Many have wondered why Jon M. Huntsman Jr., a former Obama administration official as Ambassador to China, climate-change believer, ally of Harry Reid and all-around anti-Tea Party candidate is running for the Republican presidential nomination.  Were the 2012 Republican primaries your typical RINO race (not that there aren’t abundant RINOs in the current field, at least in this author’s view), it would be clear that Huntsman would be setting himself up as the establishment, “civil,” “grown up” candidate, in the mold of a more liberal Mitt Romney.

However, primaries are determined by the most ardent partisans, which for the Republican party today certainly means Tea Partiers, and conservatives and libertarians who hold similar views to those of the Tea Party.  Given that it is abundantly clear that those who will determine the Republican nominee will never accept a person with Huntsman’s political views, one must wonder why he is in the race.

I believe I have found a plausible answer.  Jon Huntsman Jr. is potentially the key to four more years of Barack Obama, not by running as a Republican but by running as an Independent.  Allow me to explain.

By running to the left of the rest of the Republican field, Huntsman likely has no intention of competing in the Republican primary.  Instead, he may use the Republican primary and his substantial personal wealth to set up for a run in the general election as an Independent — as the “reasonable” candidate in a field characterized by the mainstream media as consisting of terrorist Tea Partiers practicing radical brinksmanship and wanting to take us back to the Antebellum era, and President Obama who has proven ineffective, weak and ever-willing to compromise.

Independents who buy this line thus may look to spend their vote on a more moderate and palatable candidate.  Jon Huntsman would be their man.

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Via Roll Call:

A collection of 15 Republicans — all former Members of Congress, governors or Environmental Protection Agency administrators — called on the president Wednesday to set aggressive auto emission and fuel efficiency standards beginning in 2017.

“I’m just very passionate about the environment,” said former Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.), who spearheaded the letter to President Barack Obama. “We want the administration to know there are serious-minded Republicans who are well informed on the issue who urge him to take aggressive action.”

Other former House Members who signed the letter were Michael Castle (Del.), who is now a partner with the lobbying and law firm DLA Piper; Vernon Ehlers (Mich.); Wayne Gilchrest (Md.); Benjamin Gilman (N.Y.); Amory Houghton (N.Y.); Connie Morella (Md.); Chris Shays (Conn.); Jim Ramstad (Minn.); and Peter Smith (Vt.). Former EPA Administrators Christine Whitman, Russell Train, Bill Reilly and Bill Ruckelshaus also signed the letter, as did Jim Douglas, a former governor of Vermont.

[...]

In their letter, the Republicans wrote that annual increases of about 6 percent through the year 2025 would be acceptable.

What does that 6 percent number equate to in real terms?

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I recently had the opportunity to ask Michigan’s 1st District Freshman Rep. Dan Benishek a few questions about the state of affairs in Congress in the wake of the battle between Speaker Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Reid, and President Obama over what to do with the budget for the remainder of the fiscal year. What follows are his responses, and a brief wrap at the close.

[Lead in to Rep. Benishek]
The debate over the budget for the remainder of this year was very contentious. There’s been a tremendous amount of pressure; from the media, to the President and the Democrats (including a great deal of rancor within the Republican caucus itself), the Continuing Resolution (H.R. 1473) to fund the Government through September 30 had the attention of the entire country.

Many people have been very critical of Speaker Boehner and the process that got this deal done as well as what it actually contains. A great deal of attention has been paid to this fight by Tea Party folks and many others. A lot of Americans, both left AND right, believe they were “played” by Leadership on both sides of the aisle – sold a bill of goods filled with what we once called “fuzzy math” – and they are not happy. But the vote is done now, the bill has passed, and we’re moving ahead.

Q: In 2010 Americans sent a lot of new faces to Washington to change the direction of the country. Right now, people are feeling they’ve been sold out. Were they?

Congressman Benishek: People should not feel sold out. They can be frustrated. I am frustrated that the cuts were not bigger, but we have to remember Democrats still control the Senate and White House. I believe the Speaker did the best he could with the resources he had. I was not directly involved in negotiating with President Obama and Senator Reid, but I can tell you that as long as I am given the opportunity to vote for significant reductions in spending, I will be a “Yea” vote every time.

Q: What happened, how are you going to handle negotiations differently going forward, and what do we all need to be paying closer attention to?

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No matter what happens on November 2^nd, 2010 will be the year that conservatives won.  Patriotic conservatives of all flavors, have risen up in extraordinary ways, in every corner of the country.  It appears all but certain that Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be dethroned. Dick Morris even predicts as many as 100 new Republican Congressmen giving many people really high expectations for the new Congress.

Others fear that for all their trouble from organizing, holding rallies and knocking on doors, they will only replace the leftist Democrats with RINO Republicans who will squander the victory.  Will we get Speaker Boehner, or a fresh new conservative leader who will truly take a big stick to big government.   A closer look at the numbers should give conservatives reason to be really excited and also a cause for continued resolve.

If you want a conservative Congress, you have to ask yourself just what kind of conservative are you after.  Drew Kurlowski, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Missouri who studies voting behavior and partisanship, referred me to a dataset popular with political science academics called DW-Nominate.  It is a tremendous resource that meticulously compiles the voting records of the Congress going back to the 1st Congress.  If you want to know who George Washington’s favorite conservative was, this is your site.  Moreover, they settled on a definition of “conservative” that is tremendously useful.  Move over “fiscal conservative” and “social conservative” and make room for (limited) “government intervention in the economy”.  Let’s call it L’GIE.  So who are the liggies?

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There were three major surprises in the sometimes nasty Republican Senate primary results last night.  The first is the most obvious, Christine O’Donnell pulled off a stunning upset over nine-term Congress Mike Castle.

Jo Ann Emerson is back in the news today as one of nine members of the U.S. House of Representatives sponsoring H.R. 3936, a $165 billion union pension bailout bill. But why?

It could be that the seven-term Republican elected in the 8th Congressional District of Southeast Missouri simply loves bailouts. After all, she did vote for the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) and “Cash for Clunkers”. But I don’t think her love for bailouts is the main reason why she is behind the bill.

Instead, I think her sponsorship of the union bailout bill stems from the fact that she is married to Ron Gladney.

In a May 3 post, I pointed out that her second husband is both a Democrat and an labor union attorney for St. Louis-based Bartley Goffstein LLC and that, according to Federal Election Commission records, she has received campaign contributions from a variety of union entities, including the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). And that’s not all!

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Did Republicans lose in 2006 and 2008 because they were too far to the left or too far to the right? And which approach should they adopt if they want to regain power in 2010 and 2012? Some people think the GOP needs to be more moderate. David Frum, for instance, says Republicans need to mimic David Cameron in the United Kingdom. And at his website, Frum highlights this (rather disturbing, as I will explain below) video of Cameron making a pitch to the British people.

First, the good news about the video. It is possible that Cameron intends to do good things about education and welfare policy. Unfortunately, it’s also possible that he intends to do bad things. But we don’t know since there is nothing but rhetoric. Speaking of rhetoric, it is troubling that he also has lots of language about a “fair” society and the gap between rich and poor. This doesn’t necessarily mean he intends to push bad policy. A policy of smaller government and free markets, after all, will boost economic growth and help poor people climb the ladder. Shrinking government also will reduce the power of special interests, which will make society more fair. But it’s also possible – and perhaps more likely – that he is using this rhetoric to signal support for more redistribution.

What is most troubling, though, is that Cameron sides with government and against taxpayers whenever he gets specific about policy.

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Congressional Candidate, and Big Government Contributor, Doug Hoffman took to the New York Post today:

At this time, three months ago, I was wrestling with a decision. A decision as to whether or not to run in a special election to fill the seat vacated by the new secretary of the Army, John McHugh. If you had told me 90 days later I would be penning an op-ed piece for the New York Post, I would have laughed in disbelief. I would have laughed even louder had you told me that I would be receiving endorsement and support from political leaders like Fred Thompson, former Majority Leader Dick Armey, or Sarah Palin. Or appearing on broadcast media with national audiences, as their hosts peppered me with questions about the future of the GOP and our nation. 

You see I’m not a professional politician; I’ve never sought elected office. I grew up poor in Saranac Lake, in the heart of the Adirondacks. My siblings and I were raised in a single-parent household by our mother. We worked to help her pay the mortgage. But, like so many others in this great land, I worked hard, got a good education, did a six-year stint in the military, married, landed a good job with a “big eight” accounting firm and started living the American dream.

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