Phil
MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM UTAHVOICES
Merry Christmas from all of the voices here at UtahVoices.com. May we earnestly seek to find peace for all, and bring joy to all that we may meet! Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
Jon Huntsman – For President?
by Phil
Wednesday evening, I spotted a very interesting posting by Jonathon Martin in his blog on Politico. The headline read: Add to the 2012 prospect list: Jon Huntsman.
This peaked immediate interest (for obvious reasons) and Martin makes a strong case for Jon Huntsman – something I have been bantering about for weeks.
Huntsman, 48, cuts an impressive figure and has a fascinating personal and political story to tell, including the sort of foreign policy background most governors lack. The scion of a prominent Mormon family, he served as U.S. ambassador to Singapore for Bush 41 when he was in his early 30s, did trade stints in the Commerce Department and was a deputy U.S. trade representative under the current Bush, overseeing trade with Africa and Asia.
The two-term Governor is an impressive figure. But Martin points out that his pedigree isn’t the only thing that puts him in the Presidential mix for 2012.
As any Utah governor would be, Huntsman is in line with the GOP base on social issues. But he takes a more centrist tack on the environment, and had some blunt words for his party on an issue he believes is hurting them with younger voters.
“We as Republicans can’t shy away from speaking the word ‘environment,’ and we shouldn’t shy away from speaking the words ‘climate change,’” Huntsman told reporters at a press conference this afternoon. “When you’ve got a body of science that already is rendering certain judgements about what is happening in our world, for us to shy away, say it doesn’t matter as an issue, I think is foolhardy, it’s short-sighted and it’s bound to do us damage in the longer-term.”
Huntsman also talked fluently about education, energy and health care, making the case, as many of his fellow governors have, that the GOP needs to come up with practical solutions on such day-to-day concerns.
Huntsman represents the sensible faction of the new GOP. The side that George F. Will so fondly deemed the “ABP Republicans” (Anyone But Palin). He’s pretty impressive, especially by Republican standards. There is no denying that Huntsman has done a superb job as Governor. I like Jon Huntsman, and I voted for him twice. I like him because he’s a true moderate and he takes business seriously without giving too much.
He’s worked for more modern liquor laws in Utah, but he’s stayed out of the messier moral issues. He’s not a moral police man – he’s more of a statesman. I like his international ties and his stance on the environment, and although he found himself on the wrong side of the school vouchers issue, that was not a huge deal for me.
The key with him is his ability to manage. He reduced the state budget BEFORE the shortfalls started rolling in. He knew we were having an economic downturn, so he reduced spending prior to the bottom dropping out on the State. That’s pretty gutsy, and quite intelligent. He understands the role of government, and he also understands the role of ACTUAL budgeting. He’s not like the rest of the GOP morons who spend like drunken sailors…he’s smart and he runs the budget like a family does. No money? No buy!
However, I don’t think the GOP will be ready for a serious run for the Whitehouse in four years. The walk through the wilderness is going to take at least eight. In two years, the Mormon issue will still be a caustic one, especially with the Prop 8 blowback. He will get killed by the newly empowered environmentalists because he used to run a chemicals company, and there’s no denying that his resume was padded by a father who was a generous donor to the Reagan campaign. The son of a billionaire Mormon chemical magnate that has had life pretty much handed to him on a silver platter will have a hard time relating to every “Joe the Plumber” that Republicans seem to be so hot and bothered over.
None of this is fair, but that’s politics.
He’s already stated that he won’t return for a third term as Utah’s Governor. Could it be a run at the Presidency? Could be. My hope is that he has designs on taking over for Orrin Hatch when he retires in four years.
Until then, at least we have a Governor who won’t have to borrow money from the RNC for shopping sprees.
The Death of an Ideology
by Phil
Ronald Reagan is dead.
That may be a shocking revelation to many, but the Gipper has left the building. And for the first time since his death in 2004, we can finally send his molested political ideology with him. I admire President Reagan, but it’s time for us to move on.
As I joyfully watch the current Republican party begin their long journey through the wilderness, I am struck by my thoughts of Ronald Reagan. He was MY President…the man who was in charge through the greater years of my youth. I trusted him, I admired him, I felt safer with him and I will always feel a bit angry when those bastards went after him during the Iran-Contra hearings. He was the perfect leader for the perfect days of my youth. Maybe I’m just sentimental, but he deserves his face on a coin or a bill.
But, the Gipper has passed, and he can now take his politics – or the current, perverted version – with him.
This past election has created more than its fair share of historical significance. Undeniable. But one thing many of us are witnessing is the death of an ideology. We watched a political party fall from the tree of America this November, and it was well overdue. What was once was bright and colorful, is now brittle, frail and ready to be added to the compost heap. It’s time to rake the leaves, prune the tree, and move forward into the coming spring. They had it coming, and Ronnie must be rolling over in his grave.
But, before we look forward, we must look back. What happened? Where did it all go wrong?
Ronald Reagan was the perfect leader for America and the world in the 1980′s. He was gilded by the age of McCarthyism and the very real threat of communism. He was elected at a time when an untested, brilliant-minded Democratic President (!) just couldn’t get anything done. He came in and restored a country to economic stability and a new place as the shining city on the hill. He fought the evil empire, and he won.
The amazing ideological victory for Ronald Reagan was his ability to turn the fight against the Soviet Union and communism into a moral battle. He was a very conservative, God-fearing President, and he brought his faith with him to the White House. He used it to rally his country behind a common enemy. This enemy was real, it was foreign and it had nuclear weapons. We believed and we trusted him…and honestly, we didn’t have any reasons not to. And you know what? We won.
The way politics work; the party of record will always take what has been successful recently, and try and apply it to new problems. It has been this way for generations. The Republican Party took the ideology of Reagan and applied it to everything they stood for. This worked for a while, but with a change in times come a change in the challenges. Eric Hoffer once said, “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” This is what has happened to the Reagan ideology under the modern the Republican Party. Under George H.W. Bush, it became a business, then under the Gingrich-led congress, and, eventually, under George W. Bush, it became the corrupt racket that it is (was).
The mistakes came not exclusively in the Reagan philosophy itself, but in the way it was applied to different problems in a different time. In the 80′s we all had a common enemy, and a common goal. ANYONE could get behind the fight against communism. But after 1988, the world changed…literally! Cold war philosophies work during the cold war, but when the world changes, so must the way we govern.
Over the next two decades, the Republican Party used this moral battle to fight on a number of fronts. They fought big government (while still growing the government), the environment, abortion, liberalism and Bill Clinton. The problem was, in turning all of these issues into moral battles, they alienated people. It’s one thing to use morals against communism – a lifeless, Godless political ideology of evil – but it’s something entirely different to use the same tactics against your own citizens and their beliefs.
Out of this culture came the Limbaugh’s and Hannity’s of the world, a group of ghouls hell-bent on propagating hate and destroying all that was unclean and unholy – in their own minds. The witch hunting and culture wars that we have seen over the past eight years have shred the very fabric that Reagan wove. This is where the Republicans and their hit-men greatly underestimated America. It worked for a while, and it was given new life when 9/11 hit. But you can only create fear and loathing for only so long. Even when you find a new common enemy – terrorism – the Republicans botched it. The GOP had gotten so used to creating fear to win battles, we turned our fear-mongering towards the world, and one of its largest religions. The new war is not a cold war, it’s a holy war. And now the world views America much differently. So much for being the city on the hill.
Demonization is no way to win elections or trust in your own people, at least not in the long term. That was not what Reagan had intended when he brought his moral fabric to the office. In his speech at the 1992 GOP Convention, he said, “And whatever else history may say about me when I’m gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears, to your confidence rather than your doubts.” That sounds a lot like the newly elected President, not the party of Reagan!
What the GOP has done over the past 20 years is destroy the very thing that inspired them. They turned it into a racket, and they are now being punished for it. Reagan inspired people, built a trust and a renewed sense of pride in America. This ideology created an entire generation of political thought, but now it’s played out its course. A new direction was charted on November 4th, and it will usher in a new generation of political thought. The irony is it was formed on much the same foundation set forth by Reagan – youth, hope, change and a better tomorrow.
Rest in peace Mr. President. We’ll take it from here.