The Pro-Life Issue

I’m the founder of this blog, but I’ll admit I have some issues with Jon Huntsman’s stance on abortion, which got us thinking: how much do you have to agree with a candidate before you’re ready to vote for them? Would you rather not vote than disagree with a candidate on a couple of issues?

Certain issues are taking precedence this election season, specifically the deficit and the unemployment rate. What other issues are you most concerned about, and which ones are you not so concerned about?

While he was governor of Utah, Huntsman passed three significant bills concerning abortion. Taken verbatim from the Jon2012.com blog:

• He signed HB 90 to make second-trimester abortions illegal and increase the penalty for performing an illegal abortion.
• He signed HB 222 to allow women to learn about the pain an abortion will cause to their unborn child.
• He signed HB 85 to require parental consent for minors to obtain an abortion.

Now Huntsman says he’s pro-life, and I’ve traditionally been pro-choice. Huntsman’s bills are definitely moving in the direction of pro-life, but they are not ultra-conservative by any means. So in the end I think Huntsman and I can find common ground here.

Here’s my view: I wish abortion were an option for less women. By that I mean, I wish women were encouraged to take more precautions to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Abortion causes serious emotional trauma for a lot of women and can lead to complications with subsequent pregnancies. Leaving that aside, there are so many other ways that women can prevent having children, and it frustrates me that teens and adult women are not more educated on the options they have. This is what we need to focus on: teaching women AND men about contraceptive options, making those options as affordable as possible, and being good parents, siblings and mentors to young women so that they don’t feel pressured to have sex at a very young age, or to have sex just to have sex. 

But there’s one gray area in Huntsman’s stance: I would like him to clarify his position on what a woman should be permitted to do if she has been raped or put in danger by a pregnancy. Additionally, I am concerned that under Huntsman, legislators would again try to end funding for Planned Parenthood. The social conservatives don’t seem to understand that Planned Parenthood can’t use any of its money to fund abortions, and it does very significant work on educating women and providing them with contraception options so that abortion becomes the last resort, and hopefully more rare.

Why We’re Doing This

How much does image matter? Whether you like it or not, image is often the first step in establishing who a person truly is to that person’s would-be supporters. Initially, it was a photograph of Jon Huntsman that drew us in. He was in a restaurant in New Hampshire, wearing a jean jacket, his wife Mary Kaye listening closely to the owner while Huntsman shook the owner’s hand. But there was something about his expression: calm, friendly, inviting, attentive. The accompanying article to this photo painted Huntsman as a kind of book-smart leader, experienced but a little eccentric. For better or worse, the word “maverick” sprang to mind. (Some pundits have used the word “cowboy.”) We knew about Huntsman from the odd news story about Utah and from his introductory speech for Sarah Palin at the 2008 Republican National Convention. Was this really the same guy? This guy seemed like a star. Where had this guy been all our lives? Oh — working. Raising seven children.

This is a good feeling. It doesn’t feel like Obama in 2008, as so many people have been saying, or expecting us to say. Obama didn’t have experience, and our feeling back then was, almost embarrassingly, that we just weren’t inspired. It seemed like nearly everyone around us was. What were we missing? “Hope” and “change” sounded like an ad campaign, inappropriate for the time. In one-on-one debates with Sen. Clinton, so often Obama would respond to questions after the senator with some variant of “What she said.” The orator Obama was a different man than the debater Obama. It was admirable, the message of hope, but it was the message of someone who was naive, who didn’t seem aware of the enormity of what he would face in office. He warned us things would be tough, but it’s clear that he was unaware how tough.

We were just as disenchanted by McCain, and for similar reasons: he had strayed too far from his 2000 message, and Gov. Palin didn’t have enough experience to justify her vice presidential nomination.

Huntsman announcing his candidacy felt like McCain in 2000, when most of us at H4P weren’t even old enough to vote. It feels right, and it feels honest. Sifting through dozens of interviews, speeches, profiles, and analysis, we already trust this person. Are we being naive now? Are politicians really all that different from one another? The answer is no, and it is foolish for people to believe that things will ever really change in Washington. Huntsman seems to know they won’t, and that’s part of the reason we’re supporting him. It’s about the people you surround yourself with and the decisions you collectively make.

What we want out of this is for more hard-working, trustworthy, and experienced people to be elected to the highest offices of the Republican Party. We believe that Huntsman embodies these qualities. We believe that if he is nominated, he will inspire his fellow politicians on both sides of the aisle to be more respectful, more collaborative and more productive. This election is not an issue of moderate vs. conservative, but rather of inflammatory vs. civil and words vs. action. We want someone who knows how to reduce the deficit, create jobs, and improve our tarnished image overseas, and we want someone who is going to be honest and straightforward with us, and diplomatic yet firm with everyone else. We want someone who is going to listen to his opponents and know how to make informed decisions. We don’t want someone who is too inexperienced to know what’s right and what’s wrong.

We are downright alarmed by some of the statements that the other Republican candidates have made. Jon Huntsman, quite simply, is on another level.

Politicalprof: Fact Checking Michele Bachmann

politicalprof:

Glenn Kessler at The Washington Post has done a nice job fact checking Michele Bachmann. Not that any of this is a giant surprise, but here you go…

A couple of us attended a fundraiser for Huntsman yesterday, where the candidate handed over half the allotted hour to answer our questions. We wanted to hear from him about national security, but before everyone knew it Huntsman had to dash (though not before giving several satisfying answers on cap-and-trade, the Israel/Palestine conflict, job creation, the budget, and a few other things. At the beginning of the Q&A, Huntsman’s wife Mary Kaye grabbed a notebook and started taking notes. Awesome).

Anyway, today Jake Suski, one of Huntsman’s right-hand men, put up a post about Huntsman’s national security stance, and it includes the above video.

Jake Suski, “National Security for the 21st Century,” Jon2012.com, 6/28/11.

"On his swing through [New Hampshire], after the usual tropes about being a father first and foremost, saluting the service of veterans and relishing the give-and-take with the locals, Mr Huntsman spoke chiefly about his desire to revive the economy through a new “industrial revolution”. America could bring one about, he argues, by reducing its debt, lowering and simplifying taxes, cutting regulation and increasing the exploitation of domestic sources of energy. The alternative, he says, is a decade of stagnation and decline."

- From The Economist’s introductory piece on Huntsman, “Picture perfect,” which appeared in print on 5/26/11.

"What’s most worrying is that the U.S. response to this crisis seems to be one of a country in middle age, a nation that has lost its can-do moral edge, the ability to come together and overcome. In this critical regard President Obama has failed to deliver."

- From Roger Cohen’s latest op-ed, “America, Awaken,” in the New York Times. Cohen argues that a better energy plan and a better industrialization plan can whip the country back into shape. He’s not endorsing any particular candidate for 2012 here, of course, but does reference a recent article President Clinton wrote in Newsweek (“It’s Still the Economy, Stupid”) about how Obama might fix the climbing unemployment rate.

"Huntsman is a human being while Romney has trouble convincing people that he believes anything or that there’s anything inside him. In a contest between two millionaires voters might well give the nod to the guy who rides a Harley and plays in a rock band rather than to the guy you vote for only while holding your nose."

- Stanley Fish says what we’ve been thinking, and so perfectly, in a new Opinionator post for the New York Times (6/27/11).

Huntsman: Will He or Won’t He?

On Saturday, Politico published two different arguments about Jon Huntsman’s presidential bid, an admittedly media-hyped affair thus far, dominating most of last week’s election headlines. But let’s not forget what media hype did for President Obama. And Sarah Palin.

On one side of the debate, Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei sound convinced that Huntsman has too steep a climb to convince the frustrated right that he’s the solution to Obama, and moreover, that he can actually beat him in the general election.

On the other side, Charles Mahtesian believes Huntsman has the star power to steal the spotlight away from the other Republican candidates, and help bring Republicans, Independents, and maybe even some Democrats back toward the center of the aisle.

Allen and Vandehei:

“The GOP base, sensing weakness in Obama, wants a brawler, the sort of Republican who prospered in dozens of races in the 2010 mid-terms. This is the main reason so many activists are clamoring for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to get in the race. Huntsman, by contrast, is running as a diplomat…”

Mahtesian:

“Huntsman…has all the hallmarks of a serious candidate: Money, telegenic looks, a solid grasp of the issues, a track record of political success and an ability to articulate a message…”

"It’s strange to think that the man sitting on that wall, tucking into a sandwich, might one day be president. It’s equally hard to look at him and not wonder whether he might be coming along right on time. He’ll be called a RINO and a traitor and a nobody in the coming weeks and months, but he’ll also be called reasonable and practical and professional and electable. Even today, so close to the start of everything, his path is clear: He needs to find a broader Republican base, drawing in those right-leaning voters who presently find themselves without a country, fiscal conservatives who don’t much care whether two men get hitched or their candidate’s wearing a pin in his lapel. His success or failure will be dictated by just how many people like him have been waiting for the storm of paranoid rhetoric to pass, waiting for the return of a party and a candidate who wants to govern rather than rage. Have they been out there all this time, waiting, quietly, by the millions? Right now, on this lakeshore afternoon, he still has such a long way to go — how can he ever think that all of this might happen for him?"

- From Chris Jones’s profile of Huntsman, “Romney Doesn’t Scare Obama. This Guy Does,” from the August issue of Esquire.

"If you’re of a certain age, you may remember the “Saturday Night Live” routine in which Phil Hartman played the “Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer” — a Neanderthal who thawed out after 100,000 years, went to law school and became a grandstanding advocate and even ran for political office. (“I don’t really understand your Congress or your system of checks and balances, because as I said during the campaign, I’m just a caveman,” went a typical oration. “I fell on some ice and later got thawed out by scientists. But there is one thing I do know: We must do everything in our power to lower the capital gains tax!”) As I watched Huntsman tour New Hampshire, I began to think of him, in a kind way, as being the unfrozen caveman candidate. He’d been living in a censored society on the other side of the planet — encased in ice, for all political purposes — during the town-hall uprisings in the summer of 2009 and all the grass-roots fury that attached itself to everything Obama did. And this, he seemed to think, exempted him from having to know much about any of it. I’m just a caveman. I don’t know much about your “tea parties” and your “birthers.” But there are some things I do know … ."

- From Matt Bai’s lengthy profile of Huntsman, “Jon Huntsman Steps Into the Republican Vacuum,” in the New York Times Magazine, June 26, 2011.