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.”

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.”

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

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:

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.”

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.

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:

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).

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.”

One of the other candidates, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, in an appearance earlier this week compared gay marriage to polygamy, asking voters “what about three men?” Huntsman described that kind of rhetoric as divisive, saying the conversation ought to be based on “fairness and dignity.”

Huntsman is one of the few Republican presidential hopefuls to support civil unions and reciprocal beneficiary rights for same-sex couples, and would allow states to enact marriage equality. He has previously spoken out against homophobia in the campaign, condemning his fellow candidates for allowing a debate audience to jeer an openly-gay servicemember.

Huntsman first embraced civil unions in February 2009, despite supporting a constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage in 2004.

The largest newspaper in the state Mitt Romney once governed has endorsed former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman in the lead up to the New Hampshire primary.

Here’s the key excerpts from the Boston Globe editorial, “For vision and national unity, Huntsman for GOP nominee“:

He has stood up far more forcefully than Romney against those in his party who reject evolution and the science behind global warming….

Strong economic growth put Utah in the top five in job creation during Huntsman’s tenure, while he gave tax credits to companies developing solar energy. He … joined the Western Climate Initiative, which set goals for reducing greenhouse gases.

Of course, even Huntsman has waffled at times — see Call Jon Huntsman “Crazy”: He Flips on Climate Science (and Earns an F in Geography). UPDATE: Huntsman Mostly Flops Back).  But nowhere near as consistently (inconistently?) as Mitt has waffled.

When asked about Obamacare, Huntsman said he has not promised to repeal the health care law like many of his primary contenders, but said he would take a balanced approach to the bill. Good measures in the bill such as coverage for people with pre-existing conditions or allowing young adults to stay on their parents plan up to a certain age should stay in place, along with other good measures in the bill if possible, he said. He added the Supreme Court has yet to rule whether or not the bill is constitutional, he said.

“Let’s take a careful assessed approach,” he said. “As president I think my inclination would be to call together the fifty governors together, cause many of the governors have worked on various aspects of healthcare reform. … We’ve got to start with cost containment and transparency,” he said.

Huntsman has previously backed eliminating the law entirely, telling ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in May 2011, “If I had a chance to repeal it, I would. But then you have to say what goes in its place, and I think the answer to that is look at what all the states are doing.” This afternoon, campaign spokesperson Tim Miller clarified that the candidate “supports the repeal of Obamacare and would assess reinstating certain provisions once repealed.”

In 2007, the former Utah governor introduced a reform plan that closely resembles the health care law. The proposal “called for providing subsidies to help Utahns who didn’t qualify for government programs and requiring insurance companies to take all comers without charging higher premiums based on medical history. Taking a page from Massachusetts, Huntsman also sought to build a health exchange…[and] called for everyone to get insurance or face penalties.” Huntsman did establish the exchange, which is similar to the state-based marketplaces created under the Affordable Care Act. He ultimately abandoned his larger version of reform (after it stopped being politically feasible) and his “goal of halving the state’s ranks of uninsured.” At the end of his term, “The state’s uninsured rate remained steady at 11 percent in 2010, meaning 300,000 Utahns went without coverage.”

• Rep. Michele Bachmann: Scalia is “at the top of the list.” Roberts, Thomas and Alito are “marvelous.”
• Fmr. Speaker Newt Gingrich: Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito are “a pretty darn good list.”
• Fmr. Gov. Jon Huntsman: Roberts and Alito “fit the bit very, very nicely.”
• Gov. Rick Perry: “Alito, Roberts or Thomas, pick one.”
• Fmr. Gov. Mitt Romney: “Roberts, Thomas, Alito and Scalia.”
• Fmr. Sen. Rick Santorum: “Thomas.”
• Rep. Ron Paul: “All of them are good and all of them are bad.”

Watch it:

Although Paul refused to name a favorite justice, there should be no doubt that he shares his fellow candidates’ support for corporate-owned democracy. In a 2010 interview with radio host Thom Hartmann, Paul said that he agreed with the Citizens United decision’s result because he thought that not allowing corporations to spend unlimited money influencing elections is somehow discriminatory in favor of newspaper companies.

Moreover, Citizens United is one small part of the favoritism Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito have shown to wealthy corporations at the expense of ordinary Americans. As ThinkProgress previously explained, all four of these justices also endorse the following gifts for corporations:

• Judges For Sale: All four voted in Caperton v. Massey to allow a wealthy coal CEO to pay $3 million to elect a sympathetic justice to a state supreme court in order to stack that court with jurists who would overturn a $50 million verdict against his company.
• Corporate-Owned Courts: All four voted to give corporations a nearly unlimited power to force workers and consumers into a privatized, corporate-run arbitration system that overwhelming favors corporations. Under their vision, real courts run by neutral judges are off limits to anyone a clever corporation does business with.
• Dividing And Conquering Ordinary Americans: All four voted in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion to allow corporations to strip their workers and consumers of their ability to bring class action lawsuits. Because of this decision, corporations now have a nearly unlimited power to cheat the people who do business with them — so long as they only do it a few dollars at a time.
• Corporate Immunity To The Law: All four voted to give generic drug makers immunity to key state laws after one of their drugs caused a condition called an horrific neurological condition that causes sometimes crippling, uncontrollable bodily movements in many of the people who took it.

In other words, if the GOP’s preferred justices get their way, there may no longer be any need for corporations to buy elections — because they’ll be largely immune from the law anyway.

But in an interview last night with CNN’s Erin Burnett, Huntsman staked out even more hawkish territory and committed to a ground invasion to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon:

BURNETT: Do you think at this point, unless we’re going to commit, and I’m curious whether you would commit to full on military conflict with Iran, that we have to accept that they will eventually be a nuclear power? It’s more important to figure out how to deal with that than to yell and scream about it happening when its inevitable anyway.

HUNTSMAN: Well, I think they’ve already made the decision to go nuclear. [...]

BURNETT: So, if push comes to shove and this is important, I’m not saying this is something you do tomorrow, but if push comes to shove, if what was between them and a nuclear weapon or there was an uncertainty, required troops invasion, you’d do it?

HUNTSMAN: I can’t live with the implications of not doing it. I can’t live with the thought of what a nuclear Iran brings to the region and what they said about Israel, which is our centerpiece alliance in the region. I can’t live — I can’t live with the world with a nuclear Iran.

So, then, you say, what do you do? And realistically, you got to have all options on the table. You got to be prepared to use all elements of national power.

Watch it:

While Jon Huntsman is confident that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon, and is prepared to commit to a ground invasion of Iran to prevent it, neither the United Nations nuclear agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), nor U.S. intelligence estimates have made that claim. Either Huntsman has access to information the IAEA and the White House aren’t acknowledging or he’s willing to go to war on a hunch.

HUNTSMAN: I think the regime in Tehran, I think they’ve already decided for themselves that they want nuclear status. I think they’ve looked at North Korea — you mentioned North Korea — and they have said, North Korea, nobody’s touching North Korea. They have, you know, a few crude devices. And compare and contrast it with Libya, and say Libya had a program. They gave it up for friendship internationally.

And I think they’ve decided they want whatever credibility comes with — with nuclear status.

Watch the video:

Huntsman did discuss real issues that could be informing an Iranian decision on building weapons of mass destruction, such as the “credibility” issue to deter attacks. And he, declaring himself “not optimistic,” raised important considerations and policy questions about the fallout were Iran to produce a usable nuke, such as potential regional proliferation and whether a containment strategy could work against a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic.

But his assertion that Iran has “already decided” to build a bomb — and that seems to be, with the subsequent comparison to North Korea, what he means by “nuclear status” — is out of step with the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and U.S. intelligence estimates.

The latest still-classified National Intelligence Estimate, a consensus opinion of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, reportedly concludes that there is no unified Iranian nuclear weapons program. The Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, in testimony on Capitol HIll this year, responded affirmatively when asked if his assessment was that “Iran has not made a decision as of this point to restart its nuclear weapons program.”

That said, a recent IAEA report raised “serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme.” But both a White House official speaking after the IAEA report was released (“The IAEA does not assert that Iran has resumed a full scale nuclear weapons program.”) and, over this past weekend, the newsroom and ombudsman of the Washington Post decided that this wasn’t enough to declare, as Huntsman believes, that Iran had resumed a full-scale weapons program.

During the speeches and Q&A with RJC’s membership, the candidates liberally threw around talk of U.S. air strikes against Iran or allowing Israel to lead the way for a joint war, imposing “suffering from sanctions” on the Iranian people, sabotaging refineries and doing “whatever is necessary” to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Watch a compilation of comments from the invited candidates:

But while the candidates and the RJC audience seem to think that the way to win over Republican primary voters is by promising military action, covert — though widely discussed — operations against Iran, and unconditional support for an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, there’s no consensus on these issues in Israel.

Last month, a Haaretz poll found that Israelis were nearly evenly split on whether Israel should attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, with 41 percent supporting a strike and 39 percent opposing. And former Mossad chief Meir Dagan has repeatedly warned that an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities could spark a devastating regional war and is the “stupidest thing I have ever heard.”

The RJC and the GOP presidential field claim to stand side by side with Israel, and are ready for war with Iran. But the views expressed at yesterday’s RJC Presidential Candidates Forum in Washington, DC, fail to reflect the diversity of public opinion in Israel and the potentially disastrous consequences of a U.S. and/or Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.