Posted on 05/20/2010 8:49:30 AM PDT by pissant
This interview is part of an ongoing series of conversations with former Congressman and conservative activist Duncan Hunter. The intent is to keep this rock ribbed conservative’s ideas and in the public square which will hopefully help guide his former colleagues still in office, as well as inspire the American people to embrace his Reaganesque views on American politics. With any luck, Hunter will seek the presidency again in 2012, but for now he is concentrating on helping the GOP regain the majority in the House by supporting a lineup of like-minded, young conservatives running for seats currently held by liberal Democrats. This interview is Part II of the Q &A from May 17, 2010.
AJM: Another question: Now that Justice Stevens is retiring, I’m sure you’ve seen that in the news, that he’s going to leave at the end of this month…
DH: Yeah.
AJM: John Paul Stevens, the eldest and most liberal member of the court, and Barack Obama’s nominee is a gal named Kagan. I can’t remember her first name. Kagan is her last name. I thought this would interest you. She was the head of the Department of Law at Harvard University. It sounds like a good credential, right? But when she was the head of Harvard Law, she is the one that booted the ROTC off of that campus. And she is very much against, vocally against, the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy and therefore was instrumental in keeping the military off Harvard’s campus. I think on just THAT ALONE, that should be enough to oppose her nomination, do you think?
DH: Well, I think this is just another reflection of the fact, just another piece of proof, that liberals love everything about freedom except for the people that fight for it and give it to them.
AJM: Yeah, it’s incredible. But does a person like that, I mean do you…
DH: If you are asking me if I would vote for a radical Obama selectee, or nominee for the Supreme Court, the answer is a definite NO. (laughs)
AJM: (laughing)
DH: I think that’s a pretty easy one for you there, Jim. (laughs)
Don’t feel like you’ve got to do a lot of convincing me. We need folks capable of understanding the plain language of the constitution, not some liberal activist who can’t quite grasp why it is that America remains a free nation. We’ve got enough of these confused lefties in the Congress, we don’t need them on the Supreme Court.
AJM: Ha!
DH: So you can put me down as a ‘no’ on Miss Kagan.
AJM: Done!
DH: Hey, have you been doing a lot of consulting lately for your engineering company?
AJM: I’ve been very busy as of late, yes.
DH: Well, what have you been doing?
AJM: Well, let’s see. I’ve done a power systems study for the *****************, I’ve done a redesign for the ventilation, the power to ventilate the factory floor in a very, very large building for the ******** company. Working with the mechanical engineers to take the poison out of the air. So yeah, I’ve been busy.
DH: Good. OK.
AJM: Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever told you about my job. I mean you know I’m an electrical engineer.
DH: No, I knew you did some of that stuff.
AJM: Yeah, when I got out of college, I went to work for Boeing Company. I was there for about nine years. When they merged with McDonnell Douglas, I saw the writing on the wall that they were probably going to lay off a bunch of people, so I hightailed it out and went to a large consulting firm. I’ve been to a couple of different ones since. So that’s what I do. I’m part owner of my company and we do electrical design for all kinds of different customers. So we want to see the industrial base much stronger, because that’s what a large part of our bread and butter is.
DH: Good. Good. You know we need to make some things in this country. We are shipping the manufacturing base overseas. That’s one reason why we aren’t seeing a large increase, a large response in the jobs market.
AJM: Oh I agree. Everyday you see something else. Just yesterday, or two days ago I read that Stanley Furniture Company, an old time furniture company back in, I believe, Virginia – Virginia or North Carolina, one of the two; it’s an old furniture company that makes all kinds of furniture, but they’re shutting down their main plant and shipping it overseas to China. 570 jobs gone.
DH: Wow.
AJM: You know, I’m like you. I remember reading a quote. I think it was from your wife. That you don’t buy anything that’s not American made, or you try not to buy anything that’s not American made.
DH: Yep.
AJM: I’m the same way. I’ve been doing it for a very long time. I drive my wife nuts with it sometimes. But if she brings something home made in China, I tell her to take it back.
DH: You know what’s interesting about the United States; we’re unique in this sense. If we would just buy our own products, we could pull ourselves out of the recession. No other nation can do that, because they are already buying their own products, primarily their own products, so there’s not as much to be gained there. But if we would simply buy our own products, if Americans were loyal to their own manufactured products, it would help immensely.
Of course the other side of that is that we’ve become very unfriendly to business and to manufacturing in this country. And we sure need to change that. It’s a push-pull thing.
AJM: To be quite frank, the Republicans have been as bad or worse on this than the Democrats.
DH: This is one thing I told President Bush when he was trying to persuade a number of us to sign on with the South American trade deal. The Kennedy Trade Liberalization Act of 1962 was strongly opposed by three Republican leaders in the Senate: Strom Thurmond, Barry Goldwater, and a Senator named Prescott Bush. One of the most eloquent speeches against this phony ‘free trade’ was made by the President’s grandfather. That’s the Bush I liked on trade.
This swing to so-called free trade has been the product, in recent years, of the Republican Party moving to that position. Now it is basically a position that is supported by the elites in the Democrat Party, as well as most of the Republican leadership. That’s a tragedy for the country.
AJM: It’s a tragedy alright, because now, everyone and their sister recognizes that Ronald Reagan is the Gold Standard of modern conservatism, right?
DH: Right.
AJM: Well, Ronald Reagan, when he was in office, midterm in office, the CATO institute, the Libertarian think tank – who I think have some good ideas, no doubt – but they came out and just lambasted Ronald Reagan because he WASN’T a ‘free trader’.
DH: That’s right. He kept Harley Davidson from going under. With limits on foreign bikes, loan guarantees, remember?
AJM: Yeah. Steel tariffs too, if I recall.
DH: And one of his great remarks he said was “when one side is cheating, there is no free trade”. Incidentally, pull the research on that, on when the CATO Institute came out and got after him.
AJM: I have it.
DH: You may remember, in the debate in Michigan, when we were talking about trade, I think it was McCain who insisted that Ronald Reagan was a free trader. Reagan wasn’t a free trader.
AJM: I have that article from the CATO institute bookmarked at work. Do you have an email, Congressman?
DH: Yeah, yeah. It’s **************.
AJM: I’ll send that article to you.
DH: Yeah, send that off to me.
AJM: Unbeknownst to CATO – CATO’s intent was to criticize him – but in reality, they built him up as somebody who stood up strongly for American manufacturing.
DH: Exactly. So pull that research, and pull what he did with respect to Harley Davidson and send it. That may be imbedded in the CATO report. Probably one of their points. Their point was ‘survival of the fittest’, etc, etc. Of course, when one side is cheating it doesn’t stack up, so that was the great remark by Reagan that this was no free trade. That’ll be good. So send that one.
AJM: I sure will. I sure will. Now listen, the other thing about ‘free trade’ and Reagan was that, granted, Reagan wanted to open up China some, he didn’t want China to be a closed nation. That made sense, to bring them out of their bubble. But he never went so far as to say, ‘let’s ship our jobs and technology to communist China’. And the way he treated the Soviet Union, he was very, very stingy about what kind of technologies he would allow to go to the USSR. Very stingy.
DH: Yeah. Republicans need to think about that. He wanted trade, but he always wanted it on America’s terms.
Trade is a business deal between countries, and the question is: what do you give for what you get? And in the most recent deals, we’ve given our markets away for essentially nothing in many cases.
AJM: Absolutely.
DH: When one guy is following what is basically a religious philosophy, and the other guy is insisting on a good deal and driving his terms, the guy who sees free trade as a religious act is going to lose out.
AJM: I hear you. I’ll let you go. It’s getting late.
I think I told you I sent DeVore a message and he says he’s going to try you again, so as soon as he gets time, he’ll try calling again. You guys keep passing like ships in the night.
DH: No, no. We’ll get a hold of DeVore and make sure he knows I’m endorsing him.
AJM: He knows that, because I told him that already. (laughs) But the thing that will be of most value is actually having him have an actual press release. If you could type up a paragraph and send it to him, I’ve got his email. That would be fantastic. And then if you guys can plan some kind of event or something else beyond that, that’s great too.
DH: Hang on a second Jim, I’ll see if he sent me an email.
AJM: I don’t think he has it. But I’ll send you his when I send that CATO stuff to you. He’s actually very good at returning his emails quickly.
DH: OK. Good.
AJM: He’s one of those hi-tech guys that has an Ipod, or Iphone.
DH: Yeah, how nice. (laughs)
AJM: Well thank you for your time, sir.
DH: Listen, you take care. We may get a chance to swing by and see you when Sam comes home in July or August, back to Fort Lewis.
AJM: That’d be great. Now when is the Idaho primary, do you know?
DH: I think its June. I think Idaho is coming right around the corner. And the Arizona primary, where I’m helping Jesse Kelly, I think that is August. Which is kind of bad, because it’s tough to pivot off a primary campaign to a general campaign so quickly, in that short of time. Especially if you have strongly contested primaries.
AJM: Yeah. That’s one of the good things about Gunny Pop. He doesn’t have a….
DH: That’s a real advantage, but in Arizona Jesse Kelly’s got one.
AJM: He’s has like three opponents, doesn’t he?
DH: Yeah. He does.
AJM: And Vaughn Ward’s got a pretty decent opponent up in Idaho too, I believe.
DH: Yeah. Is that Labrador?
AJM: Yeah. Exactly. An immigration lawyer, of all things.
DH: Yeah. Although I don’t know how much that is going to help him. (laughs)
AJM: Not very much.
DH: I haven’t seen any polls on that, have you?
AJM: No. No one polls Idaho. None of the big boys poll Idaho. Considered a backwoods, I think. So I haven’t seen Rasmussen or anyone else polling. There are probably some local polls, by the University or something, but I haven’t seen them.
DH: Yeah.
AJM: Are you going to get back up and campaign for Ward before the primary?
DH: I’ll try to. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get up there or not.
AJM: If you can, keep me posted. I didn’t hook up with you last time you came out here, but if you do, I’ll come out and hold a sign, or something.
DH: Hey, sounds good my friend. Take it easy and I’ll talk with you a little later.
AJM: OK. Thanks for your time.
You should email this to Duncan D. Hunter, his son. Sounds right up his alley.
Sounds like “AJM” has a very interesting career. :)
“Shame on you, America!!!!”
52% of the American voters voted stupidly, and that’s an understatement.
Just thought I’d add this about Kagan, from the left-leaning justice:
“Justice Kennedy described the law Kagan had defended as an illegitimate attempt to use “censorship to control thought.”
more http://cnsnews.com/news/article/65600
Obama is intentionally picking nominees who will destroy the Constitution, if they get their way.
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