Posted on 12/21/2007 3:55:55 PM PST by pissant
As a virtual unknown nationally, 14-term congressman Duncan Hunter is trying to build a presidential campaign on his sturdy conservative credentials on defense and security policy at a time of war. The decorated Vietnam War veteran has focused his efforts in South Carolina, an early primary state where his hawkish views have found appreciative audiences.
Though he represents a San Diego-based congressional district in Southern California, Hunter kicked off his race for the White House in January 2007 in Spartanburg, S.C., with the slogan “America: The Strength of Freedom”. The state is one of the few places where Hunter’s long-shot campaign has broken through even marginally. His strongly conservative message emphasizing military might and protecting American markets from unfair foreign trade plays with voters in a state with several military installations and with a textile industry that’s been battered by foreign competition.
Hunter’s campaign was initially boosted by his top-three finish in two South Carolina countywide straw polls conducted in the spring of 2007, but Hunter continued to register in the low single-digits in statewide South Carolina polls through December.
In both fundraising and polling nationally, Duncan has lagged far behind Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney , former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani , former Sen. Fred Thompson and Arizona Sen. John McCain .
Hunter says he has based his campaign on “three pillars”: his national defense credentials, his emphasis on sealing the country’s borders to stem illegal immigration and his pledge to crack down on China’s trade practices. He has also vowed to appoint only judges who oppose abortion rights to the federal bench.
Hunter has backed the Bush administration 100 percent on the war in Iraq and disapproved of Democratic-sponsored bills calling for troop withdrawals. Hunter was also an enthusiastic backer of Bush’s February 2007 request for additional troops in the war-torn nation. He says the United States should keep troops in Iraq until the job is done, which is the achievement of a self-governing nation.
“If you think we’re going to be there for a long time, you don’t understand the determination of the U.S. Marines and the U.S. Army,” Hunter said at a September, 2007 candidates’ forum in New Hampshire. “We’re going to turn it over.”
Hunter also sees immigration and trade through the lens of national defense. He opposed Bush’s plan to provide legal status and a path to citizenship for the 11-12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States. With other conservatives, he backed a bill, passed by Congress, to build a 700-mile fence along the U.S. border with Mexico.
On trade, Hunter has focused on the stump on China’s alleged manipulation of currency markets, and had earlier been a leader in the House on legislation to make such manipulation tantamount to an illegal trade subsidy subject to sanctions. The Chinese yuan is pegged to the U.S. dollar in world markets, but, Hunter says, the yuan is undervalued by as much as 40 percent. “The Chinese government is cheating,” Hunter told the American Spectator magazine in March 2007.
When the House voted in 2000 to grant China normal trade status, Hunter led a band of Republicans warning that the vote would help Beijing rebuild its military. Hunter also opposed the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement. A Military Focus
For the past quarter century, Hunter made his mark on Capitol Hill from the prestigious House Armed Services Committee, where he was chairman for four years during the GOP majority and where he has had a seat since he first arrived in Congress at age 32.
As a junior lawmaker in the early 1980s, Hunter was a steadfast supporter of President Ronald Reagan’s military buildup. The Cold War thaw of the 1980s, followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union, did not shake Hunter’s support for maintaining high defense-funding levels. In the 1990s, he continuously tried to increase President Bill Clinton’s defense requests, complaining that Clinton’s long-term plans for defense spending were too stingy.
Hunter also took on Clinton in 1993 over his revision of the policy banning homosexuals in the military. Although Clinton’s policy reaffirmed the Pentagon’s ban on homosexual conduct by military personnel, it prohibited the military from asking recruits to disclose whether they are gay. Hunter offered an amendment to the 1994 defense bill that would have allowed the Pentagon to resume asking recruits about their sexual orientation, but it was rejected, 144-291.
Hunter has been an important ally for President Bush on Capitol Hill, not only on the war but on other major defense and security issues. In the fall of 2005, he went up against McCain, who is also a Vietnam War hero, when McCain tried to pass a ban on “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment” of suspected terrorists in U.S. custody, which the administration maintained would have crimped its intelligence gathering operation. After Hunter tried unsuccessfully to get the provision dropped from the annual defense authorization bill, he refused to sign the final document until then Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte assured him it would not “degrade” the country’s ability to collect valuable intelligence information.
In 2004, Hunter took a high-profile role in blocking a wide-ranging intelligence overhaul bill until he was satisfied it would allow U.S. troops untrammeled access to spying data.
Yet Hunter also has gone his own way and bucked both the administration and the Pentagon when it has suited him. His independence sometimes made him an uncomfortable ally for the defense establishment. He sounds out independent experts and occasionally challenges the armed services. In the early 1990s, he battled to make the Navy explore more novel designs and missions for nuclear-powered submarines. And over the Pentagon’s objections, he has pushed for a pilot program to let small companies bid to take over some weapons programs.
A big disappointment for Hunter was having to give up the Armed Services committee chairmanship when Republicans lost the majority in the 2006 elections. He has said he plans to retire from the House in 2008 whether or not his bid for president is successful. That paves the way for his son, Iraq war veteran and Marine 1st Lt. Duncan Duane Hunter, to run for the seat. From Father to Son
Duncan Hunter was born on May 31, 1948, in Riverside, Calif. The biggest influence in his life was his father, Robert O. Hunter, a former Marine who joined up after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. After the war, his parents settled in Riverside, where they ran a cattle ranch and construction firm. His father ran once unsuccessfully for the House in 1968.
Hunter’s early life followed a similar pattern. He dropped out of the University of California at Santa Barbara to join the Army because he felt compelled to serve in Vietnam — and he wasn’t that interested in school. He likes to say he was “the proud bearer of a 1.7 grade point average.” As an Army Ranger paratrooper in Vietnam, Hunter won a Bronze Star for participating in 25 helicopter combat assaults.
After the service, Hunter buckled down to academics and got a law degree, attending Western State University on the GI bill at night while working in construction during the day.
His early career years were atypical for the conservative he would become. For three years in the late 1970s, he ran a storefront legal office in San Diego’s Barrio Logan, giving free legal advice to poor Hispanics. Conservatives under Reagan later gutted federally subsidized legal programs.
Hunter credits his father with getting him involved in politics by encouraged him in 1980 to challenge nine-term Democrat Lionel Van Deerlin in what was then California’s 42nd District. His father wrote his campaign brochures and his mother designed his billboards with the theme, “A Strong Defense Means San Diego Jobs.”
Hunter’s work in the usually Democratic inner city and his tireless campaigning helped produce an upset victory over Van Deerlin, whom he portrayed as “anti-defense.” He promised that a pro-Pentagon stance would keep jobs in the San Diego area, which has the nation’s largest naval base and numerous defense industries. With a boost from the Reagan landslide that year, he won with 53 percent of the vote.
He secured his hold on the district in ensuing campaigns, except for a difficult run in 1992, when he was held to 53 percent. Hunter’s support suffered from revelations he had nearly 400 overdrafts in what became known as the House bank scandal in 1992. In recent years, Hunter has faced other questions about his ethics.
In August 2007, Congress abruptly cut off funding for a controversial combat plane that Hunter has shepherded through the appropriations process at a cost of $63 million. The Pentagon has maintained for years it doesn’t want the plane, the DP-2, after the aircraft continually failed technical tests over its 20-year development. Executives of the contractor — DuPont Aerospace, based in La Jolla, Calif. — are major political donors to Hunter.
In October 2006, Hunter took out a full-page ad in The San Diego Tribune in response to the newspapers disclosures that he underpaid his property taxes for over 10 years. Hunter’s house was listed in records as being a two-bedroom house under 3,000 square feet when it actually had six bedrooms and 6,200 square feet, the paper reported. Hunter said he never noticed the discrepancy and paid whatever he was billed by the county. He was elected that year with 64.6 percent of the vote.
And, they left out his perfect record on the 2nd amendment and taxes.
Duncan in the Media PING
He has a couple of good official endorsements like Chuck Yeager and some good unofficial endorsements from Anne Coulter and Michael Reagan.
And he has MY endorsement 110%, so that oughta count for sumthin. LOL
Mine also
JC
based his campaign on “three pillars”:
his national defense credentials,
his emphasis on sealing the country’s borders to stem illegal immigration
and his pledge to crack down on China’s trade practices.
Great and important pillars!!!
Duncan Hunter's national defense credentials alone should have elevated him to number one! There is something seriously wrong here.
Here’s an endorsement:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz0CaSGvbEM
America Supports Duncan Hunter....don’t you?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXACCqNOYys&feature=related
You want to stop the invasion....BUILD DUNCAN HUNTER’S FENCE
Cheap gas and independece from foriegn oil? BUILD MORE REFINERIES:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHoJwPEqfkg
Your endorsement counts a great deal to me. Shall I retire my tagline seeing as how you are endorsing another? ;*)
Also, don't forget Sen. Bob Smith's endorsement.
The question is, can Hunter rally Tancredo’s supporters, Tancredo’s endorsement for Romney notwithstanding?
Thanks for the ping. B4DH.
Huckabee has surged because he won a couple of debates and he’s got evangelical support. If a quick rise can happen to the liberal pro-life evangelical Huckster, it can happen to the conservative pro-life evangelical Hunter.
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According to Intrade, the winner of the December 12th GOP debate was... Duncan Hunter.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1938773/posts
“He has a couple of good official endorsements like Chuck Yeager and some good unofficial endorsements from Anne Coulter and Michael Reagan.”
Didn’t Henry Hyde endorse him, too? and now Bob Smith. Hunter has had some pretty solid principled conservatives in his corner.
From OP: “He has also vowed to appoint only judges who oppose abortion rights to the federal bench.”
Hear that, my fellow social conservatives, and Duncan Hunter has a 26-year pro-life history to back up what he says - NO FLIP FLOPS.
Duncan Hunter: “when reviewing judicial applicants, any candidate for the bench who can view a sonogram of an unborn child, and not see a valuable human life, will not receive my appointment. This has been my position throughout my career and will be strongly emphasized in my Presidency. I will continue to make that known and continue to solicit co-sponsors in my legislation that establishes legal recognition of the unborn at conception.”
AND Hunter introduces the personhood-at-conception law each year, and much more pro-life work.
“Didn’t Henry Hyde endorse him, too?”
Yes he did, and thank you for reminding me about that.
Hunter’s support will snowball if he has a good showing in Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan, Nevada, Wyoming, etc., the early primary states.
Call a talk show that airs in any or all of these states, write an editor’s letter and contribute to Hunter’s campaign.
Let’s not let the RonPaulbots outdo us. :)
I agree, Hunter doesn’t necessarily have to win. But if he makes a strong showing, surprising the pundits and the media, he will garner some richly deserved attention. When people learn about Duncan Hunter, they are easily sold on him. Especially since none of the front runners are walking away with the nomination. People really are not satisfied with their choices right now. But then, they have yet to hear of Duncan who? :)
The more I hear about him, the better I like him.
Duncan Hunter is the best candidate by far.
“The more I hear about him, the better I like him.”
Please tell your friends.
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