Newt Gingrich is rising in the polls to challenge Mitt Romney for the Republican nomination now that Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain have gotten their turn and flamed out. Given the desperation of anti-Romney GOP primary voters, it has to be asked why they felt that these three people all merited a serious look, but Jon Huntsman — sentenced to 2% polling in perpetuity — did not. Why is Governor Huntsman seemingly the very last kid to get picked for the kickball team?
The pat explanation is that he’s a moderate, a Lincoln Chafee/Nelson Rockefeller type in a party gone far to the right. But this simply isn’t true: He is pro-life, anti-gun control and wants to cut taxes and repeal the Affordable Care Act. He governed Utah well to the right of how Romney governed Massachusetts, and he has been more consistent on conservative positions than Newt Gingrich over the years (I know being more consistent than Gingrich is a low bar, but remember that’s the guy who just zoomed past Huntsman in the “anything but Romney” sweepstakes).
I have written before about how anti-Mormonism was one of the founding principles of the Republican Party and how Christian Evangelicals harbor deep suspicions about the LDS Church. On the face of it, one could argue that those prejudices have faded away; how else could Romney now have a good shot at the GOP nomination?
But there is another possibility that could explain both Romney’s inability to close the deal and Huntsman’s lagging campaign. Maybe those GOP primary voters who are comfortable with a Mormon candidate have already gone to Romney, and the ones who are still in play are largely those with negative views of Mormons. If that is what is going on, Huntsman cannot rise as an alternative to Romney because that would require anti-Mormon voters to ensure a Mormon GOP candidate (by making it a race between two Mormons). If and when Gingrich collapses, these voters will turn to Rick Santorum or Ron Paul or anyone else they can think of other than another Mormon.
If anti-Mormonism is indeed driving voters from him, Huntsman’s only path to the nomination is not to scoop up the votes that haven’t gone to Romney yet but to go after the people who are currently supporting Romney and convincing them to switch horses. At this point, that’s probably impossible.
Huntsman is a devil-worshipper, at least in Republican theology. He worked for the Great Muslim Kenyan Socialist Satan, so he must be one of the lesser imps. Viewing Obama as a legitimate President of the United States is enough disqualification for the wingnuts, without invoking Mormonism.
I doubt it. His relative sanity is what’s killing Huntsman’s campaign. He’s consistently taken moderate, informed, consistent-with-reality stands on things that run counter to the Republican base’s purity filter. He’s competing with facts and sense against things like “The solution to declining school performance and income inequality is eliminating Janitor’s unions and child labor laws, so that poor children could clean their own schools, earning enough to buy the bootstrap cranes they all need.” which is Gingrich’s latest bit of free-form nonsense.
Plus…Hunsman willingly accepted the position of Ambassador to China with The Enemy. He is forever tainted by this treasonous act.
Now, anti-mormon bias could definitely be at work with Romney, although I suspect the main reason he’s not accepted more is that the base clearly doesn’t trust him, for which I hardly blame them…he’s changed his spots so often they’re starting to all fade away.
“For Pete’s sake! I’m running for President”, pretty much pegged his Principle/Opportunism ratio at a very small number, very nearly at the same magnitude as Gingrich’s.
A sane Republican party would recognize Huntsman as a very viable general election candidate. We’re not going to get something a sane Republican party will nominate. We’re going to get something way less sane and the the post “Citizens” Big Moneyfolks hoping to rule behind the throne will dump ginormous amounts of cash into the race to buy their way into the White House, if by no other means than dumping enough poison into the waters to depress voter turnout.
Our compliant media will happily lap up all those advertising dollars in exchange for constantly reminding us that ‘Both Sides Do It” regardless of the reality.
I had a long comment about how the oh-so “moderate” Huntsman has an economic plan far more extreme than anything from any major Republican a generation ago, but it seems to be logged in the Moderation Queue or something.
I should hope he does; That’s like saying that your cardiologist, as you lie on the gurney in total arrest, has a plan much more extreme than anything he had 20 years ago when you showed slight signs of hardening of the arteries. Back then, “I’m going to carve your heart out, and replace it with one from a cadaver!” would have been crazy talk. Today, “Cut back on the saturated fats, and include more fiber in your diet.” would be.
The economic situation is far more extreme today than a generation ago. Anybody who has a plan that isn’t extreme isn’t taking it seriously.
Brett,
His plan is to eliminate taxes on unearned wealth; to eliminate all deductions and credits, thus raising taxes on the working poor; to slash income tax rates for all brackets, but especially the wealthy - which in combination with the cuts in deductions and credits would probably mean the lower and lower-middle classes would break even, but would greatly reduce taxes on the working wealthy; and to reduce the nominal corporate income tax, which would be meaningful if corporations paid tax in the US.
Basically, Huntsman’s plan would greatly reduce taxes on high earners, eliminate taxes on the truly wealthy, and reduce tax collections overall, even from their already historically low levels. Average folks would see little or no tax reduction (middle income families with kids and a mortgage in particular would feel the pain), and the working poor would take it in the neck. This plan does nothing to address the deficit or debt (quite the opposite); it accelerates a decades-long trend in which the wealthiest sliver of the population control an ever-greater proportion of the country’s wealth; and it’s not terribly likely to boost economic growth all that much.
Pray tell: in what ways do the extreme proposals in the Huntsman plan help our extreme situation?
Oh, so you have specific complaints about it, aside from it being “extreme”?
Well, yes, Brett, that was the content of my long comment about his economic plan. You know, the comment I said wasn’t appearing, in the comment you replied to.
Apparently you didn’t, and still don’t, have any interest in its contents other than that it should be “extreme”.
My point was simply that “it’s extreme” isn’t a reasonable complaint in extreme times. You’ve got to have some substantive issues with the nature of how it’s “extreme”; ANY plan that actually engages with the present economic circumstances is going to be “extreme”. These are extreme times.
Another reason is probably that he doesn’t really attack Obama all that often, which is what gets the base excited. The big applause lines at the debates aren’t Huntsman’s nuanced answers, they’re the barbs about how Obama’s socialist policies are going to prevent you from buying your preferred light bulb or how he’s secretly hoping Iran gets nukes so they can subjugate all of us to Sharia.
By not doing that, Huntsman isn’t really giving the base much reason to get excited about him. So they don’t. They look, yawn, and then move on.
Actually, I don’t think he’s gotten enough traction for most Republicans to be aware that he IS a Mormon… Have you considered the possibility that he’s just not doing a very good job of campaigning?
I think it has been covered a lot in the free media, but it is an empirical question how many people paid attention. As for him not doing a good job….compared to who? Cain? Gingrich?
Well, according to the last poll I checked, both Newt and Cain are running around 90% name recognition, while Huntsman is down around 50%, somewhat worse than Santorum. I’d rate that as a bad job campaigning, when half the people don’t even recognize your name.
Senator Larry Craig went from 3% to 95% name recognition the day after his “I’m not gay” news conference. A good campaign move, eh?
…now that Rick Perry and Herman Cain have gotten their turn and flamed out.
To be fair Mrs. Bachmann had her 15 minutes of shame too.
And I expect after Mr. Gingrich sours the cream everyone will want to press hands with Santorum.
Which is all to suggest Keith that you are looking at this as all or nothing regarding anti-mormonism. Could it be the same percent that says “anybody but Romney” feels exactly the same about Huntsman? Don’t be so dismissive of Mormon loathing on the Christian Right. It is still there. They can no more abide Joseph Smith’s translational BS then they can abide the talking in tongues of Mohammed. Both religions undermine their Bible as the final and perfect word of God. And the genetic purpose of religion is to unite a people against outside forces. Out of social cohesion comes group selection success. By accepting a Mormon president, the Christian fundamentalist undermine their own Darwinian collective. I don’t see them doing that. In fact, I suspect Mormonism will steal votes from Romney in the general election. Many on the far right will stay home if the choice is between a black Christian socialist and a white, Mormon, Wall-Street pump-and dump chameleon. Crikey. Why bother wasting gas to vote if that’s your choice?
Koreyel: You are absolutely right about Bachmann, I have edited the post accordingly.
But on this “Could it be the same percent that says “anybody but Romney” feels exactly the same about Huntsman? Don’t be so dismissive of Mormon loathing on the Christian Right.” you are agreeing with ecentral point of my post (which is of course fine) but framing it as something I should have said “instead”…but our views on tis seem to track almost perfectly.
I have a hard time pinning this on anti-mormonism. How can it hurt Huntstman while Romney is still on top? That just doesn’t make any sense. Deeper insights please.
Benny Lava: Because the votes that keep moving are the ones among people who have not and will not support Romney. This stops Huntsman from rising as an alternative to Romney, he’s fishing in a poisoned well. If you are an anti-Mormon voter looking for an alternative to Romney, you would sooner elevate your cat than another Mormon to the role of chief challenger to Romney.
That doesn’t make a great deal of sense: On that theory, Huntsman and Romney are both drawing from the same well: Republicans who don’t care if you’re a Mormon. Republicans not liking Mormons can’t explain why one is drawing much more support from that limited pool than the other.
The explanation would have to be something like, “Republicans who are open to Mormons are disproportionately not conservative.” Which I’d buy as an explanation, (Or at least contributory.) but then the explanation for why Huntsman is tanking relative to Romney isn’t that he’s a Mormon, it’s that he’s a conservative Mormon.
Huntsman’s record is conservative. He also worked for the Obama administration and has campaigned as a moderate, which has probably never been a good strategy for winning a partisan primary, ‘specially given the mood of the GOP these days.
That aside, I’d bet 10 bucks that the most liberal governor of Utah in our lifetimes (whoever it might be) has governed to the right of the most conservative governor of Massachusetts (whoever that might be — Romney? William Weld? Further back I’ve nor memory.) The voters of those two states might as well live in different countries.
The most conservative MA governor in some ways was probably Cellucci. Didn’t get anything done, but it isn’t really the job of the MA governor to get anything done (it’s their job to mediate disputes between the state House and the state Senate; rarely, as with Romneycare, they can coax legislation out of them). He wasn’t conventionally conservative - pro-choice, pro-gun-control - but he was anti-tax, and more importantly in terms of cultural identification with conservatives Cellucci hated the voters of MA as casually as they hated him, and unlike Weld and Romney he didn’t aspire to parlay a continuing relationship with those voters into higher or even continued electoral office. Cellucci left office mid-term when he got too bored with it and the mutual hatred got to be too much, leaving the job to become George W Bush’s failed ambassador to Canada. Selling George W Bush to Canada might never have been the easiest job, but Cellucci managed to become more unpopular north of the 49th parallel than the Shrub himself. Ironically for a failed Bush crony, Cellucci left the administration to work in the exciting field of horse racing (see also Michael D. Brown).
I’m going to guess that the most liberal Utah governor of my lifetime was Cal Rampton, who apparently funded a big construction project with a tax reform and tried to reform Utah’s anti-union laws. But I’m not Utah politics expert; I only just found out about Rampton when I was looking to see who preceded Scott Matheson Sr.
If Rampton was not a governor in your lifetime, you are cordially invited to get off of my lawn.
On the subject of the main post, I don’t think we need to go to anti-Mormonism to explain why Huntsman’s getting no traction; he may be an extreme right-winger in his policies, but not in his tone, and anyway being an extreme right-winger still leaves lots of room for him to be not right-wing enough for today’s GOP primary voters. What really did Perry in wasn’t being an idiot in the debates or threatening to lynch Ben Bernanke, it was defending his position on giving in-state tuition to illegal immigrants.
As a secular humanist who believes in no religious test for public office, I am disheartened that anti-Mormonism may be the driving force that causes President Obama to be re-elected, but since I’d _strongly_ prefer to see Obama re-elected than see any of his Republican opponents elected, I’m willing to chalk it up to bigots hanging themselves with their own bigotry, and laugh all the way to the next election. Schadenfreude is still a beautiful thing.