Out of the Hunts

I've read a number of predictable analyses of why former Utah Governor John Huntsman failed to connect with Republican voters in any way that could earn him enough votes to be a meaningful Primary challenger to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. I've read that his "words were conservative but his music was liberal."

I get that his belief in science, i.e. of Climate Change, is an anathema to his Party's electorate, as is his having served in China in the Obama Administration, even speaking Chinese in a GOP debate.

I understand that he never had the organization that Willard has. I've believed from the start that this was mainly his training for the 2016 campaign, assuming Willard fails to beat Barack.

I see that Stephen Colbert, not on the Primary ballot, was outpolling Huntsman in South Carolina. Colbert claims he scared Huntsman out of the race.

Here's why I think John Huntsman was such a dud as a candidate, at least this time around:

• Intellectualized Voice: Yes, Barack Obama is a very smart guy, a book reader, a.k.a. an intellectual. But, to a lesser extent than Bill Clinton, he turns his intellectual notions into understandable, even moving ideas that can galvanize a crowd. From his underwhelming candidacy announcement on, Huntsman never seemed to have the common touch.

• Lack of Leadership: I commend Huntsman for taking a firm stand against Willard's slam of his having served as a diplomat under Obama, his smart invocation of non-partisan service, but he had numerous opportunities to stake the moral high ground in a number of debates where the other candidates and the audience were out of line. Most notably, there was the debate where the gay soldier was booed by the audience. What a great moment that could have been for Huntsman to show moral leadership and distinguish himself from the rest of the candidates. Blown.

• Weakie: He just doesn't seem all that virile. More Adlai Stevenson than Dwight D. Eisenhower. Americans want a certain masculine reassurance in their President. For example, what Hillary Clinton had that Huntsman does not.

It'll be interesting to see how Romney's 1950's-style masculinity compares to Obama's 21st Century version.

May the most manly man win.

In the Hunt

So now former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman enters the race for the 2012 GOP Presidential nomination. Whether he can be the alter-Mitt or if he's just in it for 2016 training and recognition is yet to be seen. He has promised to run a civil campaign, not one that questions President Obama's patriotism or American-ness, which is a nice start. And while he'll surely be labelled the GOP moderate, it's important to note that he's not looking to do much that's different, say on catastrophic climate change, no matter his "reasonable" public positions on the issues. And while he does ride a motorcycle, I wonder if he'll come across as manly enough for the job, and I mean that in the same sense that Hillary Clinton is perceived to be.

I say that if he does win the nomination, he may not be entirely aware of what he's up against:



As a commenter on that video said, "What power this man has....he gets Bin Laden and soothes a crying baby!"

Now if he can just get unemployment down three or four percentage points by June 2012...

Losing Cause

A solid majority of everybody hates the Paul Ryan Republican Medicare-killing plan, according to a new CNN poll:

The poll indicates that 58 percent of the public opposes the Republican plan on Medicare, with 35 percent saying they support the proposal.

Ryan's sorry voucher plan was designed to pander, by making it affect only those age 55 or under. However, if the GOP thought that meant they'd keep the seniors in their camp, they may have actually helped push them into the Democratic column for 2012:

"Half of those we questioned say that the country would be worse off under the GOP Medicare proposals and 56 percent think that GOP plan would be bad for the elderly," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Opposition is highest among senior citizens, at 74 percent, suggesting that seniors are most worried about changes to Medicare even if those changes are presented as ones that would not affect existing Medicare recipients."

That means even the people you'd most expect to be for Ryan's Ayn Rand dream date -- those on the Right -- are against it as well:

"A majority of all demographic groups don't favor the GOP Medicare proposals," Holland adds. "That includes conservatives - 54 percent of them don't like the plan. As a result, rank-and-file Republicans are split right down the middle, with 48 percent favoring the GOP plan and 50 percent opposed."

Ryan's been lying about the healthcare reform passed last year, saying it "kills Medicare as we know it," which I thought would even be beneath him. I guess not -- he's that desperate for his plan to somehow be accepted as "bold" and "smart" when it is merely another gussied up attempt by GOoPers to dismantle New Deal and Great Society advances in order to better allow the wealthy to keep all the money in America for themselves.

But thank you, Lyin' Ryan, for -- even better! -- helping to bolster public support for the Affordable Care Act, i.e. health insurance reform, or what the GOP disparages as "Obamacare" -- a phrase they may come to regret as it becomes more popular in implementation:

But the most surprising numbers -- and possibly the best one for Obama -- are the results showing that political messaging against the Ryan budget may actually increase the numbers who support the Obama's health care law. The legislation is enemy number one for Republicans heading into 2012, who hope to use continuing wariness about the bill to attack the president and Democrats this fall.

Meanwhile, the Republican Presidential candidates continue to act like lemmings, including the supposed smart, moderate one:

Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who took his first steps into the Republican presidential field as a moderate, has over the past month turned himself into something far from the center when it comes to Medicare. From throwing Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) more love than anyone to grabbing onto Ryan's Medicare-destroying budget with both hands, Huntsman's separating himself from the pack: No one running for president, it seems, is more excited about the Republican budget plan than him.

In an op-ed published Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal, Huntsman calls Ryan's plan an "honest attempt to save Medicare" and he calls on critics to put up their own plan or shut up about the GOP's. But that's among the more subtle love he's thrown Ryan and his budget in the recent past -- on Tuesday, Huntsman called Ryan one of the two Republicans alive he admires most.

My own conviction is that anyone who follows the "teachings" of crank Ayn Rand, like avowed devotee Paul Ryan, should not be allowed near a position of governmental responsibility.

After all, the most disastrous Fed Chairman of all time, Alan Greenspan, was one of her personal acolytes.

Backstabbers in their Midst

Great Josh Marshall piece on the instant implosion of the New Gingrich campaign barely days after its announcement. His biggest mistake doesn't seem to be calling President Obama the "biggest food stamp President" which is just heinous with identity politics, but that he called Paul Ryan's Medicare elimination plan "Conservative social engineering" and "too radical" for America. (Hey, that sounded like surprising sanity to me.) It's been a particularly wild firestorm:

And now it comes out that this afternoon Newt was compelled to personally call Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) to apologize for questioning and criticizing Ryan's Medicare phase-out plan. And his spokesman publicly stated that Newt apologized. Publicly. On the record. Voluntarily.

I mean, wow. Watching TV just now, I see that South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) is now lashing out at Gingrich as some sort of GOP health care policy traitor.

What's breathtaking about this isn't just the reckless ridiculousness. That's Newt's trademark. But I can only imagine Newt's mortification. This is a man of no little ego. Whatever else you want to say about Gingrich, he is a genuinely historic figure in the history of American politics. And he's called on the carpet and has to apologize to these newcomers who couldn't have been out of their 20s when he was in his early 90s heyday?

I can only imagine.

It's all about fear, as Josh points out, which is exactly what Obama was saying in the last election (and Bill Clinton the decade before that): hope vs. fear. And all the GOP are terrified, mainly of their own Party. After all, Dems don't scare them. Case in point, per TPM:

"If 90 percent of the oncological community said something was causing cancer we'd listen to them," former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman told Time in a new interview. "I respect science and the professionals behind the science so I tend to think it's better left to the science community - though we can debate what that means for the energy and transportation sectors."

The reaction to that little nugget was about as you'd expect.

Never mind that Huntsman also backs off his past support for cap-and-trade in the interview, or that he basically says that while climate change is a problem, it's not one that America should deal with until after the economy recovers (both standard GOP talking points). It's his basic understanding of the concept that human-caused climate change is real -- and even worse, that maybe something should be done to stop it -- that caused a stir on Tuesday.

...

Over at RedState, Daniel Horowitz wrote that Huntsman's views on climate change's human origins were just another piece of the Huntsman which conservatives have found less than palatable thanks to his moderate views on gay rights (he's for civil unions) and the uncomfortable fact that until this month he was a full-fledged member of the Obama administration.

The interview Huntsman gave to Time "can only mean that he is seeking the VP nomination for a Mike Bloomberg ticket," Horowitz wrote.

Fear of betrayal, core of Conservative paranoia.

Hence purity tests.

Crazy Like on Fox

Is the GOP fragmenting before our eyes, or is this a process by which they eventually unite behind, say, former Utah Governor John Huntsman?

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is Republican Partying like it's 1995, doing his best to appeal to the red meat, most cranky and insulting individuals in his party, but is also rejecting the Paul Ryan Medicare elimination plan. Which John Boehner now claims he's resurrecting with a new "message"...after his House GOP freshmen begged Presdent Obama in a three-page letter to let them be forgiven for having voted for the wildly unpopular Ryan budget plan.

Former Governor Mitt Romney is losing the support of GOP elites, who are finally realizing what we've known all along: unelectable due to his Massachusetts health care reform success (yes, that's how crazy his party is) as well as his appearance of either phoniness or the aloofness of wealth.

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels is the next Mitt Romney and the pre-John Huntsman, except that he's acting like Hamlet (or Mario Cuomo) about making a decision, possibly due to issues with his wife, which is also (x3) an issue for Newt Gingrich.

Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) is now running and telling everyone he would not have voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act on property rights grounds (generally libertarian utopianism) and compares both Social Security and Medicare to slavery. Yes, comparing the institution of forced servitude and genocide with making sure we don't have poverty-stricken grandmothers like we did before these programs were enacted.

Donald Trump...is a contingency over at NBC, which would probably like to replace him in his own series anyway.

And former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee's "heart says no" (as in I just bought a really huge new house and love doing my TV show platform to pay for it). I assumed that as he bought the multi-million dollar home and has been putting weight back on again (business meals?) he wasn't running.

My father used to say that you have to be slightly crazy to want to be President. It's that kind of job. Does this make Mike Huckabee now the most sane of the top tier viable Republican Presidential candidates?

And what does that say about the 2011 Republican Party?

Kudos

Congratulations to Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, Michael Steele, Karl Rove, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and most of all Richard Bruce Cheney:

The decline in Republican Party affiliation among Americans in recent years is well documented, but a Gallup analysis now shows that this movement away from the GOP has occurred among nearly every major demographic subgroup. Since the first year of George W. Bush's presidency in 2001, the Republican Party has maintained its support only among frequent churchgoers, with conservatives and senior citizens showing minimal decline...

...The losses are substantial among college graduates, which have shown a decline in GOP support of 10 points. (The losses are even greater -- 13 points -- among the subset of college graduates with postgraduate educations.) This may reflect in part Barack Obama's strong appeal to educated voters, a major component of his winning coalitions in both the Democratic primaries and the general election...

Stephen L. Taylor analyzes the problem hardcore Republicans are having with reality, as they claim the party is in trouble because it has somehow not stayed 100% pure and true to its base:

There are two rather major problems with his “analysis.”

First, the party isn’t losing its base, it is losing everything else.

Second, the Rove strategy, especially in 2004, was a base mobilization strategy, not a treat the base like doormats strategy. Indeed, the Bush/Rove years were not exactly exemplified by the GOP going out and forming a party based on what McCain would call RINOs–indeed, it was just the opposite.

As Daniel Larison rightly notes:

The Gallup findings are interesting, because they show that conservatives are among the least likely to have stopped identifying themselves as Republicans, yet they remain convinced that pursuing an agenda geared towards appealing to them (and only to them) is the means to win back all the other people who have drifted away since ‘01.

It is a odd bit of reasoning that Larison describes, but it does seem to be the dominant mode of thinking within certain Republican circles these day.

The least-touted story on Fox News has to be Obama naming Gov. Mike Huntsman, a loyal but non-ideological Republican, as Ambassador to China. Huntsman was seen by Dems as the only guy in the GOP farm system with real potential for Presidential stature, and he may one day move into the Oval Office, if his party calms down (or if he switches) just as George H.W. Bush was Ambassador to China before ascending to the Office. But in some ways it's a much bigger deal than Arlen Specter, a huge coup for Obama.

Huntsman's political strategist, John Weaver says:

"If it's 2012 and our party is defined by Palin and Limbaugh and Cheney, then we're headed for a blowout," says strategist John Weaver, who advised Huntsman and was for years a close adviser to Sen. John McCain. "That's just the truth."

So, kudos, I say, because I believe what ails the Republican party should not infect the rest of the country, especially as we try to recover from this last infection.

Stay pure, Republican Party. Keep hunting down those heretics, as the President converts another and another.

Keep up the good work.