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Security

Huntsman Calls Romney’s China Talk ‘Typical’ Campaign Rhetoric

By Ben Armbruster on May 25, 2012 at 10:15 am

Former Utah governor and GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman again criticized Mitt Romney’s harsh rhetoric toward China last night on CNN, calling it “typical” during a campaign.

Romney released an ad yesterday saying that he would get tough on China “on day one” of his presidency should he be elected. “President Romney stands up to China on trade and demands they play by the rules,” the ad says.

During an interview last night with CNN’s Erin Burnett, Huntsman — who has endorsed Romney for president — criticized the former Massachusetts governor and suggested he would pull back if elected:

HUNTSMAN: I think — this is a — this is a typical trajectory where during a campaign season you’re going to talk about China in ways that you’re hearing today. We’ve seen that election cycles gone by. They you get in office and I think Mitt Romney has the prospects of doing that which his most important for the U.S.-China relationship. Strengthening our own domestic economy and giving life and confidence to our creative class so we can get back on our feet.

If you want a strong U.S.-China relationship it starts right here at home and it starts with a stronger economy.

Watch the clip:

Huntsman was less diplomatic in his criticism of Romney on China last February, referring to his China policy as “wrongheaded.”

But Huntsman isn’t the only Romney-backer to differ with the presumptive GOP presidential nominee on China. Earlier this month, right-wing foreign policy don Bill Kristol called Romney’s attacks on the Obama administration’s handling of an escalating situation with a Chinese dissident “foolish.”

Even Romney’s own foreign policy advisers have praised President Obama on China. “I think he has a good policy in Asia, particularly in dealing with China,” neoconservative Brookings scholar Robert Kagan said, adding, “I think he’s strengthened our position in Asia with our allies.”

Election

Jon Huntsman Slams GOP: Reagan Would ‘Likely Not’ Be Able To Win Today

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Apr 23, 2012 at 9:59 am

Former Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman slammed his party during an interview this weekend at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. He compared his party’s demand for purity and discipline to the Chinese Communist party, BuzzFeed reports, saying that Ronald Reagan would “likely not” be able to win the GOP nomination today.

He said he regrets taking such a hard line against tax increases, criticizing pledges like the one from anti-tax activist Grover Norquist that almost all Republican politicians sign. On his party’s foreign policy, Huntsman said, “I don’t know what world these people are living in.”

And Huntsman, who, during his presidential run, slammed his party’s denial of climate change and evolution, said this weekend, “I had to say I believe in science — and people on stage look at you quizzically as though [you were] an oddball.”

Appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe today, Huntsman downplayed much of his criticism and attempted to make nice. But when asked about presumed nominee Mitt Romney — whom the former ambassador once called “completely unelectable,” but has since endorsed — Huntsman couldn’t help but bring up the candidate’s flip flopping:

JOE SCARBOROUGH: What does Mitt Romney stand for? What’s his core conviction?

HUNTSMAN: Listen, [laughter] he’s talking about jobs. He’s talking about economic revitalization. And I think he’s been consistent on that theme. You can talk about the other back and forth, and flip-flopping and the other things. … If you’ve wrapped yourself up in too many pledges, that diminishes your ability to do what needs to be done in the final stretch to some extent.

Watch it:

Indeed, Huntsman and Romney have a long history of tension, and the former Utah governor has slammed some of the former Massachusetts governor’s positions as “out of touch,” “wrongheaded,” and “outlandish.”

Security

Romney Adviser Robert Kagan: Obama Has ‘Good Policy In Asia, Particularly In Dealing With China’

By Ali Gharib on Feb 22, 2012 at 6:49 pm

Candidate Romney (L) and adviser Kagan (R) part ways on Obama's Asia policy

The once shoe-in favorite for the GOP presidential nomination Mitt Romney has been taking a beating lately — from his own supporters and advisers. Much of the criticism centers on Romney’s policies in various parts of Asia. Just this week, Romney supporter Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) parted ways with his candidate of choice on whether to enter into talks with the Taliban, with McCain supporting the Obama administration’s position. But a much more significant gulf may be opening up between Romney and his camp on China, particularly about his strident criticisms of Obama’s “pivot.”

Last week, Romney wrote a Wall Street Journal opinion piece blasting Obama’s Asia policy, particularly on China (albeit while misrepresenting said Obama policy). That afternoon on MSNBC, former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, who endorsed Romney after dropping his own presidential bid, said Romney’s China policies were “wrongheaded” and that he “would disagree with what some of what Governor Romney said.”

Now, a top Romney foreign policy adviser — not merely a supporter — has come out and praised Obama’s Asia policy, particularly his work on China. Appearing on the Colbert Report to promote his book, neoconservative Brookings scholar Robert Kagan, an Iraq hawk who advises the Romney campaign, said Obama “has a good policy in Asia, particularly in dealing with China”:

COLBERT: How can you advise Romney and like anything the President does?

KAGAN: I think that when the president does the right thing, it doesn’t matter what party you’re in, you should be supportive.

COLBERT: Killing bin laden doesn’t count. Killing Awlaki doesn’t count. Killing Qaddafi doesn’t count. Supporting the Arab Spring doesn’t count. So what else has he done?

KAGAN: Well, I think he’s done some things wrong. I think he has a good policy in Asia, particularly in dealing with China. I think he’s strengthened our position in Asia with our allies. On some issues I think he’s been a lot weaker.

Watch the video, starting at the four-minute mark:


The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Robert Kagan
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Kagan’s assessment that Obama has “strengthened our position in Asia with our allies” flies in the face of what Romney said in his Wall Street Journal piece. The GOP candidate wrote:

[Obama] has only encouraged Chinese assertiveness and made our allies question our staying power in East Asia… The supposed pivot has been oversold and carries with it an unintended consequence: It has left our allies with the worrying impression that we left the region and might do so again.

But maybe no one should be surprised that Kagan is a fan of some Obama policies. After all, the feeling seems to be mutual. Last month, Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin and the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein wrote that Obama spoke effusively about Kagan’s essay in the New Republic (also here) about “the myth of American decline.”

NEWS FLASH

Romney Supporter Jon Huntsman Criticizes Romney’s China Policy: ‘It’s Wrongheaded’ | Mitt Romney has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today trying to paint President Obama as weak on China. While the piece misrepresents the president’s China policy, Foreign Policy’s Daniel Drezner opined that it also “reads like it was composed by the Hulk.” Now it seems like Romney’s own supporters think it was a bit much. Discussing the op-ed today on MSNBC, former GOP presidential contender Jon Huntsman, who has endorsed Romney, called Romney’s China policy “wrongheaded.” “It’s much easier to talk about China in terms of the fear factor,” Huntsman said referring to Romney’s op-ed. What advice does Huntsman have for Romney and the other candidates on China? “Less pandering.” Watch the clip:

Politics

Huntsman Drops Out: Is Set To Endorse Romney, Whom He Called ‘Unelectable’

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Jan 15, 2012 at 10:05 pm

Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman (R) informed his advisers today that he is dropping out of the presidential race. After his third place finish in New Hampshire’s primary, Huntsman declared that he had a “ticket to ride” but it appears the be on a bus owned by GOP front-runner Mitt Romney, whom Huntsman is now expected to endorse. “The governor and his family, at this point in the race, decided it was time for Republicans to rally around a candidate who could beat Barack Obama and turn around the economy,” Huntsman adviser Matt David said in a statement. “That candidate is Gov. Mitt Romney.”

While the statement was not an official endorsement, CBS reports “Huntsman is expected to throw his endorsement to current front-runner Mitt Romney.”

Last week, Huntsman told CNBC that Romney was making himself “completely unelectable.”

Huntsman’s decision may have been influenced by the fact that a powerful group of social conservatives called on conservative to coalesce around Rick Santorum as the anti-Romney candidate this weekend.

NEWS FLASH

BREAKING: Social Conservatives Officially Unite on Rick Santorum As Romney Alternative | Moments ago, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins announced on a conference call that social conservatives had officially settled on Rick Santorum as their preferred candidate for the Republican nomination.  The decision was made today after three rounds of balloting at a meeting of more than 150 social conservative leaders and political activists held over the last two days in Brenham, Texas.  Though the meeting was widely seen as an effort to settle on a candidate to stop Mitt Romney, Romney’s own campaign sent a representative to make an appeal to the group and Perkins said it was “not a bash Romney weekend” and “not a lot of time” was spent discussing him. Jon Huntsman’s campaign was the only campaign not to participate in the meeting.

Politics

Huntsman: Romney Firing Comment Renders Him ‘Completely Unelectable’

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Jan 9, 2012 at 7:49 pm

EXETER, New Hampshire — The Jon Huntsman campaign escalated its attacks on front-runner Mitt Romney the night before the New Hampshire primary, with Huntsman himself telling CNBC host Larry Kudlow that Romney is making himself “completely unelectable.” Romney is taking flak from all GOP opponents, in addition to Democrats, for his comments this morning that he “liked being able to fire people.” Huntsman said earlier that he prefers to hire people, rather than fire them, and his adviser had harsh words this afternoon for Romney when ThinkProgress interviewed him, but Huntsman’s statements on Kudlow represent the strongest attack from the candidate himself yet:

HUNTSMAN: First of all, you’ve got to get elected to office for heaven’s sake, and making statements like that you render yourself completely unelectable. Whether you’re referring to economic policy, it really becomes more of a political issue, when you’ve got the Chicago political machine and $1 billion bearing down on you. You make a statement like, you talk about pink slips, and pretty soon you’re going to lose the high ground.

Watch it:

NEWS FLASH

Huntsman Adviser Slams Romney As ‘Out Of Touch With Average Working People | NASUHA, New Hampshire — John Weaver, a senior strategist to former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman (R), slammed Mitt Romney for saying that he “liked being able to fire people,” calling Romney “out of touch” and “unelectable” at campaign stop in Nashua, New Hampshire this afternoon. “The bottom line is…here’s a guy who’s out of touch with average working people,” Weaver told ThinkProgress. “His ties to Wall Street, the fact that he’s taken $32 million from Wall Street, the picture with his Bain partners looking like some Richie Rich guy with money falling out of his pockets…and on top of that, he has an inability to connect with average people.” Touching on the anti-Wall Street sentiment in this election cycle, Weaver added, “I just think he’s unelectable against Barack Obama in this environment.”

Economy

Huntsman: ‘I Will Break Up The Big Banks’

By Pat Garofalo on Jan 9, 2012 at 4:30 pm

Across the board, the GOP’s 2012 presidential candidates have denounced the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, enacted to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis. However, none of them has come up with a plan to replace it, save one: former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who is hanging his campaign on a strong showing tomorrow in the New Hampshire primary.

In a Fox News op-ed, Huntsman explicitly said that he would like to “break up the big banks” by imposing a fee on banks whose size hits a certain percentage of GDP:

As president, I will break up the big banks, end future taxpayer bailouts, and restore capitalist principles – competition and creative destruction – to our financial sector.

We will accomplish this by imposing a fee on banks whose size exceeds a certain percentage of GDP, proving them an incentive to slim down and localize.

This is akin to the “bank tax” that lived a short life during the financial reform debate. While it wouldn’t be as clean a break as reimposing the strict divide between investment banking and traditional commercial banking, if it were large enough, a fee like the one Huntsman proposed would provide an incentive for banks to shrink — or if not, could be used to build up a pot of money that could be tapped to dismantle a big bank that is going under, instead of resorting to ad hoc, taxpayer funded bailouts.

As Reuters’ Felix Salmon put it, Huntsman “goes where Obama dares not tread.” Indeed, Obama has never called for breaking up the biggest banks — or “right sizing” them, as Huntsman puts it — preferring instead to craft a regulatory framework in which big banks can exist without having one of their failures doom the wider economy.

But that fact is that the biggest banks are still big enough to pull down the financial system, and while Dodd-Frank went a long way to make it possible to dismantle those banks without taxpayer funds, it didn’t do much to reduce the dangerous co-mingling of investment and commercial banking (which even 90s deregulator Newt Gingrich now admits it was “a mistake” to permit in the first place).

Security

Huntsman Raps Romney: ‘The President Of The United States Is The Commander-In-Chief’

By Ali Gharib on Jan 9, 2012 at 1:09 pm

During Saturday night’s ABC/Yahoo! Republican presidential debate, former U.S. ambassador to China Jon Huntsman rapped former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney on failing to recognize the chain-of-command of the U.S. military. By design, the military leadership is subservient to the president, a fact most GOP contenders have ignored throughout the campaign as they sought to portray Barack Obama as weak on national security.

Romney has, as on so many issues, flip-flopped on whether or not a president should defer to his generals in making decisions about war and peace. Initially, he said Obama should defer to military leaders, then walked his position back and said he would listen to the generals’ “input” and make his “own decision.” During Saturday’s debate, Romney didn’t quite return to his initial position, but he did punctuate his statement on a plan for Afghanistan by declaring that he would be “listening to the commanders on the ground.”

Asked to respond, Huntsman, who’s spoken out for a more speedy withdrawal from Afghanistan, lept at the opportunity:

MODERATOR: Governor Huntsman, you have a disagreement?

HUNTSMAN: Yes. I would have to tell Mitt that the president of the United States is the commander-in-chief. Of course you get input and — and advice from a lot of different corners of Washington, including the commanders on the ground.

But we also deferred to the commanders on the ground in about 1967, during the Vietnam War, and we didn’t get very good advice then.

Watch a video of the exchange:

The U.S.’s top military officer, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Martin Dempsey, and other top generals agree with Huntsman. “I find some of those articles about divergence or control of the generals to be kind of offensive to me,” Dempsey recently said. “(A)t the end of the day, our system is built on the fact that it will be our civilian leaders who make that decision and I don’t find that in any way to challenge my manhood, nor my position. In fact, if it were the opposite, I think we should all be concerned.”

Huntsman concluded his comments on Saturday by declaring that “civil war is around the corner in Afghanistan.” He said he doesn’t want to spend more money or lose more troops in that scenario and the U.S. should “move on.”

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