Freedom Line Blog

Jon Huntsman has the looks, money, and credentials to be a top-tier Republican presidential candidate – if he can stop getting endorsements from the two most liberal presidents of the last 35 years.

President Barack Obama praised Huntsman for the latter’s “enormous skill, dedication and talent” to the job of being Obama’s ambassador to China the last two-plus years.  In acknowledgement of Huntsman’s rumored presidential campaign, his former boss said, “I’m sure that him having worked so well with me will be a great asset in any Republican primary.”

Jimmy Carter likes what he sees too.  Telling CNN that Huntsman is “very attractive to me personally” and an “attractive” candidate, Carter is giving the former Utah governor’s moderate positions on social issues, immigration, and the environment a very liberal hue.

If this keeps up, Huntsman may be tagged with the worst label for a GOP presidential contender: the kind of Republican Democrats will feel bad about voting against, but will do so anyway.

None of which helps with the GOP base.

After all, being Obama’s former ambassador to China is already a tough sell for conservative voters.  Getting praise from Jimmy Carter may be the kiss-of-death.

File this one under “Gone, but not willing to shut up long enough to be forgotten.” House Minority Leader and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (she of “we’ll have to pass the health care bill for you to find out what’s in it”), has stepped in it again. In a speech at Tufts University in Boston earlier this week, the erstwhile Madame Speaker let the public know just how deep her reverence for the electoral process runs:

To my Republican friends: take back your party. So that it doesn’t matter so much who wins the election, because we have shared values about the education of our children, the growth of our economy, how we defend our country, our security and civil liberties, how we respect our seniors. Because there are so many things at risk right now — perhaps in another question I’ll go into them, if you want. But the fact is that elections shouldn’t matter as much as they do…But when it comes to a place where there doesn’t seem to be shared values then that can be problematic for the country, as I think you can see right now.

Our apologies to Mrs. Pelosi, but conservatives have the intellectual acumen not to confuse unilateral surrender with unanimity. Elections matter because Americans have widely varying understandings of what constitutes the best interest of the nation. If the former speaker can’t understand that, she may be well advised to consider another line of work.