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The Tea Party has "completely captivated and ruined" the Republican Party, and will doom the party's chances of reclaiming the presidency unless it is checked, says Jon Huntsman, Sr. The billionaire and one-time adviser to President Richard Nixon weighed in on the state of the GOP Tuesday in an interview with Yahoo Finance. He recommended that the party turn to a candidate such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush or his son, Jon Huntsman, Jr., the former governor of Utah and U.S. ambassador to China who ran in the Republican primary for the 2012 nomination and was widely perceived as...

After trolling my own readers yesterday with rumors of Huckabee and Romney running again, I’d be remiss if I didn’t troll them with a rumor about a guy they dislike more than either of them. No half-measures when trolling. That’s my motto. Former presidential candidate Jon Huntsman has engaged in discussions with supporters in recent months about pursuing another White House bid — this time as an independent, according to three sources close to Huntsman… Other friends and former aides, however, suggested that the 2016 conversations were primarily a function of Huntsman’s willingness to hear out his supporters — not...

Former presidential candidate Jon Huntsman has engaged in discussions with supporters in recent months about pursuing another White House bid — this time as an independent, according to three sources close to Huntsman. The former Utah governor declined to comment for the record. His daughter, MSNBC co-host Abby Huntsman Livingston, who was a surrogate for Huntsman’s campaign in 2012, said in an email that her father is “primarily focused on family and private-sector endeavors.” She added: “He has no plans to run, but in politics never say never. I know there is a lot of pull out there for him...

Last week Jon Huntsman encouraged a little speculation when he said he was "open" to running for the presidency again. After his last showing — in which he didn't even come close to winning a single state in the Republican primary — this announcement did not come with the same breathless fanfare as his last one. Still, I think he should go for it. My advice: Get petty and vindictive. In the last election cycle I was assigned to profile Huntsman, and I thought I would stick a few pins in him. I wanted to dislike him, in some way....

Jon Huntsman thinks Hillary Clinton is just the cat’s meow, but that doesn’t mean the failed 2012 presidential contender isn’t leaving open the option of launching another disaster of a campaign in 2016. “Well, at the risk of totally destroying my future of politics, I have to say [Hillary Clinton] is a very impressive public servant,” the former Republican Utah governor told Larry King during an appearance on ”PoliticKING” on something called Ora.tv that will air Thursday. ”You know, as a young Republican you are trained to go after the Clintons and Hillary Clinton of course was the nemesis during...

The 2,500-seat Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts sold out March 31 for an appearance by Jon Huntsman as part of the Philadelphia Speaker Series. Two days later, Huntsman filled Boston Symphony Hall. Another Huntsman appearance at UCLA later this month is sold out. Without the benefit of incessant media attention some early 2016 prospects have been receiving, Huntsman’s visions and his authentic, inspiring way of conveying them has been attracting, and resonating with, capacity audiences. At the Kimmel Center, Huntsman drew laughs in lowering his hand slowly to the floor, a metaphor for the impact on his 2012 primary...

In a speech Friday, Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush praised illegal immigrants as "risk takers" who embody the entrepreneurial spirit of America and doubled down on his defense of Common Core. According to the Miami-Herald, Bush made his remarks in front of business leaders in Florida. “People who come here legally and illegally are the risk takers,” Bush reportedly said. “If you’re living in a rural area of Guatemala and you come, you’re a bigger risk taker than those who stay,” he added. Of course, the first action of those who come to the country illegally is breaking the law....

Was Bill Kristol kidding—just throwing a sop to the not-inconsiderable ego of his host—or could he have been serious? On today's Morning Joe, unveiling his line-up of the nine Republicans he sees running for president in 2016, Kristol included none other than Joe Scarborough himself. But in an unkind cut to someone prospectively facing the famously conservative GOP primary electorate, Kristol described Scarborough as "filling the Huntsman lane" and representing a "Morning Joe conservatism." Ouch! As interesting as were Kristol's nine [which included Sarah Palin] were the names he left off his list, including Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio. View...

Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who ran for the Republican U.S. presidential nomination in 2012, suggested he might run again but said he is not a candidate yet....

To think, we’ve spent two years believing it was Romney that had the nastiest, most relentless seek-and-destroy oppo operation on the GOP side. Now I feel like Frank Drebin discovering the missing evidence in the Kelner case. My god — he was innocent. If you believe the sources in “Double Down,” Team Huntsman feeding a mega-smear of Romney to Harry Reid was the tip of the iceberg. 1994, his wife Cheri left [Mitch] Daniels for a married man, but then the couple reconciled and remarried. “In the years since, she had never spoken publicly about the turmoil, and Mitch had...

After calling Obamacare a “dog bill” and insisting that some good did come out of the shutdown showdown, Hatch was blunt when asked about the influence of outside conservative groups and the Heritage Foundation in particular. “Heritage used to be the conservative organization helping Republicans and helping conservatives and helping us to be able to have the best intellectual conservative ideas,” Hatch said. “There’s some real question in the minds of many Republicans now … is Heritage going to go so political that it really doesn’t amount to anything anymore…. Right now I think it’s in danger of losing its...

It is hard not to be cynical about the right-wingers’ racket. They promote confrontation in which there is no hope of victory, assail other Republicans when it fails and, along the way, raise a great deal of money and get a whole lot of media attention. There are two things going on here. First, the short-term incentives for Lee to engage in this stunt are obvious. He’s not ever going to be president of the United States and will forever be in the shadow of people like Jim DeMint, president of the Heritage Foundation, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). (Lee...

Tuesday, 79-year old Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), now serving his seventh term in the Senate, signaled that he and other members of the Republican establishment are likely to encourage a primary challenge to first term Senator Mike Lee (R-UT). Lee upset former Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT) in the 2010 Utah Republican primary convention in the Tea Party's first major primary win over a Republican establishment politician. Hatch told the Deseret News and KSL NewsRadio that "[i]t's time now... for Lee and other tea party Republicans to be 'rehabilitated' for refusing to pass a budget bill needed to keep the government...

Hot Air’s Allahpundit and Erika Johnsen have both documented a growing movement to boot Tea Party members of Congress over the next two election cycles. It seems that the business community is behind this conspiracy; horrified over the fact that a rather significant proportion of Republicans in Washington were willing to roll the dice on default. In the aftermath of the government shutdown, which was highly enjoyable, the Republican establishment is striking back – and one of their targets in the Senate is Mike Lee. [In Utah,] prominent Republicans and local business executives are openly discussing the possibility of mounting...

<p>Virtually every other show [aside from "Morning Joe"] belongs to hosts who unstintingly support Obama and the Democrats, with only minor points of disagreement. ([Host Chris] Hayes criticizes Obama for his drone killings and surveillance programs, and often conducts friendly interviews with Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who collaborated with Edward Snowden. Melissa Harris-Perry, who appears on weekends at 10 a.m., nearly always defends Obama, and called Glenn Greenwald a “jerk.”) Conservatives are far less visible on MSNBC than liberals are on Fox News, and the right-leaning guests who do appear are typically critics of the conservative movement: Steve Schmidt, the Republican strategist, who says the party is too tolerant of “nuts” and “kooks”; Josh Barro, an advocate for Republican reform who describes himself as “neoliberal”; Abby Huntsman, the daughter of failed presidential candidate Jon, who has described the G.O.P. as a party of “non-inclusion.” The over-all impression is that your average Republican or conservative is simply too fanatical to be part of polite discourse.</p>

[RINO ALERT] Typically, when a politician says that a party is soulless, he's talking about the other guys.

With humble apologies to Ernest Lawrence Thayer, who wrote "Casey at the Bat," which was published in The San Francisco Examiner in 1888.The outlook wasn't brilliant for the GOP this year: The economy had tanked; hope and change had morphed to fear. The strong and swift refused to join the presidential race. So the weak and doubtful rose -- and tried to take their place. Our Herman Cain, for instance, flogged his taxing 9-9-9. To 10 parts cuts but 1 part tax, all said that they'd decline. Newt brought his wife, who wore her hair as if it were a...

Former U.S. Ambassador to China and presidential candidate Jon Huntsman said on Friday that Mitt Romney’s response to the violent protests in the Middle East and North Africa posed a “problem” for the man he endorsed several months ago. Romney’s decision to criticize the Obama administration was ill-advised and was a lost opportunity, Huntsman said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “This was an opportunity to instruct, to elucidate, to educate, to talk about how you put the pieces back together again in North Africa and the Middle East,” he said. “Not to condemn, not to criticize, not to turn it into...

s Jon Huntsman headed the way of Charlie Crist? When the 2016 Dem convention rolls around, will we see the also-ran GOP presidential nomination-seeker on the podium, seconding Hillary's nomination? You've got to wonder after Huntsman's toadying performance today as he made the MSNBC rounds. After appearing on Morning Joe earlier, Huntsman turned up on Andrea Mitchell's show. Mitchell posed a laughably-loaded question, bashing Mitt Romney's response to the Obama administration's handling of the embassy attacks. The haughty Huntsman was only too happy to play the useful idiot, concurring that there was "a lot to the criticism" and ripping Romney...

Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman has become the second Republican voted off the island in the 2012 Republican primary campaign (we don't count Tim Pawlenty or Herman Cain, both of whom dropped out before voting began). His decision late Sunday to suspend his campaign is a bit jarring, given that he had insisted after a disappointing third place finish in New Hampshire that he was staying in through South Carolina. I suspect that what happened is a combination of two things. First, financial reality set in. If you don’t think a candidate is going to win, you’re hard pressed to...