Posted by
philosophocon on Sunday, September 14, 2008 10:47:59 PM
When the hats were all tossed in the ring at the beginning of the primaries, the one I found I liked best was Duncan Hunter. He was one of the several nominees who had no chance because they were not given one, and I personally blame the RNC more than the MSM for this. Too conservative and not well-enough known according to the party bigwigs and as parroted by the MSM; as opposed to say a first-term Alaskan Governor (how many of those can you name off-hand?) brought in to save McCain’s bacon by taking the role of arch-conservative, as the candidate for veep, no less. And we still know less about Palin now than we knew about Hunter then. This isn’t a dig on her, but rather an indictment of the manipulation of the Republican primary process to make sure an actual conservative wouldn’t head the ticket.
He’s pretty much a solid conservative across the board, and his record backs that up. Perfect? No, but I don’t think he’d require much nose-holding for either the Republican base or conservatives, to the extent the two groups don’t overlap. On national security you’ve got a Vietnam Vet and former Army Ranger, who’s headed the House Armed Services Committee and believes that the concept of national security also included border and immigration control, and building the dam fence! On the economy he gets mixed reviews, he’s good on cutting taxes but seems to have generally gone along with the Republican spending spree, although he has also supported balanced budget amendments and the line item veto. He opposed NAFTA and CAFTA, and while I’m a free-trader myself I’m not entirely convinced that these particular deals were very bright ideas. No executive experience, private sector experience was as a lawyer, but as Chairman of the Armed Services Committee he was at least responsible for a sizeable budget. Still, all in all, as good as or better than McCain, he of the self-professed lack of knowledge of economics, who opposed making the tax-cut permanents and who also was part of the spending spree. Although McCain wins in the opposing earmark category, from what I can tell. On foreign policy he opposed pressuring Israel to give up land for peace, against the Law of the Sea Treaty, in favour of forcing UN reform by withholding US funds and against permanent normal trade relations with China.
Duncan Hunter gets an A+ rating from the NRA, is rock-solid on abortion, received a 17% rating from the NEA (which must be a good thing), voted for building new refineries, against prohibiting drilling in ANWAR and against implementing Kyoto. He opposes Kelo and gets lousy ratings from enviro-whacko groups. He said: “The SCHIP bill is the first extension of socialized medicine” and had an 11% rating from the American Public Health Association, so strongly against Hillarycare, another good thing.
Actually my biggest beef with Hunter is that he didn’t oppose more of Bush’s big-government programs or McCain-Feingold. He voted for No Child Left Behind, the Prescription Drug Plan and McCain-Feingold (after initially opposing it). Now, I have no indication that these issues were of particular importance to him and that he thought they were good ideas, so I don’t know whether or not he voted to go along to get along, or if he spent a lot of time receiving stern lectures from the Majority Whip. Still, beats having his name on these and other disasters.
In terms of what he’s done lately, scroll down to the next post where I have taken a look at the bills Hunter’s sponsored or co-sponsored during the 110th Congress, as I previously did with McCain.
http://www.ontheissues.org/Duncan_Hunter.htm
http://www.house.gov/hunter/biography.shtml
http://degreeofmadness.typepad.com/degree_of_madness/2006/10/california_rep_.html