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Huntsman compares GOP to Communist Party of China Posted by CNN Producer Gabriella Schwarz (CNN) – Former GOP White House contender Jon Huntsman on Monday explained the comparison he made between the Republican Party and Communist Party of China the night before as "waxing philosophical" on the state of politics. On Sunday night Huntsman equated being disinvited by the Republican Party from a Florida fundraiser in March after he floated the idea of a third party to "what they do in China on party matters if you talk off script," according to political blog BuzzFeed. On Monday the former Utah...

Jon Huntsman has halted his campaign for president, leaving Romney the only serious choice on foreign policy.

The Huntsman Corporation, a leading chemical company, said yesterday that Bain Capital Inc., the buyout firm that owns Domino's Pizza and Sealy Mattress, agreed to buy a $600 million stake in the closely held business. Huntsman said it would use part of the money to buy out Imperial Chemical Industries' 30 percent share of Huntsman.

ANUARY 16, 2012 Jon Huntsman to Drop Out of Presidential Race BY CAROL E. LEE AND NEIL KING JR. Republican presidential candidate Jon M. Huntsman Jr. intends to drop out of the nomination contest on Monday and endorse rival Mitt Romney, the Huntsman campaign said. "He's going to endorse Gov. Romney tomorrow and urge the party to come together," one person briefed on events said. A Huntsman aide said Mr. Huntsman was proud of his third-place showing in New Hampshire last week but felt his campaign was standing in the way of a Romney win in Saturday's primary election in...

Huntsman Wins Key SC Newspaper Endorsement By Jo Ling Kent, NBC News CHARLESTON, SC -- Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman won the endorsement of South Carolina's largest newspaper, The State, on Sunday morning. The announcement comes six days before the Palmetto State primary as Huntsman attempts to quickly gain last- minute traction after spending very little time in the state. Huntsman finished a distant third in the New Hampshire primary after campaigning there for nearly six months straight. This is the second time Huntsman has been endorsed by a major newspaper with just days to go before an early state...

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Jon Huntsman was endorsed by Columbia, S.C.'s The State newspaper on Sunday. The endorsement comes less than a week before the South Carolina primary and comes as Huntsman quickly tries to gain traction in the Palmetto state. The State's endorsement is actually similar to what happened just before the New Hampshire primary: Mitt Romney's hometown paper, The Boston Globe, backed Huntsman in a long editorial in which it compared Romney with the former Utah governor. Like the Globe endorsement, The State praised both Romney and Huntsman but said Huntsman was the better candidate. "There are actually two sensible, experienced grownups," The...

Want to see what America would look like without private equity? Move to Detroit and contemplate the ruins of a city ruined by the placid conformity of auto industry executives. The economic impact of the corporate takeover business can’t be measured by the outcome of takeovers as such. Private equity transformed the way American business thought about the world. If managers did a lousy job, outside investors could raise money (a lot of it from trade union pension funds as well as university endowments) and kick them out. Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry should be ashamed of themselves for bean-counting...

Leading Family History Site also Links GOP Candidates Huntsman and Perry to Former Presidents and American Legends PROVO, UTAH (December 20, 2011) - As Americans prepare to cast their votes in the 2012 Republican Presidential primaries and caucuses starting January 3 in Iowa, Ancestry.com today announced that several key Republican presidential contenders have historic political leaders in their genes – suggesting that the upcoming primaries are really one grand ol’ family party. The world’s largest online family history resource has discovered that Mitt Romney leads the pack in presidential lineage with six former Commanders–in-Chief in his family history.  The former Massachusetts...

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin challenged GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney to furnish his tax return and supporting documents that would prove he created the 100,000 jobs he claimed he did while CEO of Bain Capital. "Governor Romney has claimed to have created 100,000 jobs at Bain and people are wanting to know is there proof of that claim and was it U.S. jobs created for United States citizens?" Palin told Fox News Sean Hannity. Palin said that transparency was needed as Romney would likely be targeted by Democrats on this issue if he were to become the Republican nominee....

In a five-page order yesterday, Judge Gibney of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, wrote: The Court finds that there is a strong likelihood that the Court will find the residency requirement for petition circulators to be unconstitutional. (...) If absentee ballots are printed, and particularly if they are mailed, it will impair the Court's ability to enter an order granting relief to the plaintiffs. They are presidential candidates and will have no chance to secure the delegates from Virginia at the Republican convention. The harm to them would obviously be irreparable. (...) The defendants point...

Romney has said that Obama is putting free-enterprise on trial and that some in the GOP are joining him? What? This is according to the un-aired ad "Bain & Co: The 1994 Ad By Sen. Ted Kennedy Which Will Floor Mitt RomBOT In 2012": The day Romney took over at Bain, "he had his predecessor fire hundreds of employees." The company was rescued with "a federal bailout of $10 million dollars." "According to the Globe, Romney's company failed to repay at least $10 million to a failed bank and the rest of us had to absorb the loss. Romney abd...

MANCHESTER, N.H.--Mitt Romney won the New Hampshire primary Tuesday, the second state in a row he has carried in his campaign for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. Romney is the first Republican, not including incumbent presidents, to win both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary since Iowa Republicans began holding their first-in-the-nation caucuses in 1976. Ron Paul came in second; Jon Huntsman in third. It was a start-to-finish victory for Romney in New Hampshire, who led in the polls here throughout the 2012 campaign. Romney owns a summer home in the state, which borders his home state of...

"...Mitt Romney says he saved Bain & Co. but he didn't tell you the day he took over he had his predecessor fire hundreds of employees or the way the company was rescued was with a federal bailout of $10 million dollars. According to the Globe, Romney's company failed to repay at least $10 million dollars to a failed bank and the rest of us had to absorb the loss. Romney, he and others made $4 million dollars in this deal which cost ordinary people $10 million dollars. Mitt Romney - maybe he's just against government when it helps working...

The gloves have come off by the other candidates now in response to all of the mudslinging being done at the hands of the Romney and Paul campaigns so the New Hampshire Primary is proving to be a little more contested than originally thought and is proving that it may not be the coronation that Mitt Romney expects. I came fairly close with my predictions for Iowa, correctly nailing that Bachmann would end her race by the end of the week and calling Mitt Romney the winner, albeit by 8 votes. I thought Santorum would run fourth, but did expect...

In the Republican presidential candidate debates this weekend, Mitt Romney repeated his claim that he is an effective leader who created a "net net" of 100,000 jobs while he was working in the private sector. But three recent reports, by the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press and by Fact Check.org, the nonprofit nonpartisan project run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania say that the Romney campaign has yet to offer convincing proof to back up the claim. ... It hardly seems plausible to suggest that he created the positions that make up the current...

LIBERTY ALERTS, GUN OWNERS OF AMERICA As New Hampshire voters get set to head to the polls, Mitt and Jon Huntsman continue to ignore requests from gun owners that he return the GOA candidate questionnaire. Thank to your efforts, we’ve heard from most of the Republican candidates, including Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul. But Romney and Huntsman continue to turn a deaf ear to the Second Amendment community. Romney’s stonewalling is no surprise. After all, he is on record supporting a semi-auto ban and waiting periods for gun purchases. Still, he has the audacity to travel around the...

Gordon Gekko Romney is being taken to task over his proclivities, and activities at Bain. To make it short, Romney engaged in what is commonly known as asset-stripping. My point in this thread isn't to delve into the minutiae of what asset-stripping entails, but rather to point out that Romney is attempting to pigeonhole Gingrich as being anti-free market capitalism through the use of a false choice: If Gingrich doesn't support what Romney did at Bain, then he is anti-free market capitalism. Romney's false choice... And all the while, Romney is trying to use a smokescreen to cover what he...

Confused about the proposed tax reform from each of the presidential candidates? Be confused no more. ATR has compiled a single chart that covers the essential differences between each candidate's plans. As proposals change, this chart will be updated, so be sure to bookmark it and share it with your friends using the Facebook, Twitter, and email links above.For an html version, please click here.

Romney: "I don't have lobbyists running my campaign. I don't have lobbyists tied to my..."

Romney had a tough start. Santorum had a very pointed question on his decision not to run for re-election in 2006, “Why did you bail out?� Romney responded with what Newt rightly called “pious baloney.� On this question, Romney simply can’t admit the truth—he didn’t run for re-election because he might have lost and, more importantly, he wanted to run for president. Romney absurdly characterized leaving office to run for another office as returning to the private sector. I’m not sure how much voters will be outraged by any of this. They probably assume every politician wants to run for...

Liberal MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow has had difficulties getting any mainstream Republican presidential primary candidate to come on her show. Shocking. Give Maddow some credit though for her tenacity. In desperate search for a few words with former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, currently placing sixth in national GOP nomination polls, Maddow traveled all the way to New Hampsire to attempt to “ambush” interview Huntsman Friday. Unfortunately for Maddow, Huntsman’s handlers were unimpressed by her Bud Fox-like perseverance, rejecting her request for a few words with the candidate who was already mobbed with media attention. Checkout the MSNBC video of Maddow’s...

What was going through the minds of the GOP candidates Saturday night when they engaged in a circular firing squad — and largely gave GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney the kid glove treatment at the big televised ABC debate? As California Democratic campaign consultant Bob Mulholland laughingly told us afterwards (he got a ticket to sit in the debate hall at St. Anselm College): “What was wrong with these guys? If any one of them had punched him out, they would have made the headline of the night.” Yeah, well, move along, there’s nothing to see here. The guy who showed...

Endorsements might not matter much in the grand scheme of things (how many of you change your minds based on an endorsement?), but, cumulatively, they do say something about a candidate’s ability to campaign effectively and about the kind of supporters a candidate attracts. Then, too, endorsements sometimes have the opposite of their intended effect. Case in point: Some Republican voters have said they would reconsider a candidate if Donald Trump endorsed that candidate. For that matter, does anybody actually like Mitt Romney better because John McCain endorsed him? In advance of New Hampshire, both Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman...

Romney has a record where he touted his belief system, policy proposals, etc, when running for U.S. Senator against Ted Kennedy. He has a record as governor. But Romney says ignore THOSE specifics - here is who I claim to be now, and what I claim to stand for. And he says now to take him at his word about who he is and what he stands for. But he is low on specifics, especially tonight, and throughout the debates, Romney has been heavy on platitudes and speaking moatly in generalities (I will restore America, America can be great again,...

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If you thought it would be impossible for Jon Huntsman and the Establishment media to stoop any lower than they already have in their attempts to marginalize and discredit Ron Paul, you thought wrong. Just last week, Huntsman’s campaign released a “tacky, glib ‘Twilight Zone’ attack ad in a desperate bid to steal Ron Paul voters“, in the words of Infowars.com’s Paul Joseph Watson. Now, just days later, a ridiculous, pathetic joke of a video has been posted to YouTube entitled “John Huntsman’s Values”. The one minute video, which was posted two days ago (Jan 4), features clips Huntsman speaking...

Dude, it's time. No more delays, no more excuses.UNLEASH HUNTSMANIA. Among the candidates, only two stand out as truly presidential, Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman. Both have track records of success, and both, through their policies and demeanors, have shown the breadth of spirit to lead the nation. But while Romney proceeds cautiously, strategically, trying to appease enough constituencies to get himself the nomination, Huntsman has been bold. Rather than merely sketch out policies, he articulates goals and ideals. The priorities he would set for the country, from leading the world in renewable energy to retooling education and immigration policies...

Several news reports have it that Romney did not win the Iowa Caucuses. Mr. True supposedly has a photo showing 2 votes for Romney, not 22, on a piece of paper. Barring any objective, verifiable proof that shows more than 12 votes mistakenly being credited to Santorum, Romney lost. On the flip side, if Romney did win, the Weekly Standard, in a news piece entitled "Answers from Iowa," says that Romney's 24.6% in the Iowa Caucuses was the worst ever (for either party) for a candidate winning the Iowa Caucuses. Romney spent millions in Iowa, had the worst percentage ever,...

Would conservatives support a presidential bid by David Petraeus? The Iraq surge architect isn't a candidate. But for years prominent conservatives from Rep. Peter King to Andrew Breitbart have touted the soldier-scholar as a dream conservative candidate to take on Barack Obama. The question is, if Petraeus had run, would his service in the Obama administration -- first as head of U.S. Central Command, then as Commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan and now as CIA Director -- have counted against him? It's safe to say conservatives wouldn't have re-purposed the old "General Betray-Us" moniker for the man who has...

. . . Among the candidates, only two stand out as truly presidential, Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman. Both have track records of success, and both, through their policies and demeanors, have shown the breadth of spirit to lead the nation. But while Romney proceeds cautiously, strategically, trying to appease enough constituencies to get himself the nomination, Huntsman has been bold. Rather than merely sketch out policies, he articulates goals and ideals. The priorities he would set for the country, from leading the world in renewable energy to retooling education and immigration policies to help American high-tech industries, are far-sighted....

If Republicans didn't like Mitt Romney's position on the so-called union-busting proposal in Ohio, all they had to do is wait one day before he changed it... ... ...

PAUL RAISES $13 MILLION IN Q4: Ron Paul’s campaign raised $13 million in the last three months of the year. The impressive figure comes after he took in $8 million during the third quarter. The cash flow will allow the Texas congressman to compete through later primaries and caucuses. Because he has the most loyal donor base – the cause of liberty primarily motivates them, not access or perks – he should be able to continue raising substantial sums in the wake of his third-place finish in Tuesday’s Iowa caucuses. Only Mitt Romney will be able to post a higher...

During the Iowa caucuses tonight it wasn’t just the wind sending a chill into the hearts of presidential candidates.At 8:30 p.m., just after entrance polls started pouring in, Ron Paul tweeted a snarky shot at fellow Republican candidate Jon Huntsman.“@jonhuntsman we found your one Iowa voter, he’s in Linn precinct 5 you might want to call him and say thanks,” read the tweet that came from Paul’s verified Twitter account.The tweet from Paul’s account was deleted within half an hour of its being sent, but ABC News captured a screenshot.Screenshot from Twitter

I have grown cynical of party politics in mature democracies, including the most exciting democracy of all, the United States. In the middle of a spectrum exclusively defined by Republicans and Democrats, personality and style must be favored over platforms that few candidates are ever able to implement. So many people are bored by politics in the U.S. that half of the voters don’t bother to vote. This is not necessarily a bad thing. If politics does not affect the daily life of citizens, to the extent that most can choose to ignore it, then some wisdom has been found...

Palin: It's Not Bachmann's Time

Sacred underwear, baptizing holocaust victims, gods of their own planets. When some of America’s most celebrated pundits and public intellectuals talk about Mormons, these are the images that are summoned. Ironically in this “Mormon Moment”—signaled by a hit Broadway musical, polygamous housewives on TLC, and of course two Mormon presidential candidates—Mormons, long considered quintessential “outsiders” to mainstream American culture, today find themselves at the center of the American zeitgeist. Yet it is the Mormons’ supposed theological weirdness that is the centripetal attraction. As Joanna Brooks has noted in these pages, the New York Times recently featured Harold Bloom’s musings on...

The Huntsman campaign is going on-air in New Hampshire with this video, which scores a pretty solid hit on Paul with the newsletter issue, ending with his embarrassing flight from the Gloria Borger interview: As we count down the final few days before Iowa, I also wanted to point out and hopefully tie together some of the remaining questions about the Ron Paul newsletters. This somewhat lengthy piece is definitely worth a read even if it is somewhat obviously written by someone with an axe to grind in an intra-libertarian movement fight. I find the conclusion of the piece to...

December 25th, 2011, Edited by Richard Winger There are currently many news stories and blog discussions about the Virginia presidential primary ballot access law. Some large blogs, such as Red State, have over 300 comments about the story. Some defend the current Virginia ballot access laws on the grounds that in past presidential elections, a fairly large number of Republican presidential primary candidates managed to qualify. But what has not been reported is that in the only other presidential primaries in which Virginia required 10,000 signatures (2000, 2004, and 2008) the signatures were NOT checked.Any candidate who submitted at...

Who do you like in the Republican primary for president? Michele Bachmann Newt Gingrich Jon Huntsman Ron Paul Rick Perry Mitt Romney Rick Santorum None of the above

Gingrich 25% Romney 23% Paul 12% Perry 8% Bachmann 7% Santorum 4% Huntsman 2%

Four Republican presidential candidates – Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Ron Paul -- submitted paper work in time to qualify for Virginia's March 6 primary ballot. No other GOP contender will be on the Virginia ballot. Rep. Michele Bachmann, former Sen. Rick Santorum and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman did not submit signatures with Virginia's State Board of Elections by today's 5 p.m. deadline. Those who submitted the required signatures must clear another hurdle. The Republican Party of Virginia has until Tuesday to certify which candidates qualify. Romney was the first Republican presidential candidate to file his petitions....

Many readers are scratching their heads over my endorsement of Ron Paul last week. One writes: Let me add a few more reasons to vote for Ron Paul: If you want all federal student aid eliminated, vote Paul. If you want the Department of Energy, Commerce, Interior, Education and Housing & Urban Development eliminated, vote Paul. If you want the department of Transportation Security Administration eliminated (meaning security is the sole responsibility of private property owners), vote Paul. You can't just ignore Paul's "nuttier policy proposals". These proposals are Paul. If you endorse Ron Paul, you're endorsing his proposals. There...

It's been a bad week for Newt Gingrich in our early state Republican polling, but we still find him with a good sized lead nationally. He's at 35% to 22% for Mitt Romney, 11% for Ron Paul, 7% for Michele Bachmann, 6% for Rick Perry, 4% for Rick Santorum, 3% for Jon Huntsman, and 1% for Gary Johnson. On the surface that's good news for Gingrich but looking under the hood it's more bad news to some extent. We haven't done a national poll in 5 weeks, too long ago to make a good comparison, but on 6 state polls...

(Reuters) - Republican Jon Huntsman, who has based his 2012 campaign for the White House almost exclusively on a strong showing in New Hampshire, has been rewarded with endorsements from two newspapers in the state with an early primary election. The Keene Sentinel and the Valley News both praised the former U.S. ambassador to China in editorials on Sunday. The endorsements were another snub to Mitt Romney, a former governor of neighboring Massachusetts who has dominated most opinion polls in New Hampshire this year but whose lead has recently narrowed in the race for the Republican nomination to run for...

Since it has been an unusual presidential election cycle with various front-runners throughout the horse race for the 2012 Republican nomination, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne and New York Times columnist David Brooks say there is the possibility that anything can happen. On Friday’s broadcast of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” in their regular weekly appearance, the two laid out scenarios that in any other election cycle would have been thought of as nearly impossible. First, Dionne elaborated on a recent column about why he thinks former U.S. Ambassador to China and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman should not be ruled...

Political blogger Andrew Sullivan has made an endorsement among this year’s ever-thinning field crop of GOP presidential contenders, and it’s none other than Ron Paul. On his Daily Beast blog “The Dish,” Sullivan writes that, initially, he had his eye on Jon Huntsman, praising for the former governor of Utah’s tax reform proposals and his experience with foreign relations (particularly where China is concerned, as well as his level-headed approach and — as Sullivan puts it — his “conservative position” when it comes to global warming. However, Sullivan has been less than enthused with what he describes as Huntsman’s “mediocre...

The Economist/YouGov Poll December 10-13, 2011 If you had to choose one, which of these individuals would you want to be the Republican nominee for president in 2012? Asked of registered voters who are likely to vote in a Republican primary or caucus (n=325) Newt Gingrich 29% Mitt Romney 18% Ron Paul 14% Michele Bachmann 7% Rick Perry 6% Rick Santorum 6% Jon Huntsman 2% Gary Johnson 0% Other 8% No preference 10%

A very clear view from Rancho Mirage. Monday A grueling drive down from rainy Los Angeles to Rancho Mirage. It is about the drabbest drive there is anywhere on earth. The New Jersey Turnpike is like the 17 Mile Drive in Carmel by comparison. We always make a lot of stops because, well, because we're old and get tired easily. I visited with people at a hotel in Ontario, then at a CVS and a gas station in Calimesa, and at a Bob's Big Boy. I am like a small town politician and my district runs along Highway 10 from...

Mitt Romney will be missing in The Gift of Life premiere audience, as well as Ron Paul, a pro-life doctor, and as Jon Huntsman. When I asked Governor Huckabee if tonight amounts to an endorsement application test, Huckabee gives them all a pass. “More than anyone” he tells me, “I recognize that candidates have frantic schedules and all can’t come to every event. Those who don’t come aren’t snubbing the pro-life issue, but those who do are showing that they believe it to be a priority and that is significant.” Interestingly, Nancy Keenan from NARAL takes the premiere as an...