I understand that the strategy for a “serious” 2012 Republican is to be the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind, or to be the last man standing after voters decide they just can’t stomach Mitt Romney, or some other variation on that sad theme, but I still don’t understand what John Huntsman is playing at. He’s facing an electorate that’s primed to despise all things Obama, so he’s got to split hairs when describing his recent relationship with the President. What’s worse, he also has to tell lies about his support of the stimulus:
This is critically important to understanding Huntsman. His line on stimulus wasn’t just progressive; it was arguablyto the left of many Democrats. Faced with the economic crisis, Huntsman’s argument was that Democrats weren’t spending enough money.
[…]For the record, I imagine the Obama White House would have loved to pursue a similar approach to the one Huntsman outlined, but it was conservatives in Congress who refused. In the context of the 2012 campaign, though, it’s worth remembering that his “one gripe” with the stimulus two years ago had nothing to do with wanting more tax cuts — it was that he wanted more government spending, especially on infrastructure, not less.Obviously, that’s the exact opposite of the Republican Party’s approach to economic policy, but just as important, it’s also the opposite of what Huntsman said about his position last week.
Like Romney, Huntsman is busy retracting any of his recently-held positions that smacked of progressivism (save for civil unions), and stupidly doubling-down on the Ryan budget. In the unlikely event that he does grab the nomination, all that means is that the Obama campaign will spend a few million of its billion dollars on digging up and airing every desperate flip flop this guy made to appeal to the Republican base. He’s throwing away a lot of potential to be the next Fritz Mondale or Bob Dole.
Just Some Fuckhead
Every Republican does this and they never get called on it because Republican voters don’t care what they used to believe as long as they believe the good new thing fervently enough.
cat48
Obama loses because he “doubledowned” and refused to bend over for AIPAC/Bibi and the Dems in Congress supported Bibi.
Ija
Why did he agree to take the ambassador job if he really was planning to run for president in ’12? That seems so stupid. It’s not even a President from his own party doing the asking, I don’t think people would think badly of him for refusing.
ETA: Plus it was pretty obvious from the beginning that Obama appointed him to get him out of the way (there was a David Plouffe quote basically saying that). It would have been completely understandable for him to turn the job done. Why take it at all?
M
I used to think he was setting himself up to be front-runner for 2016. It’s not unusual for the Republican primary to be a two-cycle race: nominate whomever is next in line, whomever had a strong showing in the previous cycle.
I suspect he sees an opening this year in such a weak field, but he’s at risk of ruining his general election chances to get it.
Brian S
So it’s kind of like how Republicans can cheat on their wives (because female Republicans would not get the same benefit of the doubt) and be viable because they’ve repented? Just repent of your past policy indiscretions and embrace the faith and you too can receive the blessings of the primary goers.
Emma
Watching all these “serious” gentlemen turn weasel in order to pacify the crazy fringe has provided me with hours of entertainment. On the troubling front, it’s obvious that their only interest is to get their hands on that title, the house, the plane, and the power and have no, ningun, nessun interest in actually dealing with the country’s problems.
Comrade Javamanphil
@Ija:
He needed foreign policy credentials for the resume.
As for what Huntsman is playing at, I really have no idea. I realize he has to steer right to even have a shot at the nomination but how does a Mormon, pro-civil union, not insanely anti-immigrant candidate win the GOP nomination in 2012? I don’t see it.
Mark S.
I like this analysis by Benen:
I think that explains why Romney, who should be killing this field, has such problems. His explanations for why he changed positions always sound like utter bullshit.
MattF
Well, there’s ambition. Huntsman has persuaded himself that he has a shot at reaching the top of the greasy pole– and so all contrary arguments recede into background noise. On the plus side one senses that, unlike Romney, Huntsman’s ambition hasn’t yet extinguished his personality… so there’s that.
Ghanima Atreides
It is just name recognition for 2016.
None of the current field has a snoballs chance in hell to beat Obama in 2012.
This is Romney’s last chance, so Huntsman is angling for replacement Romney slot.
4tehlulz
@Ija: The advantage would be (total guess here I admit) is that if he’s not gov. of Utah, he’s not saddled with any baggage from any economic issues during his tenor (i.e., having to raise taxes).
Southern Beale
Harold Camping now says he was off by 5 months and the world will end in October.
Someone tell this old crackpot to shut the fuck up and eat his oatmeal, no one gives a shit what he has to say.
Ash Can
@Ija: I agree; none of this makes any sense. First he blows up his GOP cred by taking a job with the Obama Administration, then he turns his back on a competent and popular administration headed for likely re-election by a substantial margin, in a quest to become the GOP cannon fodder in that re-election. Some think tank somewhere must have made him a lucrative offer to persuade him to do this, with a guarantee to catch him when he falls. Otherwise, it’s just random behavior.
Chris
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Depends what narrative Fox News, the National Review, PJTV and all the other guys run with. If they push the “this man betrayed us and we can never trust him again” line, that’s what the voters’ll believe. If they push the “he’s a good man, he’s changed” line, they’ll believe that.
Alex S.
Maybe Huntsman just wants to steal votes from Romney to keep the nomination away from him. Because if Romney loses in 2012, the chance of nominating another Mormon in 2016 would be rather slim. The media would not stop talking about the mormon factor.
jayackroyd
“the next Fritz Mondale or Bob Dole.”
AND that’s the story the political press can’t touch. They can’t write “the Obama can’t really be beaten, even with a dreadful economy.” story. The reason the GOP is acting like a cat confronted with a puddle of perfume has to be that their internals show Obama to be really hard to beat–and that’s before they decided that blowing up Medicare was a good idea, politically.
WereBear
Precisely. So he has to become someone else. Just as McCain tamed his own inner “maverick.”
I believe in truth in advertising. Republicans running on the batshit crazy; well, that’s what they always did. Maybe this time they can’t lie about it.
Southern Beale
Georgia Republican Rob Woodall took some heat for his vote to kill Medicare at a Town Hall but what’s interesting are his responses, which clearly show the GOP’s “YOYO agenda”:
And:
This shows me that Republicans, especially young ones like Woodall who is only 41, are pathetically attached their fantasy of the “rugged invidiviualist” who achieves by the sweat of his brow. I mean seriously what freedom! Try succeeding by the sweat of your brow when you’re 75 years old, asshole. Or when the corporations have stacked the deck against anyone who wasn’t fortunate enough to be born on the right side of the tracks.
Fact is, GOPers have pulled the ladders up and the only ones succeeding by the sweat of anyone’s brow are the Republicans profiting from the cheap labor they’ve created.
steviez314
I still think Huntsman decides not to run until 2016. Makes so much more sense. Let the Kenyan/socialist/Palin fever break in the GOP.
By 2016, having worked for Obama would be seen as a plus.
I am still betting on Huntsman/Rubio ’16, and that would be tough to beat.
Ija
@Ash Can:
Exactly. I think they’ll forgive him his Mormonism, pro civil union, not insanely anti-immigrant stance etc etc before they’ll forgive him that. Unless he starts coming out with stories about how incompetent the Obama administration was in its dealing with China, or how Obama was humiliated and/or played by the Chinese government etc etc. But stories like that would also implicate his own competence in some ways, since he was the freaking ambassador.
geg6
I have some wingnut friends who aren’t buying what Huntsman is selling. He’s Obama’s boy, no matter what he says or does.
It’s a shame, really. He’s one of the few (up until now) sane Republicans left. And I really don’t get why he’s running now or why he took the ambassadorship if he planned to run now. I think he’s damaging himself, not setting himself up for a victory in 2016. If that is what his thinking is, that is.
EconWatcher
@Southern Beale:
Wow. I don’t care how red his district is. Some Dem should be able to use that video to take him down. That diatribe to an elderly lady would make even most diehard wingnuts blush.
As Molly Ivans once said in a different context, “Even Bubba knows you don’t treat a lady like that.”
Chris
@Southern Beale:
Yet social mobility (the likelihood for a poor person to become rich, basically) is lower here than it is in most Western countries, even though those countries tend to be more faggy and socialist and prone to “killing the Protestant work ethic” or whatever.
(And even that mobility would be considerably worse were it not for all the regulation and welfare we have, which allows people to spend more time concentrating on their job and less time simply struggling to stay alive).
And by the way, if rugged individualist societies are that great… why did the people who lived in them fight, bleed and die behind various populist platforms to change that society and ultimately create the one we have now?
Chris
@Southern Beale:
In moderation for use of the S word. Trying again:
Yet social mobility (the likelihood for a poor person to become rich, basically) is lower here than it is in most Western countries, even though those countries tend to be more faggy and Soshulist and prone to “killing the Protestant work ethic” or whatever.
(And even that mobility would be considerably worse were it not for all the regulation and welfare we have, which allows people to spend more time concentrating on their job and less time simply struggling to stay alive).
And by the way, if rugged individualist societies are that great… why did the people who lived in them fight, bleed and die behind various populist platforms to change that society and ultimately create the one we have now?
WereBear
Doesn’t Woodall have government health care?
Why don’t people figure that out?
Ghanima Atreides
@EconWatcher:
no. another four years of Obama will fortify Huntsman’s base. Huntsman is running for 2016.
Like Huckabee and Pawlenty and Daniels.
Mitt is the only one running for 2012, because its his last chance.
dmsilev
@Southern Beale:
The world will end 0.83 Friedman Units from now.
Seems plausible.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
@Ija: He took it to stop his progressive wave. Here in Utah, we have some of the most moronic and right wing crazy this side of the deep south. The longer he was in charge, the longer he’d have to fight the republican state legislature and look progressive. The longer he was here, the longer the list of things he would have to flip-flop on.
Also, Utah politics are a dirty game. Huntsman’s replacement took a huge campaign donation from a contractor, and that contractor ended up winning the bid, even though auditors went back afterwords and found another contractor had a better, faster, cheaper bid. Then, the contractor with the better bid was given a chunk of money to ‘compensate’ them.
A couple days ago, two state legislators who own a pothole filling company who fills them using electronic (rather than gas or other heat source) means. Miraculously, the Utah Department of transportation opened a bid for a company who fills potholes using electronic means, and no other means were allowed. Surprise surprise, there was only one company in the state that does this work, the company owned by the two state legislators. The real kicker is the electronic method costs $9 sq/ft, and the propane version of pothole filling only costs $3 sq/ft. Also, all of this is legal in Utah.
If I were Huntsman, I would have done the same thing. Having to even talk to the state legislature is something that could compromise you ethically.
Ash Can
@Southern Beale: The most disturbing part of that article is the bit about other people in attendance at this town hall applauding this shitheel. I’d like to think there are enough people in his district like the women quoted to kick him to the curb next year, but the fact someone like him was elected in the first place doesn’t bode well.
WereBear
Yes! It is like the South.
Ghanima Atreides
@Chris:
Simple, the anti-intellectualism of american protestantism.
People that believe in the Rapture, creationism, and ensoulment are too stupid to get that they are being manipulated and farmed for votes.
Brian S
Inquiring minds want to know what the hell Woodall is doing in Congress instead of succeeding by the sweat of his own brow? What a jackass.
Omnes Omnibus
@Brian S: He is willingly sacrificing his own brow-sweat success to benefit others by serving in a $175,000 a year job with unmatched benefits. We haven’t seen self-sacrifice like this since Jesus or possibly Nathan Hale.
Chris
@Ash Can:
It’s pretty much conservative SOP to swamp town hall meetings and drown out any other viewpoint with their own noise. I imagine that’s what happened here, though right wing nutjobs probably aren’t hard to find in Georgia.
Joey Maloney
@Mark S.:
To be fair, everything Romney says about anything sounds like utter bullshit; it’s just the way he talks. I’m sure that were he ever to tell the truth about something it would still sound like utter bullshit. I bet even the grunts he makes when he ejaculates sound like he’s faking it.
Cacti
I think Huntsman would be a bridge too far for the teabaggers, and in the unlikely event he captured the 2012 GOP nomination, there would be a third party revolt on the right.
Valdivia
there will be tons of tape of Hunstman giving interview in China, doing the bidding of Obama. the ads make themselves.
I do think he is gearing for 2016, but in the road to that he just may damage his brand so irreparably as to make it moot anyway.
Brian S
@Cacti:
There is no part of that statement which isn’t awesome.
Stefan
He needed foreign policy credentials for the resume.
Why? None of the rest of the Republicans have it. Bush never had it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Stefan: He inherited it from his father.
Cacti
@Stefan:
Foreign policy cred is somewhat overrated. Didn’t help McCain, didn’t help Gore, didn’t help Bush the elder.
rea
I would have thought that Huntsman’s only shot was to be the candidate of the nonwingnuts. Probably wouldn’t work, but if he’s just another wingnut, there’s no reason to prefer him over about 30 other similar guys.
Ash Can
@Valdivia: Exactly. If he was going to blow off the batshit-crazy faction by taking the job with the Obama Administration, why not stick it out until he had some actual accomplishments on his CV? If he had stuck around and, say, helped engineer some kind of new trade deal with China, he’d have that to show off to the non-batshit-crazy faction in 2016. (Of course, this assumes the GOP has such a faction in 2016, which is a big “if.” I don’t think anywhere near all the crazy will have burned through the GOP’s system by then.)
Glen Tomkins
You have to stay ahead of the play
Presidential races are like hockey, in that the key to following the action is to look where the puck is going to be a second from now, not where it is right now. There are so many “seconds” between now and the selection of the first delegate, that it is completely wrong-headed to be deciding which candidatea are down or up, much less totally out.
For example, if selection were starting two months from now, I would say Romney and Huntsman, or some moderate not yet in the race, would be most likely to win.
It’s true that right now, this month, the Teahadists among their party’s primary electorate would not let such “moderates” win. They’re still convinced that the tide is moving their way, that they don’t have to accept any hint of “moderation”.
But the conventional wisdom, after backing that view since the 2010 elections, has begun to shift away from it. The polls show that killing off Medicare is electoral poison, so powerful that it may very well lose them a previously safe seat in upstate NY. If we also see the Rs lose the WI Senate in August because WI voters reject R radicalism, and if the polls continue to say that ending Medicare is electoral poison, there is still plenty of time for the R primary electorate to decide 2012 is not the year to throw away a shot at the WH out of ideological puritanism.
No, I’m not predicting it will be Huntsman or Romney. There’s time for three or four major flips in the cycle between now and Iowa, and nobody can predict very reliably past the next likely flip that I talk about in that preceding paragraph. But I think it quite safe to say that the one outcome that is completely ruled out is the idea that things will stay static between now and Iowa, much less between now and November 2012, that the Rs will just sit where they are right now, smack in the middle of a kill zone, and they won’t move out of it in some direction or another.
Valdivia
@Glen Tomkins:
except that Hunstman in now on the record supporting RyanCare. So the CW may shift he’ll have to shift again and explain and lose his authenticity cred.
Rommie
Maybe Huntsman took the China position thinking that Obama was going to fail, and that he’d come out looking like the only “competent” leader. When it didn’t happen that way, he got out of Dodge before he was irrevocably tied to That One, and started planning for 2016. I just don’t think he’ll seriously go after the 2012 nomination.
Redshift
@Ash Can: Foreign policy only really matters for pundit cred, not to ordinary voters. On that front, any accomplishments would have been administration accomplishments where he played a supporting role, so just being ambassador is about as good.
I think both taking the ambassador job and running for 2012 are purely moves to position himself for 2016, but they shouldn’t be taken as a coherent whole. The ambassador post was a play to be the new moderate leader when the GOP recovered its sanity, and the run to the right in 2012 is a bid to remain relevant when it became clear that may never happen.
geg6
@Rommie:
Too late for that, according to my wingnut acquaintances.
Continental Op
Ticket-balancing VP for a wingnut nominee. The anti-Palin.
Chris
@Redshift:
Basically. I’ll add the caveat that under certain circumstances, it does matter, but only when it comes to candidates chest-thumping about how tough they are on terrorism (or communism in the old days) and how they’re more like Jack Bauer than their opponents. Foreign policy as such, no, not really.
Georgia Pig
I think Huntsman’s moves actually confirm that he’s positioning for a 2016 run. He’s supporting Ryancare now because it’s become a litmus test for the Republican base, and he will get absolutely nowhere in the Republican race if he doesn’t show loyalty. His willingness to embrace it also shows he doesn’t think he’ll be running against Obama. It also gives him some cred for 2016 if Obama and Congress can’t do anything about Medicare cost containment in Obama’s second term.
That will be the Democratic Party’s real challenge in 2016. Just because Ryancare is a shitty “solution” doesn’t mean that something doesn’t have to be done about Medicare’s cost trajectory. That is a daunting prospect because (1) it’s a tough problem and (2) Republicans in Congress will do absolutely nothing to help, as a Democratic failure is in their political interest. If the Dems fail to get anywhere on Medicare cost containment, Huntsman can shrug off Ryancare by saying “hey, Ryancare isn’t the best solution, but I showed courage in taking on the issue.” Even if the Dems can pull something off, Huntsman won’t suffer from having supported Ryancare because it will be forgotten.
Valdivia
@Redshift:
I think what you says makes sense. I still think he may damage his brand too much if he keeps thinking he can talk out of both sides of his mouth.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Georgia Pig:
This sounds about right to me. It may be worth reviewing the political moves that Nixon made in 1964 to position himself on the hinge between the moderate GOP and the Goldwater wing, by demonstrating his (temporary and purely tactical) loyalty to the latter without permanently committing himself to that faction. Huntsman may be aiming for a similar balancing act, aka a party loyalist but closet moderate.
jaleh
Let’s hope Palin gets in and sucks the 20% of the base…it will be so much fun to watch. However, I don’t think she will get in, she is all for the almighty $, and she will have to postpone that for a few years if she wins.
rikryah
It’s the era of the internets and youtube..
yeah…
keep the flip flips coming, HUNTSMAN
Comrade Javamanphil
@Georgia Pig: Yep. Plus he’s smart enough to realize 2012 has the GOP starting at a massive disadvantage.
Observerinvancouver
I think Huntsman is positioning himself for 2016. All the other candidates will be stale-dated (even for Republicans) by then and he’s hoping everyone will think it’s his turn.
Chris
@M: He may still be. Especially if he can get chosen as the R’s VP candidate this year, he will be in a good position to be chosen as their presidential candidate in 2016.
Glen Tomkins
@Valdivia: They’re all going to have the problem of having been too teahadist-friendly at some point. Hell, just about any D politician you could name has been too teahadist-friendly, in the sense of taking these idiots seriously enough to negotiate with them. But having flirted with teahadism is not really a problem except to you and me, and we’re not voting for any of these clowns anyway.
Assuming I’m right, and their party has to shift away from teahadism, RyanCare, etc., and cut back towards the center, what their candidates will have to worry about to get the nomination, is having been too anti-teahadist too early, before it was clearly necessary for the good of the party’s chances of winning in 2012. These people will still have to have their hurt fee-fees consoled by anyone who wants to win the nomination, and Huntsman having been for RyanCare before stern necessitiy turned him against it, will help him, not hurt him, with this crowd.
Sure, perhaps some of those swing voters will, by the general election, be somewhat more likely to vote for an R candidate who never flirted with teahadism, assuming they could find someone who has spent the last two years in a coma, or something, and somehow missed having to give public fealty to these nuts. But any true swing voter who had much chance at all of ever voting for any R, is going to have to foregive the R candidate for having done at least the minimum genuflection to teahadism. As long as the R candidate can claim that he was left of center of mass of the party when it was going all in for teahadism, as it has for the past year, he will have a fair shot at those swing voters. Huntsman and Romney will be able to make that claim.