Republicans; A Chance For Redemption

During the Republican primary in late 2011 and early 2012 I was throwing my support behind Jon Huntsman. Since I am not a Republican, I was urging all my friends and family members that were Republicans to look at what Mr. Huntsman's stances were and see if he wasn't the type of candidate they could support. It wasn't that he was a perfect candidate, but he was at least on a path that the Republican party should have taken long ago. And today, I find out that he is still working to correct the path that the disastrous path that the Republican party is on.

The Chicago Tribune is reporting that Mr. Huntsman supports marriage:

"I've been married for 29 years. My marriage has been the greatest joy of my life," he wrote. "There is nothing conservative about denying other Americans the ability to forge that same relationship with the person they love."

I supported Mr. Huntsman at the time specifically because he seemed to be a thinking man that was sincere in his desire to help the United States. He didn't seem to be a politician that was just in the race to see if he could advance his own career, and the longer that I keep my eyes on him, the more that I like him.

Not only is Mr. Huntsman trying to get the Republican party on the right track, he is hoping to get them to take the lead on issues that should never even have been debated in the first place.

"Today we have an opportunity to do more: conservatives should start to lead again and push their states to join the nine others that allow all their citizens to marry," Huntsman wrote.

I am a liberal and I doubt that conservative philosophy would ever be able to morph enough that I would feel comfortable in the Republican party. Despite this fact, I think it is important to have more than one party working toward their vision of what's right for the American people. If only one party has any real political power then there can be no competing visions of the future to make sure that the United States stays on the right path.

The Republicans would be smart to nominate someone like Mr. Huntsman to represent them instead of looking for people that are so far to the right that they make Ronald Reagan look like a flaming liberal.