In an interview with The Huffington Post, former GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman calls fellow Mormon Mitt Romney out for his silence on Richard "God's Gift or Rape" Mourdock and his secrecy over his tax plan. He also defended the Obama administration's response to the attacks in Benghazi.
On Mourdoch:
"[If I were Romney] I simply would have said I'm withdrawing my support... You should always be driven by the right thing to do. And I think the right thing to do is to drop support and ask for the ads to be removed and to move on."
On the tax pan:
"I would've laid out all of the loopholes and deductions that were part of my tax plan. I'm not in a position to say mathematically if it adds up or not. We'll have to leave that to the American people. [But] how do you make the numbers add up in the end if you're not going to specify the loopholes and deductions?"
On Benghazi:
"We do ourselves an enormous disservice, certainly [in] our political discourse, by jumping to conclusions before we have any expert opinion or analysis. Presidential leadership would suggest that these kinds of events do happen. We have diplomats who wear a different kind of uniform overseas and the work they do is inherently dangerous, and we sometimes don't remember that. We're reminded of that in Libya, but when these things happen as they do from time to time, let's let the experts do the analysis and we'll figure out later what happened."
No wonder Republicans never gave this guy more than 1% of the vote in the primary. He's far too reasonable.
2:55 PM PT: Wow, rec list... thanks!
Let me add that (while I'm sure this interview will go unread by most people) I see it as a bizarro endorsement of Obama.
Consider: In this interview, Huntsman nails Romney on a social issue, an economic issue and a foreign policy issue. Talk about covering the bases.
And he is calling Romney out for the very character flaws that should disqualify him for the presidency: his failure to provide specifics, his lack of moral fiber, his refusal to stand up to the fringed of his party and his quickness to politicize even the most sensitive matters.