For the Editorial Board, last night’s CNN Republican debate stage was conspicuously missing someone: former governor of Utah and ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman.
Through all the smoke and mirrors, candidates and party officials are likely to employ in the upcoming election, conservatism — as the Tea Party has come to define it within the Republican Party — is wildly out of touch with a majority of college students and a majority of Americans.
Few Republicans have been able to articulate an inclusive vision of conservatism that doesn’t divide or even alienate significant portions of the population. One of those few Republicans wasn’t on the CNN debate stage — because he was here on campus.
Huntsman delivered the fifth annual Patrick O’Meara International Lecture at the Whittenberger Auditorium, focusing on the challenges and opportunities facing United States-China relations.
Huntsman, elected twice governor of Utah, has served as ambassador to Singapore, deputy assistant secretary of commerce, U.S. trade ambassador and, most recently, served as ambassador to China under President Obama.
In addition to his foreign policy experience, what makes Huntsman stand out is his politics — a brand the GOP desperately needs if it has any hopes of winning back the White House.
Huntsman ran for president in 2012 and found little appetite for his candidacy amongst the GOP. Though the establishment eventually picked Mitt Romney, it was the same cycle Rick Santorum came in as the party’s No. 2 — an omen of the far right politics that would come.
What is so revolutionary about Huntsman’s brand of conservatism is that he fundamentally understands that, regardless of our issues, America can work toward a better tomorrow — it’s just a matter of how.
Huntsman isn’t a demagogue. He isn’t preaching the end of America, as so much of the Republican Party currently is.
He, like so many Americans, wants solutions. He’s one of the few adults in the GOP who grasps that to govern, you have to compromise.
Huntsman, with his positions and experience, is a modern conservative in the truest sense of the word. He believes same sex-couples should be allowed to marry, supports ending corporate welfare and closing corporate loopholes and deductions, recognizes the effect of income inequality, understands the role the U.S. should play in a complex world and, above all, fundamentally understands how partisanship has paralyzed our government.
At his lecture, Huntsman touched on his 2012 run and how it was in large part sunk by the inroads he made with Democrats. That’s wrong.
The Editorial Board hopes one day Republicans will be more Huntsman than Donald Trump. The country, and our political discourse, desperately needs it.
