In the Huntsman.
Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman is inching up in New Hampshire primary polls, but he’ll need a breakthrough before Christmas if he’s going to move into contention in the crowded January 10th contest. George Will gives Huntsman a gift in his latest column. Will is suspicious of Mitt Romney’s conservative credentials and contemptuous of everything Gingrich, labeling both “too risky.”
Here’s his concise assessment of Huntsman:
Jon Huntsman inexplicably chose to debut as the Republican for people who rather dislike Republicans, but his program is the most conservative. He endorses Paul Ryan’s budget and entitlement reforms. (Gingrich denounced Ryan’s Medicare reform as “right-wing social engineering.”) Huntsman would privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (Gingrich’s benefactor). Huntsman would end double taxation on investment by eliminating taxes on capital gains and dividends. (Romney would eliminate them only for people earning less than $200,000, who currently pay just 9.3 percent of them.) Huntsman’s thorough opposition to corporate welfare includes farm subsidies. (Romney has justified them as national security measures — food security, somehow threatened. Gingrich says opponents of ethanol subsidies are “big-city” people hostile to farmers.) Huntsman considers No Child Left Behind, the semi-nationalization of primary and secondary education, “an unmitigated disaster.” (Romney and Gingrich support it. Gingrich has endorsed a national curriculum.) Between Ron Paul’s isolationism and the faintly variant bellicosities of the other six candidates stands Huntsman’s conservative foreign policy, skeptically nuanced about America’s need or ability to control many distant developments.
James Pethokoukis on the American Enterprise blog:
If elected president, Huntsman says he would like to slash tax rates to their lowest levels since before America entered World War I and eliminate taxes on capital gains and dividends. Powerful supply-side medicine for an anemic economic recovery. Huntsman has embraced Representative Paul Ryan’s transformational, market-oriented debt-reduction plan, calling it “the model I would work from.” He’s also pro-life, a dedicated free trader and—at least as evidenced by his sweeping bank reform plan—an ardent anti-crony capitalist.
Huntsman won an important distinction for economic conservatives a few months ago when the Wall Street Journal tagged his plan for recovery “as impressive as any to date in the GOP Presidential field.”
If Huntsman is to have a moment that lifts him into contention, this is it.