RSS Feed MenuJon Huntsman will resign as governor of Utah to accept a posting as ambassador to China.
It’s a fine appointment from the point of view of the national interests of the United States. Huntsman speaks the language and knows the region (he previously served as ambassador to Singapore). His standing as a former governor and a possible future presidential candidate will enhance his clout in a capital where clout matters.
It’s a brilliant appointment from the point of view of the political interests of Barack Obama. Gov. Huntsman’s intellect, his popularity in his state, his undoubted conservatism combined with his open-minded new approaches on social issues and the environment – not to mention his enormous personal wealth – positioned him as the natural leader of the reform forces within the GOP. By sending him across the Pacific, President Obama has acted deftly to enhance the continuing dominance of the Republican faction that serves him best. The Limbaugh-Obama axis wins again!
From Huntsman’s point of view, it’s difficult to read his acceptance of this nomination as anything other than an assessment of the hopelessness of the 2012 cycle for him personally and Republicans generally. The enthusiasm we feel for him here at NewMajority has not to date proven infectious: The Republican party of Kent County, Michigan, outright cancelled an event rather than host the governor.
“The voters want and expect us to stand on principle and return to our roots. Unfortunately, by holding an event with Governor Huntsman, we would be doing the exact opposite,” [county party chairwoman Joanne] Voorhees wrote in an e-mail quoted in The Grand Rapids Press.
(Benjamin Franklin had an apt comment on people like Ms. Voorhees: “Experience is a hard teacher, but fools will have no other.” I should have thought that the 2006 and 2008 elections were experience enough for anyone, but apparently many Republicans insist on still more.)
Four years of serving his country in a challenging posting seems as creditable a way as any of opting out of the political cycle. In 2016, Huntsman will be 56. He’ll have been twice elected governor of a state, twice served in important international assignments – including one of the most important of them all. His understanding of environmental issues will be sharpened by his service, ditto his already sophisticated mastery of the international economic issues that will matter more and more. Odds are that by then even conservative Republicans will have worked their way to accepting a compromise on social issues that looks more or less like the one Huntsman has evolved for himself.
It’s only sad that it looks like it will have to be such an unnecessarily long and frustrating wait.
ottovbvs // May 17, 2009 at 12:51 pm
mlindroo wrote 20 minutes ago”Well, they do seem to be making the same sort of argument as hardcore Marxists were making back in the USSR. The problem wasn’t ideology per se, the problem was poor and ideologically impure execution of those communist policies!”…….I visited the Soviet Union a few times in the lates seventies and early eighties and it was obvious communism was doomed……The difference between the nomenklatura who were running Russia and conservatives like Kristol and many posters here is that far right wing conservatives really believe their own propaganda….the Nomenklatura didn’t they just paid lip service……Kristol currently has an oped up urging that Cheney stay up front and center for the next four years!!
jjv // May 17, 2009 at 1:51 pm
I’m sorry David but again, it ain’t social conservatives who lost the last election. Also, Huntsman can be called a moderate all you want but he is a Mormon who was governor of Utah. If he ran for President it would be the end of him in the press. If Mitt Romney, governor of Massachusetts is unacceptable to the MSM, Huntsman would be radioactive. Utah serves the same role for Republicans as Vermont or Massachusetts does for Democrats, it produces Governors who cannot win general elections.Again, where do socially liberal Republicans win? And I don’t mean civil union supporters, I mean pro-choice, pro homosexual marriage, balanced budget types? Barack and the Democrats won on foreign policy and economics, not social issues. The article calls Dick Kempthorne a moderate! Apparently, a “moderate Republican” is one who is popular and has not yet been demonized by the MSM.Is he for school choice? How about higher marginal rates? How has he been on spending? If moderation is just a codeword for an unwillingness to defend natural marriage and the unborn it has been spectacularly unsuccessful everywhere Republicans have tried it.
Jeffersonian // May 17, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Undoubted conservatism? David you are creating a caricature of yourself. Conservatism, if I may be simple is that government protects life, liberty and property. To stray into what is a religious matter concerning the government doing good for people is to cast off conservatism. One need not invoke God, to make this religious. Just as the bill of rights is often referred to as negative rights, so is the purpose of government negative. It can establish laws to say what is wrong to do, but cannot establish laws to say what is good to do, such as giving to the poor, providing for other people’s well being. This rather than protecting people from others, forces them to be subject to others. They lose their liberty and their property. Huntsman is not a loss, but a gain, in that someone who will hurt the conservative has lost influence in the whigs.
Chrisc23 // May 17, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Governor Huntsman is an intelligent man and he will do a great job. He is still young and has a future ahead of him. Politics is a funny business. People always want to be on the side in power until the party in charge makes a mistake and drops in the polls. Then you will see more people come back to the Republican party. The TRUE Republicans stick it out because it is inevitable that the Democrats will over extend their welcome fast enough.
sinz54 // May 17, 2009 at 4:29 pm
jjv: Mitt Romney was not dissed by the MSM because of his Mormonism. He was dissed, and properly so, because of his flip-flops on issues like abortion.That was also the main thing that the GOP base had against him. Only a minority of Republicans had trouble with Romney’s Mormonism.
sinz54 // May 17, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Chrisc23: The demographics of the nation are changing.In 2008, McCain won 57% of the White vote–and still lost the election. He lost because of a massive turnout by Black voters for Obama. And two-thirds of Hispanic voters voted for Obama.Plus, Obama won the youth vote by an amazing 3 to 1 margin.These groups will not “come back to the Republican party,” because they have never been part of the GOP in the first place. (OK, maybe blacks used to vote for the GOP prior to 1960. But not since then.)The GOP may win back some more White voters. But it still won’t win national elections until it learns how to appeal to voters who never voted Republican before: Minorities and the young.
Mike K // May 17, 2009 at 9:51 pm
“The difference between the nomenklatura who were running Russia and conservatives like Kristol and many posters here is that far right wing conservatives really believe their own propaganda….the Nomenklatura didn’t they just paid lip service……Kristol currently has an oped up urging that Cheney stay up front and center for the next four years!!”There is another difference that you don’t acknowledge. Conservative principles represent human nature; the soviet nomenklatura were solely concerned with their own aggrandizement in a system that did not correspond to reality. Free trade and a free economy does represent the path to a prosperity and the ability of a free people to prosper.Socialism may be attractive to students and academics who have not ever been able to generate prosperity. It does not work in a free society. Eventually, students will figure that out once they have to make their own way in the world.
Chrisc23 // May 17, 2009 at 9:58 pm
I still believe the Republican party lost, but the Democrats didn’t “win” in 2006 and 2008. President Obama is already over exposed and that will bring him down in 2012. The Republican party needs to bring in new, younger faces. There are plenty of them eager to step up. Retire the dead wood.
balconesfault // May 17, 2009 at 11:08 pm
“Free trade and a free economy does represent the path to a prosperity and the ability of a free people to prosper.”Free trade and a completely free economy can also represent a path to a huge number of people at the bottom of the economic ladder having little or no control over their lives. Information and connections and wealth and access are commodities which can and will be hoarded unless Government enforces ground rules to limit that hoarding.As Teddy Roosevelt pointed out a century ago, these ground rules are healthy for the nation. We don’t want all lower-rung labor to be bid down to a global lowest common denominator for workplace safety, for wages, for job security. That is not good for America.
sinz54 // May 18, 2009 at 8:06 am
balconesfault & Mike K: The issue of a “free economy” is a total red herring. We don’t have laissez-faire capitalism in this country, and we never did.We’ve had a mixed economy in this country since long before any of us were born, and that’s what we would have had even if McCain had been elected.So the issue is how conservatives view a mixed economy vs. how liberals view a mixed economy. That is, what is the proper role for Government in the economics of the U.S.? And when is it improper for Government to interfere in the economy?Let’s keep the discussion centered around that, and avoid useless buzzwords like “free economy” and “socialism.” This is one blog that doesn’t have to worry about energizing the GOP base with slogans and wedge issues, so we are free to discuss real issues here.
balconesfault // May 18, 2009 at 3:00 pm
sinz: Let’s keep the discussion centered around that, and avoid useless buzzwords like “free economy” and “socialism.”Amen. I’ve been stymied on how a 35% tax rate is free market, but a 38% rate is socialism … how public healthcare is socialism, but public education is not.The labels just dumb down the argument. You’re right – it is a mixed economy, and truth be told it functions well on a very narrow path. As we saw in the 70’s, veer too far to the left, and it gets in trouble. As we saw in the 00’s, veer too far to the right, and it gets in trouble.
sinz54 // May 19, 2009 at 7:07 am
balconesfault: I agree with you in principle, but with public education you picked a bad example. Public education is, for the most part, a local affair–local school boards, education funded through property taxes, etc. Whereas public healthcare is Federal–a vast expansion of the Federal government, which is anathema to many conservatives.I wonder if the GOP base would feel better about public healthcare if it was run primarily by the states, as in Massachusetts, instead of being run by the Federal government.
The Music Stops on the Man with Perfect Pitch | THE D.C. WRITEUP // Aug 6, 2009 at 1:49 pm
[...] to accept Obama’s nomination rather than position himself for the 2012 presidential election. David Frum has noted that the party may not yet be ready for Huntsman’s brand of moderate Republicanism. This became [...]