaries start. Then we can steamroll the moderates, the leftie infiltrators in open primary states, and the state GOP elector-switching shenanigans. It might be an uphill battle to win the national election, but if we just get our act together, it should be a cakewalk for us to win our own primary.
Considering he is a progressive leftist RINO and politically irrelevant -"the hypothetical game" is ALL he does play. He is but another leftist mouthpiece attempting to gather up some more useful idiots.
RINO File.
What you are proposing is two democrat parties, one of them more conservative on economics, that means that the base of the GOP would know that they had lost their party, then they would be forced to make another one, which would leave the GOP as a 3rd party.
When the Christians are driven from your GOPe version of the party, then you and yours are finished.
A child thinks like that, this is real life.
Huntsman is himself “the fringe,” and another warning flag when one sees the initials UT.
This guy likes himself way too much
Maybe many of them don’t want independence and opportunity. Maybe we’ve already got the ones who want that (about 30%), and the rest of them like dependence on the gov. just fine. And according to analysts like Heather MacDonald, most Latinos are to the left of your average non-Latino Dem on social issues. Which means they like abortion-on-demand and other very lib. social policies.
No, not really proposing anything right now. I do think the GOP is going to emphasize different issues going forward. I suspect it is going to be a more "balance the budget and leave people alone" message as Huntsman was arguing for. Even Sarah Palin, tea party hero, has been talking about how we should listen more to Ron Paul and his supporters. The party and its candidates are just not going to emphasize the moral/social issues as much. Instead of arguing for defunding Planned Parenthood over moral concerns, we will just say the nation is broke and we can't afford it. You can accomplish the same thing in many cases by making the economic argument instead of the social one.
For example, when Romney and Ryan were asked about their positions on abortion, they should have kept those views private, saying that their positions were personal and had nothing at all to to with the real issues that affect our country. This is what the average voters want to hear.
You never see the media asking Dem candidates about their positions on abortion, birth control, etc. They only do so to Republican candidates, and they do so for the sole purpose of marginalizing them on election day. (See: Todd Akin) Do not ever under any circumstance engage a member of the MSM or any debate moderator when it comes to these social issues.
What you are proposing, is the same agenda you propose constantly, move left, force out America’s morality once and for all.
Kill social conservatism now, while it is weakened and wounded from our 50 years of left-wing “libertarian” successes.
You guys are looking to the joke called Huntsman now? Wow, Romney wasn’t enough for you.
Liberal rust never sleeps.
Ridiculous, when you are running on a position, then you have to speak on it, defend it, promote it, and win the election partly based on it, or else the agenda doesn't exist, and it has no presence in the public or political arena.
By the way, when asked about abortion, on August 27th by CBS News, Romney clearly stated that he rejected the party's pro-life platform, and supported abortion on demand, by calling for "health" of the mother.
What Republicans need to do is expel the psychopathetic libertarians from the party who think killing babies is a good thing. Ron Paul dragged Romney down with his craziness.
In summary... get lost freak.
I am not a fan of Ron Paul and his loopy conspiracy brigades, but the general libertine message of government out of our lives at every level is probably the direction the party will go. None other than Sarah Palin has made this point many times, that we should pay more attention to Ron Paul and libertarians in general.
Future campaigns are going to be run much more like Bob McDonnell in VA. He is a social conservative, but didn't touch those issues on the campaign trail. GOP candidates are going to increasingly avoid the social issues and run on economic/fiscal policy.
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