JREF Conservatives: Jon Hunstman?

[Corsair 115]

What you've done is simply fallen for the "most liberal", AGW-believing, CAP and Trading, and in many other ways, big government socialist-democratic republican candidate.

Ah, it's always refreshing to see the RINO argument trotted out. Do you seriously think any good can come from the Republican Party devouring its own in the name of ideological purity and an ever-increasing lurch to the right? What's going to happen is that the circle which defines the acceptable ideological purity will get smaller and smaller until eventually no one is able to fit into it.

 

[Nova Land]

Joe Scarborough has a cute piece about RINOs which addresses specifically the application of that label to Jon Huntsman. I don't know if someone else has already posted about Scarborough's piece, but I don't see it in this thread so I'll go ahead and share it.

Who is the real RINO?​

The insult du jour for Republican candidates this election cycle is being labeled a RINO, a Republican in Name Only. Unfortunately, the insult has been so overused lately it’s been rendered meaningless. The insult is even emptier because it is so detached from actual statements, campaign promises and voting records.

A candidate like Newt Gingrich can get away with supporting the biggest socialist scheme in American government over the past 30 years because he says nasty things about the press and calls Barack Obama a Marxist. Jon Huntsman, on the other hand, can have a stellar conservative record as Utah’s governor, be anti-abortion and adored by the NRA. But if he refuses to spit out angry screeds against Obama, he’s dismissed as a RINO, the facts be damned.

So as a public service to POLITICO readers, I, your humble conservative servant, have put together a “Who is the Real RINO?” test...

Scarborough stacks the deck to make sure Huntsman comes out as the true conservative and Gingrich and Romney come out as the RINOs. Even so, it's an entertaining (and mildly educational) little opinion piece.

 

[madfoot]

I dislike him a great deal. I'm not sure why liberals have taken such a liking to him. Is it because of a couple of good soundbites about the GOP and science?

Accepting evolution is pretty low on the list of things I care about in a candidate. I believe in evolution, but I really just don't care if politicians do.

 

[mhaze]

Ah, it's always refreshing to see the RINO argument trotted out. Do you seriously think any good can come from the Republican Party.....

....moving away from stupid progressive big government ideas that got us in the financial mess we are in, and....

concentrating on fixing the economy and ignoring all that irrelevant social issues crop....

Yep, lots of good should come from that.

 

[leftysergeant]

....moving away from stupid progressive big government ideas that got us in the financial mess we are in, and...

Excuse me, but you seem to have missed a key bit of history here. It was tasking the brakes off the paper-shuffling charade in the finacial sector, the busting of unions and lowering taxes while going to two wars, only one of which made any damned sense (had it been pursued with some military skill) that got us where we are today. It was a conservative idiot from Texas who wrote the legislation that sent the financial sector on a kamikaze mission, and the idiot darling of the neocons who poured our future down the rat hole in Iraq.

Don't blame progressives for that..

concentrating on fixing the economy and ignoring all that irrelevant social issues crop...

All governance is social engineering. For the last thirty years, the morons in control have been engineering it to destroy the middle class and to put the investor class in charge of our lives. It will take a bit of restructuring of the institututions that the neocons destroyed in their attempt to erase the New Deal to get us back on the right track.

 

[Corsair 115]

....moving away from stupid progressive big government ideas that got us in the financial mess we are in, and....

I seem to recall you trying to prove that in another thread and you had your posterior handed to you. And I'll just point out—yet again—that my "progessive big government" country didn't suffer any of that financial mess stuff the U.S. went through. No subprime mortgage meltdown, no bank collapses, no financial system teetering on the edge of disaster, no housing price catastrophe.

...concentrating on fixing the economy and ignoring all that irrelevant social issues crop....

So the candidates have been ignoring abortion totally? No comments at all on where they stand on that matter? No proclamations as to what they have done about it in the past and what they intend to do about it in the future if elected President? No comments either about evolution or Intelligent Design? Nothing about what they think schools should teach in that area?

 

[Undesired Walrus]

I believe in evolution, but I really just don't care if politicians do.

What if they don't believe in the moon landings?

 

[MaGZ]

I was pretty impressed with Huntsman. Why is he not rated as well as Cain and Bachmann? He's clearly much more sensible.

Huntsman is a liberal. The Republican base knows this; also they know he was Obama’s ambassador. Together this explains his rejection from Republicans.

 

[MaGZ]

Joe Scarborough has a cute piece about RINOs which addresses specifically the application of that label to Jon Huntsman. I don't know if someone else has already posted about Scarborough's piece, but I don't see it in this thread so I'll go ahead and share it.




Scarborough stacks the deck to make sure Huntsman comes out as the true conservative and Gingrich and Romney come out as the RINOs. Even so, it's an entertaining (and mildly educational) little opinion piece.

If you watch Morning Joe regularly they are all cheerleaders for Huntsman, an interesting surprise from the Obama MSNBC network.

 

[JihadJane]

I'm widely misconstrued to be a 'conservatard' because i'm not a little weenie afraid Western civilization will devolve into tyranny if a terrorist gets water poured up his nose.

...

Are you saying you're a big weenie, then?