I agree with mistermix about John Huntsman but….Steve M. points out that Glenn Beck loves the guy. Interesting.
Feel the Huntsmentum
by DougJ| 106 Comments
This post is in: David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute, Good News For Conservatives
Mark
Isn’t Beck a Mormon too?
Colonel Danite
Glenn Beck likes a Republican Moron? Who’d of guessed that?
4tehlulz
True Israelites are clannish and cosmopolitan.
DougJ
@Mark:
Yeah, but Romney and Harry Reid are too
Mike Kay (Christine O'Donnell's Co-Witch)
Beck IS a
mormonmoron.steviez314
It’s Huntsman/Rubio ’16. Mark my words.
Mike Kay (Christine O'Donnell's Co-Witch)
@steviez314: I don’t think Rubio will move to china.
Mike Kay (Christine O'Donnell's Co-Witch)
the wingers will nominate Huntsman the day after liberals nominate Petraeus.
MikeJ
If he makes the slightest move towards running a certain twitter twit will be talking about chinese influence on US elections.
Mark S.
How many mentors does Beck have? There’s the 5,000 year leap guy, the gold guy, probably Rush and Reagan.
Following the link, Huntsman Sr plans to give all his money away when he dies. I kinda doubt Beck’s planning on doing that.
Viva BrisVegas
Huntsman can never get nominated for all of Fallow’s reasons, but mostly because he can no longer convincingly turn on the crazy.
He’ll become electable only after the teabaggers crawl back into the primordial ooze from whence they came.
I’d say about 2032.
Mike Kay (Christine O'Donnell's Co-Witch)
@MikeJ: real murkins no speake Chinese.
de stijl
I realize that Beck is a chat noir, but what is his reach really? His audience is, what, 2-3 million a night?
And it’s not like his audience is a persuasive cultural force.
I’m fairly convinced that paranoid suburbanites in scooters don’t have a force multiplier type pull. For that you need to be semi-literate and continent.
Phil Perspective
@Mark: Yes.
General Stuck
Huntsman is the one gooper who both looks presidential, and has enough working brain cells to act presidential. If not him running that could conceivably win, they will have to take apart the other wingnuts and build some sort of Frankenstein monster candidate from the individual parts.
He will have to pass the base tea tard test though, and be able to drink beer through his nose while singing Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA.
Sly
It became acceptable for the rank and file GOP to support Jewish politicians after the Christian Coalition tidied up the antisemitism of the evangelical leadership and the Weekly Standard declared guys like Pat Robertson to be, to quote former Neo-Con Michael Lind, “kosher.” Sure, they still think the media is run by Jews (except Fox, which is one of the main reasons why it is popular among movement conservatives), the banks are run by Jews, and that Jews are little else than Christ-killing sinners of the first order, but they’ll never say it in public.
So given that groups like FoF and people like Dobson are getting all chummy with Glenn Beck, and that the LDS Church put some serious cash behind Prop 8, I personally think its only a matter of time before Mormonism is considered by the vast majority of the evangelical leadership to be a Christian faith. The feelings of the flock do not matter, for the same reason why they are referred to as the flock.
Mike Kay (Christine O'Donnell's Co-Witch)
the way palin gets around this is by saying huntsman pals around with communists.
Mike Kay (Christine O'Donnell's Co-Witch)
The Village circle-jerks are kinda boring.
I more interested in what fool Kos & Kompany will dig up and con into primarying obama.
Davis X. Machina
@Sly: Happened with the Catholic Church, although not with its foot-soldiers, not so much anyways. It used to be the Whore of Babylon, now it’s a valuable ally.
Davis X. Machina
@Mike Kay (Christine O’Donnell’s Co-Witch):
Kos I think may get overtaken by his own people on this. He’ll personally come out strong and early for Obama but it may not matter.
Alan Grayson’s certainly capable of putting the ‘vain’ in ‘vanity candidate’. Most of the usual suspects have recused themselves already. The wailing over at DemocraticUnderground.com when first Dean, then Feingold, then finally Sanders fell on their respective swords was most intense.
Ross Hershberger
@Mike Kay (Christine O’Donnell’s Co-Witch):
You have to look at who has the most to gain by a futile gesture. Offhand, I got nobody.
mr. whipple
Well, if it looks certain that Kucinich will lose his district….
He’s the master of the futile gesture.
Suffern ACE
@mr. whipple: Oh, I don’t see anyone primarying Obama. O.K. Evan Bayh…as the “No Labels” candidate…nothing says “take back our party” like Bayh. I would crawl over Q-tips to vote for any primary candidate.
Mike Kay (Christine O'Donnell's Co-Witch)
@Davis X. Machina:
???
kooky kos hates obama.
Mike Kay (Christine O'Donnell's Co-Witch)
@Ross Hershberger:
yes, I agree. running would be an irrational act, since nothing, not even notoriety, will be gained.
so it will be up to a fool who can be easily be manipulated.
Nate W.
@de stijl:
Do you mean bête noir or is he Christine O’Donnell’s familiar?
de stijl
@Mike Kay (Christine O’Donnell’s Co-Witch):
Mark S.
I’ve noticed a lot of teabaggers are getting excited about the prospect of not raising the debt ceiling. Personally, I didn’t think they could destroy the economy in less than two months, but I was underestimating them. Here’s Bruce Bartlett:
de stijl
@Nate W.:
Black cat, black hat, whatevs.
Crikey, I can’t believe I fucked that up. But then again I also used to mispronounce anathema in a really embarrassing way until someone kindly corrected me.
(Puts hands in pockets, kicks pebble, walks away)
Yutsano
@Mark S.: Hey Bruce? Taste that? That horrible bitter taste in your mouth? It’s called buyer’s remorse, and u haz it.
jl
I am confused. The link says Beck loves Jon Huntsman Jr’s father. So the idea that Beck will transfer the love to the son is, as a recent wiseman said ‘specuuulaaaation’.
Maybe the Mormon link will be enough, but who knows?
Anyway, I would not waste my time worrying to much about why Beck thinks this or that, until you are convinced that you have discovered a Grand Unified Theory of Glenn Beck.
I am working on a Grand Unified Theory of Beck, as I have time. It centers around issues involving how to get rich off of media scams, but it is not worked out enough to predict who he will support.
Sly
@Davis X. Machina:
I don’t think the Catholic Church is a valuable ally for two reasons: The first is that the Church’s political and cultural power is immense in Europe and Latin America, and is pretty shitty in the United States. Not just in terms of numbers relative to national populations, but also in sentiment of the laity. When a Bishop in the United States says that elected official so-and-so can’t receive communion because they’re
a Democratpro-choice, statistically-speaking nearly three out of four of his parishioners won’t take that into consideration in deciding whether or not to vote for elected official so-and-so. In fact, they’re more likely to be offended by the actions of the Bishop than the beliefs of the politician.The actions of the LDS Church, however, are largely driven by its relationship to mainstream Christian culture in the United States because the United States is their primary base of operations (about half of all the Mormons in the world live here, by the Church’s own numbers). As with the Catholic Church, the relationship between LDS and U.S. Protestantism has always been toxic. But it being toxic matters much more to the Elders of LDS than it does for the Vatican. A political alliance may help bring an end that, even if all the talk about Mormonism being a cult will be relegated to private, internal conversations of evangelicals. Much like their antisemitism.
The weird thing is that I almost want to call this trend “progress”.
jl
@Mark S.: Let’s hope the Teabagger crazies don’t wade into unknown and deep waters on the debt. I heard a clip earlier today of some new GOPer congressman, identified as ‘tea
partybagger backed’ who was floating the idea of OKing small incremental increases in the debt limit, which he felt would maximize the chances of squeezing out concessions on discretionary spending without creating a backlash (edit) or a huge crisis.I guess his idea is that the public will be like the apocryphal frog in slowly heated water, and won’t jump out until it is too late.
I forget the this crazy new Congressperson’s name. Or maybe it was on old Congressperson who is trying to lead this herd of rabid skunks and weasels.
(edit) If they go the small incremental route, and can slowly chip away at federal discretionary spending, that will just hurt the still fragile and inadequate recovery, not throw the US into an unprecedented and murky financial crisis. One hopes that Obama would not just sit there like some prissy googoo mugwump and say and do nothing about it, since I think if he does that, it may make his re election much more difficult, due to an even slower and more frustrating recovery.
matoko_chan
Look…..the electorate will vote in a scientologist before a mormon can be president.
a mormon cant even make it past the WEC-jesus humpers to be the republican candidate.
have you all forgotten the WEC ministers that took out a full page anti-Romney ad?
vote for Romney in the primaries and go hell it said.
Mark S.
Bartlett also brought up something I’ve wondered about (along with the Medicare doc fix):
Does anyone know the history of the debt ceiling? It always sounded like a stupid gimmick to me, like something Walnuts came up with.
Sly
@Davis X. Machina:
the Sun rose in the East and set in the West?
Wailing at DU is a constant, like the speed of light.
matoko_chan
@jl: Beck is a Mormon. he had big gaudy weepy conversion viddie on the web, but i think its been purged.
notice he doesnt ADVERTISE his mormonism.
Most WECs would vote a satan ticket before pulling the lever for a mormon.
de stijl
What the hell is WEC? Google sez World Extreme Cagefighting.
I can’t figure it out from the context, but the original is in Chan-ese, so I may have an excuse.
de stijl
Ah, White Evangelical Christians. Got it now.
Jewish Steel
Hmm. Of the two I’d prefer to treat with the cage fighters.
The Dangerman
If the stupid fuckers start to mess with the Debt Limit, a default that could end up threatening even the monied elite, there will be a sharp increase in airplane accidents, accidents involving slipping off a curb in front of a bus, and the similar.
Suzan
It’s a Mormon thing. You never say anything bad about another Mormon. Unless he’s are a Democrat. Huntsman was a wonderful governor. I work in the unemployment and welfare agency in Utah and Huntsman consistently came to the defense of the poor. And then there is teh gay thing. Huntsman went against his church in support of gays. I honestly believe he is a man of integrity and if we have to have a Republican in 2016 (or even 2012 although I don’t think he’d run) he’d be my pick.
Yutsano
@Suzan: Unfortunately, every single one of those reasons you list are exactly why Huntsman will never make it out of a Republican primary. The priorities of the Republicans are to guard the interests of the elite and keep the social structures that privilege straight white males in place. Anything else is liberal wishful thinking.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano: This, of course, is big problem the Republicans face in any national election. They have to be crazy to survive the primary, but they must be sane(ish) to win the general. Few can thread that needle.
de stijl
@Omnes Omnibus:
Which is why Mike Huckabee scares me. He is my chat noir.
KG
From everything I’ve read about Huntsman, he is one thing: not stupid. Based on that fact and that fact alone, he is not running in 2012. It is incredibly difficult to beat an incumbent president. Besides, he’s going to be seen as toxic because he was willing to take an ambassadorship in the Obama Administration. 2016 will be when he runs, if he even wants the job.
The Dangerman
@de stijl:
Huckabee has NO chance; he is going to be Willie Hortened (by his own party) over the commutation of the dude that ended up killing four cops. There are other commutation and pardon issues; Lady Gaga’s meat dress had more life than this guy has in an election.
Yutsano
@de stijl: He’s your black cat?
@Omnes Omnibus: Huntsman could do it until he hit the Jeebus Belt then he’d be toast by virtue of his Mormonism. Honestly it will kill Newt down there as well despite being a good Georgia boy. All it takes is one well-placed ad mentioning his conversion and he becomes a dirty Other.
de stijl
@Yutsano:
Scroll up, dude.
Omnes Omnibus
@de stijl: “Black cat or white cat: If it can catch mice, it’s a good cat.”
de stijl
@The Dangerman:
If he wins Iowa again, he may pick up Huckmentum. He’ll have no chance in NH, but SC is next. (Unless they decide to change the order of primaries / caucuses.)
I’m not confident enough to lay real money on it, but I believe he will be the 2012 Republican nominee.
Mark S.
Man, what do I pay you people for? I looked it up myself, and I was very unfair to blame Walnuts for the debt ceiling, since it was enacted way the fuck back in 1917.
Ross Hershberger
Already handicapping the primaries. It’s gonna be a long 2 years.
de stijl
@Omnes Omnibus:
The religious beliefs of cats are anna-theema to mice.
General Stuck
I don’t think Huntsman will run in 2012, as he is smart enough to know that the tea tard mindset will be picking the GoP nominee for that race. Republicans have some wildly disparate groups in their tent and especially in their base, that ordinarily don’t come together enough to nominate a candidate who can win a national election in only four short years of being out of power. New unemployment claims fell to under 400,000 last week for the first time since Obama has been president, which is a signpost, usually, for some jobs in decent numbers to start reapearing. So Obama should get reelected fairly easy, barring the unforeseen.
The problem is just how insane the House wingnuts will get, to ransom Obama and dems in the meantime. Somehow, it seems to me, pretty fucking insane. YMMV
Omnes Omnibus
@Mark S.: I haven’t received my check. As a result, I am withholding my productivity.
mr. whipple
@de stijl:
If Palin runs, she’ll cut his nads off in Iowa and enjoy them with a Mr. Pib.
The Dangerman
@de stijl:
I heard on one of the AM programs this morning the Republicans have changed the rules from winner take all to apportioned by voting results. It’s almost like they don’t want any early winners (Huck or Sarah) to get the early knockout.
I think it’s Sarah’s to lose (the nomination, I mean; she’ll get smoked in the General).
de stijl
@Mark S.:
Jonah Goldberg would have definitely held out until someone else looked it up for him. You, sir, are no Jonah Goldberg.
General Stuck
The Huckabee dude is a nut, with a nutty family. Including a son who hangs stray dogs, and Mike’s history in college of putting live squirrels into pop corn poppers for fun. Then there is that willie horton like thingy.
Omnes Omnibus
@de stijl: Loadpants would have sent me a check.
ETA: Correction: Some wingnut welfare organization would have sent me a check for looking things up for Loadpants.
Yutsano
@mr. whipple: @The Dangerman: If indeed it goes by voting results then yes Palin will cruise easily. And she’ll hardly have to lift a finger. Witness the DWTS lunacy with her daughter. She has a fanbase, and she can motivate it when necessay. Fortunately it’s nowhere near a majority of the electorate. Plus in the general she can’t pull that trick.
de stijl
@Omnes Omnibus:
The doughy one would have intended to send you a check, but would also assume that someone else would do it for him. Hence, no check for you.
The Dangerman
@Yutsano:
In the general, she’ll get percentage numbers comparable to O’Donnell; of course, it doesn’t matter with the Electoral College and, outside of the South, she may not win a State (I think she loses Alaska, too). It would be a McGovernesque wipeout except for the high percentage of stupid fuckers in the South.
PanAmerican
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/648/romney-mormon
Check out the the favorable-unfavorable of Mormons by White Evangelicals compared to everyone else. Evangelicals don’t truck with Mormons. I’d guess the conflict is, at core, about proselytizing, and that isn’t going to be papered over by leadership for political expediency.
A Mormon GOP nominee would face a Dixiecan third party split.
de stijl
@Omnes Omnibus:
Your edit beat my comment. Damn your fast fingers!
Anya
@The Dangerman:
Another scenario: Huckabee and Palin split the jeebus vote and Romeny sneaks a win.
Omnes Omnibus
@de stijl: That has seldom been said.
mr. whipple
@The Dangerman:
Which is why she must run! She must, I say!
Omnes Omnibus
@mr. whipple: What if she would win?
de stijl
@The Dangerman:
I need to stop being bad at being cheeky and actually pay attention:
If true, this is really big news. I don’t really know how to search for this. Does anyone have a cite or link for this?
(Crap, I just turned inadvertently cheeky again by doing the classic Jonah Goldberg bleg – Please do my research for me)
The Dangerman
@Anya:
No, because he’s a sure loser in the General, too. The Bible Belt would stay home.
If it isn’t Sarah, it’s going to be someone that at least has a chance in the General; Thune or Daniels, perhaps. Sure, Sarah has no chance, but I’m not sure the Powers That Be on the Right that don’t want her can kneecap her enough (not for recent lack of effort).
Perhaps Jeb, but he’s going to have to chance his last name. Bush is toxic for a while.
Ross Hershberger
@The Dangerman:
Maybe he’ll become New Bush and be slightly sweeter, in a freshened up package.
The Dangerman
@de stijl:
Here ya go; it’s a little confusing (and I’m a little inebriated):
http://www.fairvote.org/gop-rolls-the-dice-in-2012-with-plurality-winner-take-all-rules
The key section:
de stijl
@The Dangerman:
Here’s the write up in wiki, but I’m not really sure what it means – bolding is mine:
de stijl
@Ross Hershberger:
Maybe he’ll change his last name to Landing Strip. Bush-lite!
Omnes Omnibus
@de stijl: Rim
jobshot.In honor of the black cat.
The Dangerman
@Ross Hershberger:
So, you’re suggesting a name change to Jeb Massengill?
Suffern ACE
@General Stuck: What is the squirrel thing?
Ross Hershberger
@Omnes Omnibus:
Nice bank shot there.
de stijl
@Omnes Omnibus:
Rim jobs are anathema to WECs.
Ross Hershberger
@The Dangerman:
maybe too long ago for some people. This.
Anne Laurie
@MikeJ: __
Given the filth Karl Rove spread about McCain’s adopted daughter back in 1999, I don’t wanna think about what the ratfvckers would say about Huntsman’s adopted Chinese daughter. Although I have the queasy feeling it would be some variation of the “pandering American virgins to Russian tyrants” smear first mounted against John Quincy Adams, because the bar must always be lowered…
Omnes Omnibus
@de stijl: Cudlip.
de stijl
@de stijl:
It is impossible for me to be more full of FAIL than I have been in this thread. Well, possibly the Rams have sucked more than me tonight. Barely.
At least the Rams still have a chance to win.
Anya
@The Dangerman: I have nothing to base this on, but I think the PTB at GOP will not kneecap Palin, instead they will let her fail in a humiliating fashion. The only way they can sideline her — without risking losing her committed flock of crazies — is by letting her lose in a spectacular way. She’s mean, undisciplined, lazy and does not follow advisors, so she’s a threat to party leaders.
Ross Hershberger
@Anya:
That’s a possibility. But I’ve been thinking of in terms of media attention as a limited resource. She wants it. They need it. The longer she’s in the race the less exposure their anointed candidate gets. I’m expecting some cats to be let out of bags in time to quash her chances before she gets up a head of steam.
Mixed metaphors ‘R us.
General Stuck
@Suffern ACE:
Here it is. Though I misremembered that they were live, though Huckabee doesn’t say, one way or the other
de stijl
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’ve seen references to the definition of cudlip and its relationship to cows, but it was in Chan-ese or the reflection of a translation of Chan-ese so I didn’t really understand all of it.
If forced to guess, I would offer “sheeple” as the closest analog to “cudlip” but that is kind of a WAG.
Frankly, I don’t really know what “cudlip” means.
Omnes Omnibus
@de stijl: Cow related insult as best as I can tell.
de stijl
@Ross Hershberger:
I’m eagerly awaiting the Republican version of PUMAs. RePUMAs.
Anya
@Ross Hershberger: Actually my hypothesis is that Republicans are prepared to lose 2012. I think they’ll focus on maintaining their big control of the House and wining the Senate but might sacrifice the presidential election to get rid of the teabaggers. If the teabaggers’ nominee loses the general then they lose their hold over the party.
@de stijl: One assumes, they will inflict more damage than the original PUMAs.
Xenos
@Anya: This is based on the presumption that Obama trouncing a teatard in 2012 would have little in the way of coat-tails. That may be true, but after a couple years of mindless foolery in the House the GOP may be setting itself up for a very bad year.
Anya
@Xenos: I am in the “No one has ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American people” camp but the craziness the teatards are about to unleash the coming two years, should put enough fear in the American people, that 2010 is never repeated.
xian
I always read matoko_chan’s posts in Sarah Palin’s voice, which is ideal for word salad.
Yutsano
@xian: It doesn’t make it any easier to take does it?
John - A Motley Moose
@de stijl: I’m hoping for a teatard 3rd party challenger. It would be extra sweet if it was Palin.
de stijl
@John – A Motley Moose:
(crosses fingers)
Hope, hope, hope.
The Dangerman
@Anya:
I heard some teatard saying today that HCR repeal will pass the House (no doubt), pass the Senate (unlikely), be vetoed (of course), and then have the veto overturned by 67 votes in the Senate (uh-huh; I want some of whatever he is smoking).
Including the apparent interest in not allowing for an increase in the debt ceiling, the zealots are so far out that I’ll take surviving the next 2 years, let alone prospering. What is it with that Mayan prediction again?
I also see where our beloved Governator commuted the sentence for the Son of a Political Ally today in one of his last acts. Reaction from the Right? Haven’t heard a peep; can you imagine if it has been a Democratic Governor? Fuck Arnold. Fuck Enron (who seemed to be behind his campaign). California is in deep fucking financial shit because of that/those asshole(s). Thank God we didn’t elect Whitman.
de stijl
@The Dangerman:
Apparently 9 Democrats and a Socialist will be so shamed and chagrined at thwarting the will of the people they will proudly change their votes and forgo their reelections.
RadioOne
@Davis X. Machina: This is almost totally wrong. There aren’t too many people on Daily Kos who are really up for a primary challenge to Obama, so I don’t think the idea of Kos endorsing Obama early will alienate enough readers to really stage a coup, or a mutiny, or whatever is supposed to happen when Kos does something that readers disagree with (which happens quite a bit). And Alan Grayson is currently looking for a more progressive district to run in for congress in Florida again in 2012 after the redistricting.
Regarding Jon Huntsman, the only way the GOP base considers a current member of the Obama administration seriously as their nominee is if Obama’s re-election prospects are almost a certainty for 2012. They did this before when they sucked it up and nominated John McCain in 2008 over more conservative candidates in the primary when it looked like the Democrats were going to walk into the White House. And they lost in a landslide. I don’t think they’ll do it again unless they think the battle is already lost.
bjacques
All are not huntsmen who can blow the Huntsman’s horn.
Just sayin’…
rikyrah
It’s Huntsman/Rubio ‘16. Mark my words.
Rubio?
You mean Senator-elect ANCHOR BABY Rubio?
EVERYTIME the GOP brings up repealing the birthright citizenship clause in the 14th amendment, a microphone needs to be shoved in his face, asking him how he feels about his fellow GOPers wanting to strip the way HE became a citizen.
matoko_chan
@Omnes Omnibus: its been explained multiple times with the original scifi refs. that you still FAIL utterly at reading comprehension must purely devolve from your profound lack of intellectual substrate……. or possible early onset Alzheimers.
;)
THE
I wish we had a politician called, “Huntsman”.
In my part of the world, all we have is a really nice spider with the same name.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
I know i’m late on this, but It should be said that Huntsman almost single handedly did the most progressive thing in Utah in my lifetime, which is to reduce the food tax from 6% or so down to 3%, and he wanted it removed completely. He called it a regressive tax that hurt the poor more than anyone else. I know I know, a republican who wants to cut taxes, but a focusing on a tax that hurts the poor is something that even most democrats won’t do these days.
I’d say I’d support him whenever he runs, but I’ve been burned by saying such things before these sorts of folks run for national office, and then get derailed by the crazy train of the national parties.