http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=14203800





Just what we need in the Republican primaries –– another RINO son of a wealthy industrialist.  

 

But it is the only way we will beat Obama.

Is he a CONSERVATIVE?

This will not go well.

Yes, and that's not a good thing in this case.



Huntsman is another GW Bush –– good on some issues, but he's Establishment Republican through and through.  He doesn't see massive government spending as a problem per se –– he just thinks it needs to be managed properly.



He won't sign any new gun control laws, but don't expect him to do much else for us.



In other words, he's much better than the current occupant of the White House, but he's not the type of politician who will have the guts to face the impending bankruptcy of the United States.



 

So, basically you want to see an unelectable candidate to run, so you can feel better about voting for them?

Um, did I say that?  Do you always infer things that are not there?  



I have voted for Huntsman before, and if he's the nominee, then I'll vote for him again. Even Huntsman would be better overall than Obama.



But Huntsman does not have the personal political philosophy or will to make the necessary changes in the federal government's spending habits.  At best he will re-arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.



 

Huntsman Sr. MADE HIS FORTUNES from SCRATCH.  Far from a RINO.



Junior knows China far better than any other politician.  I'm warming up to his potential running.



 

Honestly- that's true of most Republicans. Hell, this weekend, I had a "conservative" on this very forum telling me America is great because of all the wonderful government we have.

Unfortunately, an "establishment Republican" or a RINO are the only way to beat Obama. Then again, somebody of that ilk may cause a 3rd party candidate to have a decent run splitting the right's votes giving us another Obummer term.

Just a note, George H. W. Bush made his personal fortune in the postwar Texas oil fields.





Junior is a nice guy, solid on most issues that interest Republicans.  If we weren't facing out-of-control spending and trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see then he wouldn't be a bad candidate.





But he's not a small-government Republican by any stretch of the imagination.  I even doubt Huntsman would call for a repeal of Obamacare.  He certainly wouldn't have the guts to even cut PBS or the NEA.



ETA:  Oh, and one more thing:  Huntsman is pro-Amnesty, or at least he was back in 2007.





 

Do you have any concept of executive and legislative processes?   Please educate yourself on this matter.  
 

Yep. Both Sr. and Jr. are both excellent business men. Sr. pretty much gives all of his money to charity and into his Cancer Institute. I'm OK with Jr. running.





 

I'm well aware of the legislative process.



And I'm well aware that if you wish to control Congress' spending habits you need to have a president who proposes significant spending cuts and is willing to threaten to wield the veto pen during budget negotiations.



Based on his governance in Utah, Huntsman's idea of a spending cut is allowing the budget to only increase by 2%, instead of 5%.



That, IMHO, was GW Bush's greatest failure:  He never bothered to veto anything until it was too late.



 

Fail.  Just fail.  



The budget is drafted in the House of Representatives.  Nancy's last year as Speaker left the House without a budget!



The problems we are having are due to branches of government NOT doing the jobs they are supposed to do and doing plenty of crap they don't need to be doing!
 

Not exactly what we want, but still an improvement.  With the right Congress to work on decreasing the budget, Huntsman becomes somewhat moot in that regard.

something people don't realize about the POTUS.  They don't decide the budget or the laws written. Other than executive orders the presidents only real power in laws is his veto ability.



You don't need to ask what this guy will push for. You need to ask if he will veto things. If he wont veto conservative legislation he is good to go.  A rino president wont fuck us.  A rino congress will.  as long as Obama loses the white house the executve branch will be open to whatever we get throuhg congress.

My only real beef with Huntsman is that he is too stiff in front of a camera.  His public appearances looked too staged when when was governor.

Again, I think the budget issue needs to be handled through Congress.  Beyond that, is Huntsman really a hindrance?

It would not be too hard to do better then what we have right now.

Sadly our outlook and ideology is dying out.  Thats the truth.



 

That and 90% of America has no idea who he is.



 

Presidents routinely propose a budget, and Congress decides what will be spent.  After Congress passes the spending bills then the president has the option of vetoing them.  Often if there is disagreement the White House and Congress will enter into budget negotiations, which is where a small-government president can make a difference by forcing Congress to drop certain provisions.  Or by vetoing the whole mess and forcing them to pass a new budget without the added pork.



Huntsman, based on my observation of his terms as Utah governor, will not do anything to significantly change the status quo.





 

Presidents propose legislation all the time, and quite often they do it in response to current events.  Furthermore, they set policy at the executive level –– such as the DOJ and BATFE.



A RINO president can indeed screw us over.



 

I don't think we are going to have a problem cutting the budget.

You see, we have almost reached a point where it will be physically impossible to increase spending.

The gravy train is over. So now the question is who do you want to decide what gets cut?

I would vote for him, but I'm not excited about it.  

Huntsman has time to change that.  How many people really knew who Obama was two years before he was elected?

How is Huntsman equal to Romney?  Romney is a gun grabber and supported socialized medicine.  Has Huntsman done those things?

I admittedly don't know all the facts, but it seems to me that Romney signed those bills because he had too.  That is what the vast majority of his state's population wanted.  I don't think he was out there actively campaigning for either of those.  I'm not saying I like him by any means, but I can't say for certain that Huntsman Jr. is much more conservative than Romney.
 

Agreed. Sorry to see some willful blindness on KeithJ's part, but the President drafts a budget, sends it to congress and does sign what comes back. He may not be totally responsible, but he does have the power to lead –– which Bush did not do. He let Dems get whatever they wanted as long as things like War funding, Millenium Challenge, NCLB and other of his pet projects got funded.

We'll just be heading down a slower path to poverty with a RINO at the helm.

S&P just lowered Japan’s bond rating to AA-.  Moody’s warned the probability of assigning a downgrade to U S debt the coming two years is rising.

Comparing the U.S. budget trajectory to Japan’s recent history makes a strong arguent that the U.S. rating should be cut today. Total U.S. government debt, equal to 98.5 percent of GDP, has years of unrestrained deficits ahead before it reaches that Japan at 204 percent of GDP.

But Japan’s debt in 2000 was 135.4 percent of GDP, just before S&P first downgraded it from AAA in February 2001.

If the U.S. makes no fiscal progress, and continues to run annual deficits at the 2011 level of $1.48 trillion dollars, it will take just six years to reach a debt level of 135.3 percent of GDP, suggesting the U.S. would lose its current AAA rating at that point.

The Congressional Budget Office  predicts the U.S. revenue should increase as the economy recovers. But if our high debt levels crowd out capital investment, that growth may be crowded out as well.

If you use the Greeks as a benchmark instead of the Japanese, it gets worse. The Greek credit rating was downgraded a number of times in 2009and its debt was only 105.6 percent of GDP at the end of 2008 and 120.2 percent of the nation’s economic output at the end of 2009.

Put another way, someone buying and holding a 10-year or 30-year U.S. bond today must consider experiencing a downgrade. Would you buy a bond with the notion that its rating has a strong chance of not staying the same before it matures?

Some might feel the U.S. with debt of 135 percent of GDP is safer place to invest than a Japan or Greece. The US has never defaulted, right?

Wrong.

In 1790, the US  postponed payments on money owed from the Revolution. While the dollar values were eventually repaid 10 years later, the delay was technically a default.

The second time was the great gold heist in 1933. The U.S. broke faith with creditors by refusing to repay loans in physical gold.

Existing contracts stated that lenders could request payment in either dollars or gold, but  Roosevelt and Congress, with plans to significantly inflate the dollar, passed a law forbidding repayment in gold. Again, the dollar values were repaid, but unilaterally changing the terms of a contract is the equivalent of a default.

What we may be on the verge of experiencing is a replay of the recent real estate fiasco. The ratings companies failed to point out the risky real estate loans that contributed to the financial crisis. If  they fail to act responsibly and change the U.S. credit rating soon, they will be setting investors up for yet another mugging.

The 2 items in red are not compatible.  A real CONSERVATIVE does see massive govt spending as a problem.  Managed or not.  If this guy thinks massive government spending is O.K. then he is not a conservative and not the candidate of my choice.

One could argue that Huntsman is just Romney without the liberal track record.  



One of the reasons I am so animated against Huntsman is his waffling on the Amnesty issue a few years ago.



Back in 2006, he was a big fan of Amnesty.  He even co-authored a letter with then-AZ governor Janet Napolitano encouraging Congress to pass the Amnesty bill in consideration at the time.  He constantly spoke out for the need for some kind of "solution" which would not include any real enforcement.



Then in 2008 he reversed direction and signed a tough enforcement bill.  He didn't do it out of conviction, but rather because he knew he wouldn't get re-elected if he didn't sign it –– and because the bill didn't take effect until June 1, 2009, thus allowing the Legislature to "fix" it during the interval.  To top it off, he publicly expressed the desire to never see it enforced on the expectation that Congress would pass an Amnesty law during that time.



Now, lest anyone mistake my distaste for Huntsman to be personal, I've met him and he's a nice man.  He certainly doesn't have any skeletons in his closet (that I know of) and he is a good administrator.



In fact, given his knowledge and experience with China he'd be a fantastic Secretary of State –– just as given Romney's knowledge of business he'd be a fantastic Secretary of the Treasury.  But president?  I'd rather not have either of them.



Nevertheless, if either of them happened to win the Republican nomination in 2012 I'd still hold my nose and vote Republican just to get rid of Obama.  But I wouldn't harbor any illusions that either of them would be willing to make the necessary budget cuts to prevent the impending US budget Armageddon.



 

I should have explained that better.  Huntsman is conservative in the sense that he won't do anything to upset the status quo –– meaning his idea of reforming Social Security would be raising the payroll tax and cutting a few benefits.



(Disclaimer:  I don't know if he has actually proposed that, but based on my observations of his political philosophy that's what I would predict.)



 

Believes in climate change and unions?



 

I will vouch-out Huntsman Sr. as he is the only Huntsman I have met.

He started out poor, very poor, and made his money the American way... Inginuity and hard work.

"Wealthy son of an industrialist" doesn't cut it with me.

No, I am not vouching out Huntsman Jr... I will wait to see what issues he runs on for that... But he has actually gone out and made accomplishments on his own... Far from the sweeping generalization (your words) "Wealthy son of an industrialist..." You don't get to choose your parents... And his dad happens to be a true-DNA-deep "conservative" in my book...

He can speak fluent Chinese, he has served in multiple political leadership positions globally, and he has actually had "leadership" opportunities, and has been an effective diplomat.

Yeah, I will wait to see what issues he runs on before I throw him under the bus...

Give him a chance to represent himself and his issues accurately and honestly, then I will make an assumption...

But to be clear Huntsman Sr. is the very embodiment of true conservative American in my opinion.