Friday, February 04, 2011
Who's The Real "Quitter", Sarah Palin Or Jon Huntsman Jr? Palin "Quit" One Job Under Pressure, Huntsman "Quit" Two Jobs Under No Pressure
Jon Huntsman Jr., standing to Palin's left
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Nearly 18 months after Sarah Palin resigned as Governor of Alaska on July 2009, a mere 18 months into her first term, many of her detractors still refer to her as a "quitter". This continues to happen despite the fact that Palin made the decision with the greatest reluctance and only after thoughtful consideration, driven by the fact that the endless ethics complaints filed against her, most of which were dismissed out of hand, were bogging down the executive branch and impairing its function. Even to this day, the executive branch struggles to fulfill a request for 26,553 pages of Palin's official e-mails. Palin decided that the welfare of Alaskans took precedence over her personal ego. Furthermore, at the time of Palin's resignation, there was no firm expectation that she would become a millionaire Fox News personality; her legal fees were approaching $500,000.
Yet these same anklebiters have completely ignored the example of former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman Jr., who recently resigned his post as U.S. Ambassador to China, effective April 30th, 2011. Huntsman resigned under absolutely no pressure at all. In fact, there are no altruistic motives to his resignation; he's said to be clearing the decks for a possible run at the Republican Presidential nomination. It was strictly an opportunistic, self-serving decision.
Furthermore, this is not the first time Huntsman has resigned an office. On August 11th, 2009, a mere 10 months after being re-elected Governor of Utah in a landslide, Huntsman suddenly resigned as Governor in order to become the U.S. Ambassador to China. While this decision was more altruistic, there was absolutely no pressure on him to walk away from the Governor's mansion. In fact, Huntsman enjoyed stratospheric popularity ratings despite being somewhat of a RINO in a deep-red state.
The issue here isn't integrity or competency; Jon Huntsman is as clean as a hound's tooth, and his popularity in Utah attests to his competency as Governor. Instead, the issue is hypocrisy. Once again, many of Sarah Palin's critics employ a double standard, subjecting Palin to a higher and harsher standard than others in her shoes. It looks like Conservatives4Palin noticed the disparity on January 31st. This is one reason why Alaskans4Palin.com came into being; to show the world that there are still fair-minded Alaskans capable of objective reporting about Palin.
The bottom line: If resigning from a job is the primary definition of a quitter, then Jon Huntsman is much more of a quitter than Sarah Palin.
Addendum: What's Jon Huntsman like politically? To put it bluntly, Huntsman's a male version of Lisa Murkowski, except with more class. Huntsman is known to favor civil unions for gays and thinks cap-and-trade is a good thing. Some educated Utah perspective is offered by McKay Coppins in this Newsweek article; Coppins thinks Huntsman is both a serious and electable candidate. KSL Channel 5 discusses how both Huntsman and Romney might interact on the campaign trail, and the implications of a Mormon vs. Mormon contest.
Posted by Anchorage Activist at 2:03 PM
