Former Utah Governor John Huntsman kicks off his bid for the GOP's 2012 nomination this morning adjoin the Reaganesque accomplishments of the Statue of Liberty. I interviewed Huntsman for Rolling Stone in the bounce of 2009, if the Republican Party's affairs were dim, the Tea Affair had yet to advance itself, and Huntsman – presidential aspirations alpha to activity – was business himself as a cast afar from the "nativists" and dead-enders of the Affair of No.
In our conversation, Huntsman spun himself as a future-oriented, big-idea wielding, and, frankly, big government Republican, acquisitive to clean the GOP in the angel of Eisenhower, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.
Huntsman has aback tacked both larboard and right. He served in the Obama administering as agent to China, and has distanced himself from his already adamantly accelerating angle on altitude change.
Here, appear for the aboriginal time, are excerpts from the account in which Huntsman advocates foolishly for federal spending on infrastructure, agreement a amount on carbon, and creating a aisle to citizenship for actionable aliens. He aswell calls on his adolescent Republicans to embrace civilian unions, aggrandize the GOP's demographic abject and appearance administration and bookish bluntness by putting solutions on the table, not just criticizing Obama.
Let's get specific. What needs to be challenged aural the Republican Party.
We're not focused on the big ideas. Area are the breakthroughs on bloom care? Area are the breakthroughs on energy, and on charwoman up the air, and on renewable activity incentives to actualize the industry of tomorrow?
We're not traveling to be in the adventurous unless we focus already afresh on accolade as against to partisanship – and that agency big, adventurous account that acquire in actuality been vetted and implemented in states, area humans acquire in actuality said, "That's a acceptable idea. We've apparent it in action, and it's been done beneath Republican leadership." And again you yield some of these account and aeon them out on a civic stage.
Do you see any of that administration advancing from Washington?
In Congress, no. I apprehend a lot of partisanship, a lot of the boyhood affair rhetoric. In agreement of arch out with adventurous proposals and account I don't faculty any of that appropriate now.
We've got to aggrandize our demographics in this party. And the alone way we're traveling to be able to do that is by extensive out to those who acquire been disenfranchised, and prove the point that we can in actuality appear up with behavior that are acceptable for them. And do it in a Republican way.
With account to altitude and the environment, let's allocution about the atypical innovations and technologies that are gonna actualize jobs, and aggrandize our abridgement over the next generation. Let's put altitude change in civic aegis agreement – we don't do that! Yet that's what Republicans, at atomic traditionally, acquire been able to chronicle to.
Where do you angle on cap-and-trade?
We've got, by and large, the absolute physique of the accurate association that has rendered a judgment. It's not just in the United States, it's every academy of sciences [in the world] that has advised in on the subject, and they've all said, "There's something traveling on here, and the affairs are actual acceptable that it is man-made."
So let's acquisition applied action solutions for rolling aback a hundred years of industrialization. That's a fair and accepted debate, and one area we acquire to be intellectually honest. We can't just abolish it as bunk. That's not traveling to get us anywhere as a party.
Fundamentally, we acquire to put a amount on carbon. You either do it in a cap-and-trade scenario, or you appear up with a carbon tax. I would fundamentally abutment some way of putting a amount on carbon. That acquire to activate our altercation if we're anytime traveling to appear up with a arrangement that incentivizes humans to activate abbreviation their emissions.
That and advance in new technologies that will be carbon-free. They're out there, and they're accepting developed and will be accessible for commercialization in the next few years. But how do you get to that point? You get to that point by agreement an bread-and-butter amount on carbon – I don't anticipate there's any added way to do it. And I've had a hundred conversations with humans about how you get to that point, and I've never heard any accepted amateur – including some above CEOs, by the way – action any advocacy added than added than putting some array of accepted amount on carbon.
And let me just say, with account to cap-and-trade and the carbon tax. It's one affair to abolish it. But if you're gonna abolish something, put an addition on the table. Give us addition solution. And that's area I anticipate our affair has collapsed collapsed – we tend to blitz to criticize, and we rarely ample the exhaustion with a new idea.
Let's allocution two issues that acquire been acclimated as political cudgels in the endure brace of elections – a actual awkward attitude on clearing and aught adaptability on acceptable marriage. Is your faculty that a affair that holds those two positions can't affix to a new bearing of voters?
They cannot affix to the new bearing of voters. Plain and simple.
It's gonna yield time, to be sure, to acquire the letters from the '06 acclamation aeon if the nativist accent collection a lot of humans out [of the GOP], decidedly those newcomers to the United States. But let's get to area the fixes charge to be fabricated – as against to calumniating groups of people. Fundamentally, we've got to aggrandize our demographic base.
There is such affair as aphorism of law, and we've got to fix our authority in Washington that processes people's alleyway appear citizenship. I authored for all the western governors, forth with Janet Napolitano, a position cardboard a brace years ago on how we fix the clearing situation. We took it back, we met with McCain, met with aldermanic leaders, and of course, there was no political will on the allotment of Congress to do annihilation about it. They absolutely abdicated their responsibility.
You've aswell talked about civilian unions for gay couples as a civilian right. That's a adventurous account from a Republican.
It has continued been a Republican appearance that alone rights are important. I still acquire in acceptable marriage. But just accessory to that, civilian unions, I think, are something that is account discussing, and for Republicans, account actively considering.
What is your yield on the president's bang package?
We took the stimulus. We yield federal funds all the time – in fact, our account is apparently 50 percent federal funds, like every added accompaniment in America. Acquisition me one accompaniment that has absolutely absolved 100 percent of the funds. You can't acquisition one. These are funds that, by and large, we would be accepting over time anyway, to abutment bloom care, to abutment transportation, to abutment education.
My better complaint is that alone 25 percent went to infrastructure. I anticipate 75 percent should acquire gone into infrastructure. And projects that absolutely would acquire announced to bread-and-butter development and addition and abutting some of our arising cities and regions – authoritative them added economically viable. We charge the infrastructure. We charge it quickly. And I don't anticipate we had about abundant that was focused on key projects.
What do you accomplish of the Tea Affair movement?
I got criticized actuality by our Tea Party, because I took the money, but again you acquire to say, "Every added governor took the money, too." So I'm not absolutely abiding what the bulletin was. But the Tea Party, if you're absolutely whizzed off about taxes, all you acquire to do is attending at what we've done. We've bargain taxes in a way that's never been done afore in the history of our state. We took about the absolute sales tax off of food, we took the assets tax from 7 percent to 5 percent. This took two years of abundant lifting, and a lot of criticism, even from a adequately bourgeois assembly that I anticipation would acquire it on Day One. But if you attending at the all-embracing aisle of our taxes actuality in the state, they've gone down, and adequately decidedly so.
What is the Huntsman cast of Republicanism?
It's about bookish honesty. It's about country afore party. It's about accolade over partisanship. It's about accretion our demographic abode by hard-hitting, realistic, anxious proposals that absolutely do activate to abode the issues of the day, like bloom care, energy, and the economy. Which, at atomic in our state, would top anybody's list.
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