Our Changing Globe » Bush

Jon Huntsman For President?

Michael Redbourn — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 19:18:40 +0000

The case for Jon Huntsman's conservatism « The Enterprise Blog

blog.american.com12/4/11

Jon Huntsman in the 1980s, along with President Ronald Reagan and Rep. … Jon Huntsman clearly isn't a candidate super comfortable with escalating the 2012 elections into a climactic clash of ideologies. He's too cool, too …

Jon Huntsman Won't Kiss Donald Trump's Ring, Or 'Any Other Part …

www.mediaite.com12/5/11

Jon Huntsman gift-wrapped an unfortunate visual, telling anchor Martha McCallum that he's not going to kiss his (Trump's) ring, and I'm not going to kiss any other part of his anatomy. Huntsman was responding to the claim …

This is Part 16 of a look at possible GOP candidates that might run well against Obama in 2012.

Part 1 looked at Mitch Daniels Part 2 looked at Tim Pawlenty

Part 3 looked at Chris Christie Part 4 looked at Mitt Ronney

Part 5 looked at Sarah Palin Part 6 looked at Mike Huckabee

Part 7 looked at Rudy Giuliani Part 8 looked at Michele Bachman

Part 9 looked at Donald Trump Part 10 looked at Paul Ryan

Part 11 looked at Ron Paul Part 12 looked at Newt Gingrich

Part 13 looked at Herman Cain Part 14 looked at Rick Santorum

Part 15 looked at Rick Perry

Mr. Huntsman is most often addressed as "governor" because he was the two-term governor of Utah.

If like many others you’ve never heard of him then read on:

He became fluent in Mandarin Chinese during two years he spent in Taiwan as a young Mormon missionary.
He worked in the Reagan White House.
In the George H.W. Bush administration, he worked first on trade matters and then as Mr. Bush’s ambassador to Singapore.
During the second Bush presidency, he was deputy trade representative.
And in 2004 he was elected governor of Utah, re-elected in 2008.
Then in 2009 he accepted President Barack Obama’s offer to be the U.S. ambassador to China.

His father Jon Huntsman Sr’s first company, Huntsman Container, hit the jackpot by creating the "clamshell" burger box, which was adopted by McDonald’s and he is now the billionaire founder of Huntsman Corp., a chemical company.

It should be no surprise then that a man with this résumé, which is notably similar to that of George H.W. Bush, might choose to run for president.

His immediate problem is however that the vast majority of the public have no idea who he is.

Who Is Jon Huntsman?

The Economy

If there’s a short version of Mr. Huntsman’s core message, it’s that America needs to start competing again, and very aggressively, in the global marketplace.

"We need to get back in the game", he says, citing the lapse of free-trade momentum as a primary failing of the Obama years, "because if we don’t do it, China will move ahead with free-trade agreements as they are in Latin America, built around procurement practices that benefit Chinese companies".

The Military

"Now we have one out of every six defense department dollars going to Afghanistan. We’ve achieved much of what we set out to do. We’ve been able to rout the Taliban from power. We’ve been able to disrupt to a large extent al Qaeda. We’ve had free elections going back to 2004. And we still have 100,000 troops on the ground. The future well-being of the United States is likely not going to be fought on the prairies of Afghanistan. It’s likely to be the result of our ability or inability to compete competitively across the Pacific against the rising giants".

Washington.

"I think the appropriate role of the federal government is to carefully measure out the nation’s competitiveness. When are taxes too high and making us less competitive than our major trading partners? When do we reach the point of onerous regulation and have to throttle back so we can maintain a competitive posture?". "As a country we should maintain a level playing field for the states. Equip them with what they need to survive and be competitive and then be attentive enough to learn from them when it comes to possible national models".

Health

Mr. Huntsman says he favors repeal of the Obama health-care law and he’d block-grant Medicaid back to the states.

"Let states determine what the percentage of poverty levels are, and let public officials rise or fall on how local citizens feel about those decisions. They’re in a much better position to understand their vulnerable populations than at the federal level".

Energy And Subsidies

He thinks the recent natural gas finds in the U.S. "completely change how we operate and how we view our economy. I believe this is just revolutionary. Why not take advantage of something we control, when it’s derived from our reserves, it employs our people and enhances our economic base?". Look, we’re never going to be totally energy independent. You can talk in those terms but we’re always going to be accessing raw materials from elsewhere in the world. But we can do better than 60% of imported oil".

"I don’t like subsidies. I’d like to see us phase out all subsidies. Maybe a nudge in terms of a tax incentive like we did in Utah to convert cars to natural gas".

How Will He Try To Convince The Voters?

"When people look at what we’ve done", he says, "they’re going to say, ‘He’s a conservative problem solver’, I’m going to point people in the direction of what we’ve done as governor. I’m pro-life, strongly pro-Second Amendment. I think there are enough voters who will say, ‘I may not like everything, but there’s enough here to like’".

He adds a final point on his own behalf:

"I’m not trying to make things up as we go. I’m drawing from my own experiences, where I’ve seen it work. I want to make sure that what we advocate and say we believe in can be tied back to real-world experience. So when people say, ‘What do you stand for, what do you want to do?’ I can say, ‘Here, 1,2,3, here’s what I did as governor of a state’. I think that’s going to help people to connect the dots".

Obama Placates The Middle East At America’s Expense

Michael Redbourn — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 18:33:00 +0000

As we now all know or should do by now, President Obama is an Afro-American, the son of a Muslim father and a one-time resident of Indochina which is predominantly Muslim.

The upside to this of course is that it makes it much more difficult for the Islamic world to typecast him as a son of the “Great Satan” especially because his middle name is Hussein.

Rightly or wrongly however, President Barack Obama is getting a lot of praise heaped on him right now by much of the Muslim world because he chose the Saudi-owned Arabic TV news channel Al-Arabiya on which to make his first formal television interview.

So what’s wrong with that?

Well when you give interviews to foreigners that are basically hostile to your country it’s probably not a great idea to firstly criticize your own country and secondly praise the one that despises you, but that is what Obama basically did.

He said,

“All too often the United States starts by dictating and in the past on some of these issues we didn’t always know all the factors that were involved. So let’s listen. Well, here’s what I think is important. Look at the proposal that was put forth by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. I might not agree with every aspect of the proposal, but it took great courage to put forward something that is as significant as that. I think that there are ideas across the region of how we might pursue peace”.

The U.S. was previously dictatorial and the Saudi king had been courageous.

Obama went on to say,

“But if you look at the track record, as you say, America was not born as a colonial power, and that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there’s no reason why we can’t restore that. And that I think is going to be an important task. So what we want to do is to listen, set aside some of the preconceptions that have existed and have built up over the last several years. And I think if we do that, then there’s a possibility at least of achieving some breakthroughs. But I think that what you’ll see is somebody who is listening, who is respectful, and who is trying to promote the interests not just of the United States, but also ordinary people who right now are suffering from poverty and a lack of opportunity. I want to make sure that I’m speaking to them, as well”.

So even though America did the following praiseworthy things Obama gave the impression to haters of the U.S. that America had only been bad!

” American saved Kuwait.
” Spoke out against Russia on behalf of the Chechens.
” Tried to save the Somalis.
” Bombed, Christian European Serbia to save the Kosovan and Bosnian Muslims.
” Helped the Afghans fight the Soviets.
” Is still fighting the Taliban.
” Overthrew Saddam Hussein and is still fighting in Iraq.
” Invested billions fighting disease in Africa much of which is Muslim.
” Aided tsunami victims.

And the list goes on and on and Bush can list many things to his credit.

” The U.S. was not hit by terrorists for seven years.
” Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation was stopped.
” Libya gave up its nuclear program.
” Syria mostly left Lebanon.
” Al Qaeda’s leadership is scattered and less effective.

Throughout the almost two years of political campaigning it was tacitly understood that mentioning Obama’s ancestry and middle name were off-limits.

Obama however does not feel himself limited by this tacit understanding,

“Now, my job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language we use has to be a language of respect. I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries. The largest one, Indonesia. And so what I want to communicate is the fact that in all my travels throughout the Muslim world, what I’ve come to understand is that regardless of your faith, and America is a country of Muslims, Jews, Christians, non-believers, that regardless of your faith, people all have certain common hopes and common dreams.

The bottom line is that Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush all tried hard to promote peace in the Middle East but amongst the major obstacles to peace are religious intolerance, illiberality, violent aggression and complicity in the promotion of terror by Syria, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

The above mentioned countries know only too well the role that they’ve played for their own political reasons and Obama knows it too but he has already set out to placate them with the downside being that he will mostly likely make a bad situation far worse.

Obama’s Israeli-Palestinian Plans

Michael Redbourn — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 15:35:00 +0000

Obama’s Israeli-Palestinian Plans

During the Presidential campaign neither Obama nor his spokespeople gave much information about his intended plans for the middle east.

Now however with only eight weeks to go before Obama is sworn into office it is possible to get more than an inkling of what those plans might be in spite of the fact that he and his minions are still tight lipped.

We can gain a fairly good idea of his plans and intentions by looking at the people that are now likely to be chosen to both give advice and to carry it out.

At the time of writing it appears likely that retired general James Jones will be named national security adviser and it is known that Obama and Snowcroft (who served as national security adviser in the administrations of Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush) have spoken on at least two occasions since the elections.

Snowcroft and the man that succeeded him as national security adviser to Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski recently penned an op-ed piece for the Washington Post which might perhaps give valuable insight into the “Obama Plan For the Middle East”.

In spite of the fact that since being elected that Obama has not stressed the Israel- Palestinian conflict as one of his top priorities the two former NSA chiefs have already called upon Obama to lend “priority attention” to the ‘peace’ process.

Their plan centers on four principles which are:

1) An Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines, with slight alterations that would be mutually agreed upon.

2) Compensation for Palestinian refugees in lieu of exercising the right of return to pre-1948 Israel.

3) Jerusalem as a “real home” to two capitals.

4) A demilitarized Palestinian state.

Since it is a given that Israel will have legitimate concerns if it is asked to hand over territory to a Palestinian government that is clearly incapable of combating terrorism, the two former national security advisers have recommended the stationing of an international force, which could be NATO whose remit would be to protect Israel and to train Palestinian forces. Scowcroft and Brzezinski also believe it is highly important for Obama to publicly declare his support for these principles before the Israeli elections which are scheduled for February in order to provide Israeli voters with the opportunity to register their views.

Last June in a speech to the ‘American Israel Public Affairs Committee’ Obama pledged to immediately act towards achieving an Israeli-Arab peace if elected and he stressed a number of points that would safeguard Israel’s security:

1) An American commitment to military aid to the tune of $30 billion over the next decade;

2) A “contiguous and cohesive” Palestinian state;

3) Defensible, secure, and recognized borders and the preservation of Israel’s “Jewish identity”;

4) And Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel although he later somewhat altered his stance on this.

He has since called on Israel to ease the day-to-day lives of the Palestinians, to allow for greater freedom of movement in the territories and to halt settlement construction.

It might also be of interest to note that although Obama opposed Hamas’s participation in the Palestinian elections in 2006 he has not revealed his position on the group’s participation in future elections.

Obama’s Israeli-Palestinian Plans

Joe The Plumber And The Pony Tail Guy

Michael Redbourn — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 10:31:00 +0000

Ron Paul Has Found His Joe the Plumber: Jesse the Soldier …

www.theatlanticwire.com1/4/12

This campaign's version of Joe the Plumber appears to be an Army corporal and Ron Paul supporter named Jesse Thorsen, who has already found controversy as he's under investigation by the Army for violating protocol by …

Son of Ponytail Guy ~ gad-fly

herdgadfly.blogspot.com10/7/08

Remember "Ponytail Guy? Slate does: "Ponytail Guy" is the term some in political circles use to refer to Denton Walthall, who asked a question in the second presidential debate in 1992. A domestic mediator who worked with children, Walthall scolded President George H.W. Bush for running a mudslinging, character-based campaign against Bill Clinton in 1992. Referring to voters as "symbolically the children of the future president," he asked how voters could expect the candidates …

The “Ponytail Guy” refers to Denton Walthall, who asked a question in the second presidential debate in 1992.

Those present were, Ross Perot, Bill Clinton and President Bush.Walthall was a domestic mediator who worked with children and he scolded President George H.W. Bush for running a mudslinging, character-based campaign against Bill Clinton in 1992.

Walthall said, “The focus of my work as a domestic mediator is meeting the needs of the children that I work with, by way of their parents, and not the wants of their parents. And I ask the three of you, how can we, as symbolically the children of the future president, expect the two of you, the three of you to meet our needs, the needs in housing and in crime and you name it. Could we cross our hearts; it sounds silly here, but could we make a commitment? You know, we’re not under oath at this point, but could you make a commitment to the citizens of the United States to meet our needs, and we have many, and not yours. Again, I have to repeat that, it’s a real need, I think, that we all have”.

Ross Perot said he’d take Walthall’s pledge, “no hedges, no ifs, ands and buts”. Governor Clinton argued with Perot about who was more authentic and less dependent on “spin doctors,” and noted that as governor, he’d “worked twelve years very hard on the real problems of real people. It depends on how you define it.President George H.W. Bush stammered his reply to Walthall, “… I mean I – I think, in general, let’s talk about these, let’s talk about these issues. let’s talk about the programs”.

Joe Wurzelbacher is a plumber that wanted to buy the company that he’s working for and when he got the chance to speak to Obama at a campaign appearance in Toledo last week he told Obama that his tax plan would prevent him from buying the business.

In the course of the following exchange Obama made the revelatory comment that he believed that “spreading the wealth around” would help everyone. And there it was: the crucial distinction between the Democrats who believe that the wealth created by individuals should be compulsorily redistributed, even if that means limiting the possibilities of creating more of it, and the Republicans who feel that it would be better left in the hands of the small business people who could then use it to expand their businesses and provide more employment.

It is possible that if that distinction were to permeate the consciousness of the U.S. electorate with real force and clarity, that McCain would win the election.

McCain brought it up on several occasions during last night’s debate and initiated the exchange by saying, “Joe wants to buy the business that he has been in for all of these years, worked 10, 12 hours a day. You were going to put him in a higher tax bracket which was going to increase his taxes, which was going to cause him not to be able to employ people, when Joe was trying to realize the American dream”, after which he looked across at Obama.

Obama was clearly flustered which is extremely rare for him and he answered, “Not only do 98 percent of small businesses make less than $250,000, but I also want to give them additional tax breaks, because they are the drivers of the economy. They produce the most jobs”.

McCain then looked directly into the television camera and said, “Joe, I want to tell you, I’ll not only help you buy that business that you worked your whole life for and I’ll keep your taxes low and I’ll provide available and affordable health care for you and your employees. And I will not stand for a tax increase on small business income”.

After the debate Wurzelbacher said that Obama’s reaction left him feeling uneasy.”I didn’t think much of it the first time I heard it” and added that he still thinks Obama’s plan would keep him from buying the business.

Can McCain Still Win? And if so, then how?

Michael Redbourn — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 12:11:00 +0000

There are several things that McCain can still do to try and turn things around.

Some are riskier than others, but all are perhaps worth trying if he foresees a crushing defeat.

He could for example commit to only serving one term, and claim that by so doing that he would be free from much of the political pressure that somebody hoping for a second term would be subject to. He could then truthfully say that this would allow him to make a lot of tough decisions that Obama would be unable to make.

Another ploy would be to stop wasting time and money in Bush States that have now slipped so completely out of his grasp, that there is no real likelihood of his ever winning them now.

Obama is extremely well established in Iowa because he has been organizing there since 2007 and the State helped win him the nomination, but McCain and Palin are still campaigning there.

If I were in his shoes, and I’m glad I’m not, because whoever wins the next election will be in for a horrible drubbing and his life will get more miserable from day one, I’d be concentrating on the battleground States that I’d have a very good chance of still holding onto.

Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Virginia, North Carolina, Nevada, Colorado and Florida.

On paper he’d been short of enough votes to win but he’d be able to keep his fingers crossed and hope that the polls were more inaccurate than they seemed. Polls have surprised a lot of candidates everywhere, in both a good and bad way.

He might of course, also be able to bring in Pennsylvania from the 2004 Kerry map.

If things really look desperate in the days before the elections he could do something completely unprecedented, he could publicly and without mixing his words, condemn the of the presidency of George W. Bush.

Karl Rove and others such as Steve Schmidt would probably be distraught and be strongly against it but McCain is highly unlikely to ever run for the Presidency again so what would he have to lose.

Making such a maverick move would also show the voters that he really understood why Bush’s ratings are so low and many people might be so admiring of such behavior that they’d change their minds at the last moment.

A great many Republicans that now say that they will vote Democrat might not actually do so.

When they ponder the night before the election or even in the voting booth that to vote for Obama would mean higher taxes; a larger government; more entitlements; more U.N. involvement; less nuclear energy; less coal and a greater dependency or Iran and Venezuela; more left leaning Supreme Court judges; more open borders; more oppression-studies and a helluva lot more reparations that might just think twice!