“Call Me Crazy” Jon Huntsman: What A Primary Can Do To A Candidate
Remember when Jon Huntsman, the so-called moderate of the Republican presidential field, was saying sensible things about climate change? Well, forget it.
Jon Huntsman attended a packed blogger sit down at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday. TPM’s Evan McMorris-Santoro attended, pressing the GOP presidential candidate about his position on climate change.
In August, Huntsman acknowledged the broad body of science pointing to climate change. Seated at an elite conservative think tank, however, Huntsman played a different tune, saying climate scientists “owe us more” information before we can decide if climate change is real.
“I think there’s probably more debate to be played out within the scientific community,” he said.
For those who haven’t been following him closely, it’s important to realize that Huntsman was not only a voice of sanity on climate change; he actually seemed to take some pride in using the issue to differentiate himself from his Republican rivals. The former governor used to even support cap and trade.
Asked about climate change in May, Huntsman said, “All I know is 90 percent of the scientists say climate change is occurring. If 90 percent of the oncological community said something was causing cancer we’d listen to them.”
Responding to Rick Perry in August, Huntsman said, “The minute that the Republican Party becomes the anti-science party, we have a huge problem…. When we take a position that basically runs counter to what 98 of 100 climate scientists have said, what the National Academy of Sciences has said about what is causing climate change and man’s contribution to it, I think we find ourselves on the wrong side of science, and, therefore, in a losing position.”
Around the same time, Huntsman boasted, “To be clear, I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.”
What was “crazy” was thinking Huntsman could thrive in national Republican politics saying sane things about science. Now that the pressure’s on, he’s pulling a Romney, abandoning what he knows to be true, and desperately trying to tell his party’s right-wing base what it wants to hear.
By: Steve Benen, Washington Monthly Political Animal, December 6, 2011
Five Reasons Chris Christie Can’t Win The GOP Nomination
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has said over and over again that he isn’t running for president in 2012 — a line he repeated once again just this week. Still, Republicans dissatisfied with their options are turning up the pressure on Christie to jump into the race. The GOP base has gotten its hopes up before — over Donald Trump, Rep. Michele Bachmann, and, most recently, Texas Gov. Rick Perry — only to promptly find fault with each new candidate (or, in Trump’s case, would-be candidate) and resume the search for a savior. Here are five reasons Christie would fare no better:
1. Christie is no hardliner on immigration
“The biggest chink in Rick Perry’s armor so far has been his record on illegal immigration,” says Dan Amira at New York. It’s a problem for Christie, too. He has said being in the country without proper papers is an “administrative matter,” not a crime. And between 2002 and 2007, as U.S. attorney in New Jersey, he prosecuted so few illegal immigration cases that then-CNN host Lou Dobbs said Christie was “an utter embarrassment.”
2. He has a soft spot for gun control
In 1995, when Christie was running for state general assembly, he distributed flyers calling opponents “radical” and “crazy” for supporting repeal of the federal assault-weapons ban, says Daniel Foster at National Review. And he still fights any move to let people carry concealed weapons in New Jersey. In 2009, he told conservative Fox News host Sean Hannity that New Jersey had a “handgun problem,” and that he supports some of the gun-control measures the state uses to contain it. “Bad idea,” Hannity said.
3. Hardliners won’t like his stand on the “ground zero mosque”
Last year, Christie accused politicians on the Left and Right of using the proposed “ground zero mosque” as a “political football,” says Thomas Fitzgerald at The Philadelphia Inquirer, suggesting he thought conservatives were exploiting anti-Muslim emotions stirred up by the 9/11 attacks. This summer, he faced another backlash after appointing Sohail Mohammed, a Muslim lawyer, to be a New Jersey Superior Court judge. Critics were angry that he would appoint a lawyer who had defended a cleric accused of terrorist sympathies. Christie responded: “I’m tired of dealing with the crazies.”
4. He’s got an uncomfortable Madoff connection
In his days as a lobbyist, Christie once fought for the rights of Wall Street. On his client list: The Securities Industry Association, then led by none other than Bernie Madoff. That, says Abe Sauer at The Awl, is the kind of thing “that’s easy to understand no matter who you are, involves a universally despised villain who has come to represent all the illegality of the 2008 market collapse, and it would be devastating to Christie in much-needed Florida” — a critical presidential swing state where many Madoff victims lived.
5. A possible clincher: He believes people are causing climate change
Perry delights the Right by saying that climate change is “phony,” says James Oliphant at the Los Angeles Times. Christie says 90 percent of the world’s scientists have concluded that the climate is changing and humans are playing a role, so “it’s time to defer to the experts.” If Republican voters are looking to nominate a hardcore conservative, this is pretty solid proof that Christie “does not fit the mold.”
By: Best Opinion: New York, National Review, Philadelphia Inquirer, Published in The Week, September 30, 2011
Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?: Bert and Ernie Getting Married Is a Dumb, Destructive Idea
Some people see politics everywhere, even where they don’t belong.
Case in point a Chicago-area man who, according to Washington, D.C. radio station WMAL, has started an online petition at a website called Change.org seeking to pressure the people behind the landmark children’s program Sesame Street to “let Ernie & Bert get married.”
As a child—and as a parent—I watched a lot of Sesame Street. I’m a big fan of Bert & Ernie and their antics. I can still sing most of the lyrics to “Rubber Duckie” and “Doin’ the Pigeon” from memory. They are funny, engaging characters who demonstrate to children that people—no matter how different they might be in temperament, likes, dislikes and personalities—can still be the best of friends. But they are also, as apparently has been lost on some people, Muppets—a combination marionette and foam rubber puppet invented decades ago—by the legendary Jim Henson and his wife Jane. Muppets are not people, and while they are in many cases gender specific they, as the Sesame Workshop felt compelled to point out Thursday, “Do not have a sexual orientation.” Nonetheless someone out there thinks they would be useful to further a point about sexual identity.
It’s an idea that’s foolish, and moreover, culturally destructive because, if enacted, it would further the end of childhood innocence in America. Children are already bombarded, in and out of school, with messages and meanings that, in my judgment, are far too sophisticated for them to comprehend. Instead, they just confuse and, in some cases, scare them—as was the case when, as the Boston Globe reported back in 2009, “an anxious, depressed 17-year-old boy was admitted to the psychiatric unit at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne.”
“He was refusing to drink water. Worried about drought related to climate change, the young man was convinced that if he drank, millions of people would die. The Australian doctors wrote the case up as the first known instance of climate change delusion,'” the paper reported.
A 17-year-old man is far more mature than the average viewer of Sesame Street. We have an obligation to protect innocents and innocence and, in a sense, childhood itself. Children are treasures, precious gems that are our future and should be treated as such, not as targets for indoctrination.
By: Peter Roff, U. S. News and World Report, August 12, 2011
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