An aide to Huntsman confirmed the news to The Huffington Post and said the former governor of Utah would endorse Mitt Romney on Monday. The aide added that Huntsman "didn't want to stand in the way of the candidate most prepared to beat Obama and turn around the economy."
Huntsman will deliver a speech on his decision on Monday at 11 a.m. ET in Myrtle Beach, S.C., according to the aide. Romney will not stand alongside the Utah Republican as he delivers his remarks.
It's a bit tragic for both myself and Nick. Although we're both on the left spectrum of American politics, we both thought Jon Huntsman as a really good potential president. Perhaps Huntsman/Rubio 2016? For that matter, if Romney wins the presidency, I could see Huntsman on the short list for Secretary of State.
Some thoughts about it from The Atlantic's James Fallows here.
I hesitate to put words in the mouths of dead historical figures. How can we know what someone would say about the world if they were alive today? I can't do this with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I just can't do it, because we have no idea what he'd believe in if he'd lived through 1968 until the present day. Perhaps he takes a turn away from protesting, becoming mentally and physically exhausted with the fight for justice. Maybe he becomes more conservative, as other civil rights leaders did in the 1970s and 1980s. Or, maybe he keeps fighting the good fight. I'd like to think the last of the three, but sadly we'll never know.
However, if MLK were transported directly from that balcony in Memphis on April 4, 1968, to a CNN studio in Atlanta on January 15, 2012, I'm much more confident I know what he'd say. After taking the time to catch up on decades of history, he'd be happy with the progress we've made as a nation. But he'd also be disappointed. Certainly, he'd be saddened by the people who've lost everything due to the Great Recession, shocked by the ugly aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and angered by the War in Iraq. Again, this is based on what he was fighting against when his life was ended in 1968.
To be honest, he would be quite stunned to see that he has his own statue on the National Mall. He'd probably be angry about it, because he'd realize one very important fact: that most Americans simply forgot about what he was fighting for. No way anyone who spoke against not just American involvement in Vietnam, but the very military-industrial complex supporting the war effort, would get a statue. No way anyone who was fighting against that war partly because it hurt the War on Poverty at home would get a statue. Yet he did. Because the unsavory, complex stances he took in the late 1960s are mostly forgotten about. As is the fact that he was quite unpopular before he was killed.
I've grown tired of stating, year after on year on MLK's birthday, what he stood for. I hope more and more Americans learn what he was fighting for before he died, because so much of it--an end to hawkish militarism, a serious attempt to fight poverty, and a desire to see Americans truly unite beyond skin color and class--is still important to us today.
But this is true of many American heroes. Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation is greeted by far too many with a "Yeah, but it didn't free any actual slaves." Never mind that it was the beginning of a change in public opinion on what the Civil War had always been about. Forget the fact that it started a debate over the role of Black Americans in American society. And forget about Lincoln's own changing stance on the rights of recently freed African Americans after the war.
So it is with King. We are only supposed to see him in the vein of his "I Have a Dream" speech. But he was so much more than that. Please don't forget that.
Well, this isn't much of a surprise: strategists indicate that the GOP is hurting itself with anti-immigrant rhetoric in the run up to the 2012 general election campaign.
But immigrant-rights groups and some political watchers say the damage may be irreversible. They argue that the GOP has severely hampered itself as it looks to woo the critical Latino voting bloc that could decide who wins key states like New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and Florida next fall.
Such a political mistake has been in the making for the last six years, since the battle over comprehensive immigration reform heated up in the last years of the George W. Bush administration. Then, in a Georgia Southern publication, I wrote that the GOP was making a serious mistake if it didn't listen to John McCain and President Bush on immigration reform. Scaring off millions of voters in order to placate an aging political base is not a good idea. Yet, since the start of the Obama administration, despite his own struggles with the Latino voting bloc, friction has grown between Republicans and Latinos.
Despite the growth in deportations under President Obama, many Latinos still support the president and the Democratic Party, which cannot be good news for the GOP in 2012:
The survey also showed that the gap between Latinos identifying as Democrats and those identifying as Republicans has widened over the last few years. In 2008, 65% of Latino registered voters surveyed by Pew identified themselves as Democrats while 26% identified as Republicans. Now, the Democratic share has risen to 67% while the GOP share has dropped to 20% — a finding that could be explained by increased registration among foreign-born Latinos, who lean more strongly to Democrats than do the native-born.
If voter enthusiasm among Democrats is anywhere near what it was in 2008, President Obama may yet win re-election. Right now, there's not much passion about Mitt Romney among conservative voters, more of a shrug of the shoulders that he is naturally the nominee this year. But with Romney referring to the DREAM Act, which once had widespread bi-partisan support, as a "handout", GOP strategists realize counting on a larger swath of the Latino vote this time around will be difficult.
The Republican Party can't continue like this. It may yet be in the best interests of their party, and of the nation, if they are routed at the polls this November. Otherwise it'll take a while longer before they come up with candidates who support sensible programs for the 21st century.
Yesterday's New York Times column by Charles Blow really summed up, in one place, the toxic bile a few of the Republican candidates for president have spewed out while running for their party's nomination.
To make a long, 150 year story short: Black people are lazy. Don't invest in the remains of the American welfare state because, if you do, you're helping minorities. And only minorities, because obviously white Americans do not benefit from food stamps and other benefits.
Stuff like this shouldn't surprise me anymore. But it still hurts. Not just because of the racist tenor of it. More than that it hurts me as an American citizen. We need, we must DEMAND that we have two serious, focused political parties that intend to govern for all the people.
Instead elements of the GOP find it sufficient to play the same tired, poisonous game they've been playing since 1968: a variation on the Southern Strategy, designed to speak to lower (and let's be honest here, middle and upper middle income) white voters who loathe elements of the social safety net because of fears it benefits "other" people. The most insidious element of this newest incarnation is two fold: it's the latest in a series comments that come during a period in history in which the President of the United States happens to be Black ("food stamp president" anyone?), and it comes during a period in which so many Americans require economic assistance.
Being poor in America has always been tough, because for much of modern American history, if one is poor it is seen by large elements of the conservative political establishment as being your own fault, and something that the government should do nothing or very little to alleviate. Also, being poor has become conflated with being Black. This has especially been the case since the 1960s, when the Great Society came under increasing attack for only benefiting rioting African Americans in decaying urban centers.
As I noted before, we need more than this from our leaders. When you see statements like
“I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.”
Or
"I'm prepared, if the NAACP invites me, I'll go to their convention and talk about why the African American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps,"
From Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, respectively, you realize the depths of ignorance elements of the GOP have sunk to.
Of course it will be interesting to see how Mitt Romney tackles this once he wins the nomination. He has yet to engage in such rhetoric, fortunately, and I hope that continues.
One last point: the stupidity of this reflects the fact that, despite African Americans holding a wide range of socially conservative viewpoints according to polling, they still vote heavily Democratic. Today, obviously, having President Obama in the White House, along with the frostiness between Black voters and the George W. Bush administrations, has solidified the alliance between the Democrats and Black voters. Conservatives seem to ignore what statements about self-reliance, that stretch back to Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington and can still be heard from Bill Cosby, really mean. Black Americans don't want handouts. But they also understand American history, much more than many in the GOP. Government help is sometimes a necessary need in modern society. If the Republicans ever want to make serious inroads to the Black vote, they must realize it can be done. As long as they leave this crap in the past.
Any shock here? Due to budget cuts and strategic necessity, the US Military is changing its strategic goals (from the New York Times):
In an unusual appearance at the Pentagon briefing room on Thursday, Mr. Obama outlined a new national defense strategy driven by three realities: the winding down of a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, a fiscal crisis demanding hundreds of billions of dollars in Pentagon budget cuts and a rising threat from China and Iran.
With the 2012 presidential campaign in full swing, this story may not get the attention it deserves. But it's important that the United States is focusing more on the Asia-Pacific. With North Korea being as unpredictable as ever, the rise of China, and a host of other national security issues, Asia has to become the focal point for American foreign and military policy.
Such a shift was already predicted by none other than this administration's Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. Now we're seeing it in full swing.
