In evaluating a candidate for office, there are — ultimately — only two questions to ask:
What has he done that is relevant to the office he seeks? and
Can he get into office and, once there, deliver on his previous record?
All else is details.
Based on the answers to these questions, I believe Gov. Jon Huntsman is the best of the remaining candidates to challenge President Obama next fall. None of the others offer his combination of conservative accomplishment in office, electability against the president, and likelihood for success once there.
As to the first question, Governor Huntsman has a record of achievement in Utah that should give conservatives of all varieties much to applaud. Tax hawks can note that he reduced sales, business, and state income taxes, saving Utah’s taxpayers a net of $409M. Pro-lifers may note that Huntsman signed three anti-abortion bills while in office: one banning second-trimester abortions, another making third-trimester abortions count as felonies, and a third requiring abortion providers to explain that unborn children experience pain. Libertarians and gun-owners can celebrate his liberalization of Utah’s draconian alcohol laws and Utah H.B. 357, recognizing the right of citizens to carry concealed weapons on their property and in their vehicles without a license. As Michael Brendan Dougherty wrote in his superb profile of the governor this past summer:
In Jon Huntsman’s America, once a child survives the first trimester, he’s well on the way to having a rifle in his small hands and extra money in his pockets.
Last night at about 9:30pm I switched off my TV, fired up the computer, and got back to my incredibly more interesting game of Spore (fyi – best game ever). The inevitable Obama victory had been declared and I had no real interest in seeing pundits preen for the cameras.
Still, after an hour or so of fierce interspecies warfare (damn those neighboring predators!) I was sucked back in to the world of politics via my obsession with blogs. Just when I thought I was out, I go looking for more punishment. In reading the various reactions the following thoughts swam through my head:
1) Shit.
2) There are two types of Obamacons. One that I think has a place in the conservative movement going forward and the other I think has so abandoned conservative principles as to make their return to the conservative fold almost impossible.
Like many conservative writers, my good opinion of Barack Obama diminished somewhat over the course of the campaign. Part of this was the inevitable hardening of the partisan arteries that takes place during a Presidential year, but part of it was that Obama’s particular gifts – his combination of charisma and thoughtfulness, and his ability to project sympathy for positions he does not himself hold – created unreasonable initial expectations for the kind of actual compromises he might make with conservatives. You start with the fact that he seems to understand your side of the argument, and the next thing you know you’re imagining scenarios in which he moves the Democratic Party to the center on abortion, or comes out against race-based affirmative action, or offers some other grand, conciliatory gesture that you’d like to see American liberalism make.
None of this was ever terribly plausible, of course, given Obama’s actual record – and it was especially implausible in a year when running as a “generic Democrat” has such obvious upsides. Obama moved to the center on issues where Democrats more or less have to be move to the center – making hawkish gestures on foreign policy, promising middle-class tax cuts, etc. – but there was never any way that he was going to live up to the hopes of the various conservatives who said favorable things about him in the early going (unless they engaged in outright self-deception, as some did). Unlike previous Democratic nominees, Obama was operating in an environment where his side had the upper hand on almost every issue, and there was actually more risk than reward involved in straying too far off the liberal reservation. And the campaign he ran reflected that reality, rather than living up to its initial promise to transcend the left-right divide.
Then there are those who post videos like this (unfortunately we no longer link to his site):
The sheer joy certain “conservative” pundits took in abandoning deep rooted conservative principles to support Obama betrayed, I believe, their utter unconservative nature. I am willing to believe that after the disastrous incompetence of the last eight years of Republican government that a principled conservative could, reluctantly, come to support Obama. I cannot believe that someone who claims to want conservative government would throw their support to Obama with such emotional ferocity so as to overlook the very liberal policies that will be enacted by an Obama administration.
3) This election has highlighted the lie that is Andrew Sullivan’s “Conservatism of Doubt.” Andrew abandoned all “doubt” and any pretence of conservatism in his emotional support of Obama and his disgraceful attacks on Sarah Palin. Andrew is perhaps the worst kind of intellectual – the preening pundit ruled almost entirely by his emotions. His commentary was insightful when it was confined to longform journalism but blogging has destroyed his perspective.
4) We will hear in the coming weeks that this election represents a Reaganesque shift towards the left. A watershed moment in liberal politics that will usher in a generation of liberal policies. I disagree. I think more than anything this election shows that what the majority of Americans want in their government is competence. The governing Republicans managed to tarnish the reputation of conservatism as a competent steward of our nation. Americans want a government that will keeps things steady, and in a choice between the calm, even keeled campaign run by Obama and the frenetic, often times lost, campaign of McCain the choice was easy.
5) California voted against Prop 4: Parental Notification for Abortions and for Prop 8: Banning Gay Marriage. The end result is the exact opposite of what I would want the law to be. Still I’m glad that federalism is still alive in this country and that states can still decide certain issues for themselves. The fact that Californians were able to overturn a law imposed on them by judicial fiat gives me hope for my home state. The fact that they can’t seem to grasp that young women need more support in life changing decisions than an underpaid doctor and Planned Parenthood saddens me.
6) Thank GOD Franken looks to be losing.
7) Thank GOD Dole lost – that ad was shameful and represented everything I despise about the modern Republican Party.
What the hell is wrong with Alaska? Stevens? Are you kidding me?
9) Its looking like we won’t have to face a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. Hopefully this will curb some of the more excessively liberal policies an Obama/Pelosi/Reed triumvirate will try to enact.
10) Politics aside, it truly is wonderful to see a black man be elected President. Although I am not naive enough to think that this one event will heal all racial divides or that race hucksters like Jesse Jackson will disapear, it is still an example of the greatness of American society that race is no longer an impediment to the most powerful position in the world.
Now, Obama bans their reporters from his campaign plane. A few thoughts and observations.
Ronald Radosh sees an attempt to intimidate the press:
[T]he Obama campaign suddenly announced that in the few remaining days of the campaign, they were removing the reporters of The New York Post, The Dallas Morning NewsandThe Washington Timesfrom the campaign plane. In their place would be journalists from Essence and Jet, two African-American monthly publications. Not only would the latter two be depended upon to offer fawning stories about Obama, by the time their articles got into print it would be two months after the election.
Despite disclaimers from the Obama spokesman, the reason was clear why the three press outlets were banned. They were all papers hostile to Obama and had endorsed John McCain for the Presidency. To get a place on the campaign plane, their papers had reserved space way in advance, and had paid giant sums to guarantee seats for their reporters. Yet when last minute coverage was critical, their people were pushed out.
This may seem like a minor story, and indeed, Saturday’s Washington Posthad not one word about this development, although it was a front page story in the competing Washington Times.
It may not amount to much. Perhaps it was simply a matter of the campaign having too many demands on it for space among different news outlets. Yet anyone who thinks the choice of removal of three who were known opponents of the campaign was accidental is simply not reasoning clearly.
A thought experiment. What would the reaction be if John McCain banned, say, the New York Times and The Washington Post from his campaign plane for endorsing Obama, particularly if he replaced the seats reserved for these major papers for writers from, say, National Review and The Weekly Standard, who would of course be more sympathetic to him? A whole bunch of people would probably say that McCain was afraid of those papers, and suggest he grow a backbone.
It appears that Obama, like Nixon, has an enemies list. How much of the press will bend over backwards to stay off it?
Sign seen today on a half-empty shelf at a very large liquor store: “Due to a shortage of whiskey, Makers Mark stocks will be sporadic for several weeks. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
An economic downturn is one thing, but combine that with a whiskey shortage, and I’m suddenly convinced that we stand on a precipice. I’ve thought the 1929 comparisons were overblown, but now it’s going to be like prohibition all over again!
Apollo posted this at 7:29 PM HKT on Friday, October 24th, 2008 as DON'T PANIC
What the hell is wrong with Alaska? Stevens? Are you kidding me?