Jon Huntsman on guns

[Tiberius67]

If you thought you could aid the country by being the best person for the job, shouldn't you step up?

So if you didn't like FDR - stay home and let the Nazis win?

Rather have a crappy ambassador to an important country just so you can have ideological purity?

The country is more important than one party or party tribalism.

Ambassador postings, especially for places like China, Japan or Western Europe, are normally reserved...by both parties to be fair...for people who helped the POTUS get elected. Crappy Third World countries no-one wants to go to are the domain of career Foggy Bottom apparatchiks. They can do this because ever since the telegraph, wireless radio, ect decreased the time for Ambassadors in the field to contact Foggy Bottom, the posting has become less and less critical. Occasionally, such as the time FDR's man in London, nazi sympathizer and bootlegger Joseph Kennedy, publicly called on the US to abandon the Brits to thier fate even as FDR was desperately trying to provoke the Germans into declaring war on the US, it can blow up in the Administrations face...normally the State Department apparatchiks around said ambassador keep them from doing anything stupid. There are plenty of Democrats who could have done the job adequately or even well and had even fronted the necessary cash to Barry. ....why Huntsman? Barry would only pass over deserving members of the Party and offer something like that to the Enemy if it benefited the Party to do so. The fact that he didn't see that...or didn't care, doesn't speak well of him.

But to me, the really deal killer is the way his supporters him talk about the man. The sneering contempt he and his followers openly display for the "rabble" says all I really need to know about him. In 2008 we nominated a man who never had a unkind word for a Democrat...but plenty for fellow Republicans...and had carried Democrat water for years, he got curb-stomped. If Hunstman somehow got nominated, I have little doubt he'd be crushed even easier.

I'm not especially fond of Romney, but at least he, unlike McCain, seems to be hungry enough for the job to actually fight for it. Like it or not, he's the best chance the GOP has of stopping Barry before he can replace Kennedy or one of the four conservative SCOTUS justices with another closet Bolshevik and re-write the Constitution by judicial fiat. The polls show that more and more Primary voters are seeing this too.

 

[Neverwinter]

There are plenty of Democrats who could have done the job adequately or even well and had even fronted the necessary cash to Barry. ....why Huntsman? Barry would only pass over deserving members of the Party and offer something like that to the Enemy if it benefited the Party to do so. The fact that he didn't see that...or didn't care, doesn't speak well of him.

It doesn't benefit the administration to have a man who has experience in relations with the East(specifically heavily Chinese countries) from two administrations?
As to the purely partisan motivations for his appointment: they have been already mentioned in the thread.

It was pretty obvious that it was mostly to take Huntsman out of action for this election. And it may have worked. Look at it this way: If Huntsman was now running for president as governor of Utah, instead of former China Ambassador, would you have any reason to complain about him?

If Huntsman had remained out of the administration, then he could be facing a Governor from a southwestern state who actually can steal support from independents and democratic voters unsatisfied with the current administration. I'm still shaking my head at the idea at having served as a China ambassador is a liability, given the significant role that China is playing in the world stage.

Like it or not, he's the best chance the GOP has of stopping Barry before he can replace Kennedy or one of the four conservative SCOTUS justices with another closet Bolshevik and re-write the Constitution by judicial fiat.

Yeah, if we don't stop Obama, he could install another liberal justice like the communists who appointed Souter.

 

[GEM]

No, I don't play in your self-defined dichotomous universe. If you do, that is fine.

What I am saying, is that a competent person should aid his country if he has the ability.

If you see the world as so black and white that doing a good job for the country is not as important as your dichotomy - that is your business if you get the opportunity to aid the country when you don't like the administration.

 

[Fleet]

I’m not sure what you are trying to get at here, since requiring a permit to CCW is not necessarily a violation of libertarian principles. Certainly two libertarians may differ in good faith about the appropriateness of a particular use of State power; that seems self-evident to me, but if it would please you to see me state it, you have been so accommodated. If you are trying to argue that it is possible to espouse communitarian principles and still be a libertarian, I stand on my original statement.

With regard to Huntsman, there is no realistic dispute that Obama is a communitarian, and yet Huntsman chose to work for him. As a Republican I am not interested in candidates that are willing to compromise with my political enemies.

If you're a republican, you may be many things, but Libertarian is NOT one of them.

 

[mljdeckard]

I never said it was a CORRECT perception that his taking the ambassador job made him a liability. But it was a perception nonetheless.

 

[Dr.Mall Ninja]

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/01/huntsman-to-drop-out-of-gop-race

Well guys Huntsman is out and endorsing Romney. Everybody who was following him for his 2A views need to look for a new canidate I guess.

 

[Lunie]

I'd say the real shame is that he chose to endorse Romney.

A bit odd, too. I didn't think he would drop until after South Carolina.