Huntsman takes aim at GOP

On March 1, 2009, Politico had an article written by Jonathan Martin and titled "Huntsman takes aim at GOP".  It was posted to a message board the next day and this paragraph was discussed:

The party needs to be more intellectually rigorous, and to compete for the votes of the young, the elites and minorities, he said in an interview with POLITICO. To do so, the GOP needs to tack toward the middle on environment, gay rights and immigration. And, yes, Ronald Reagan is to be admired – but as much for his oft-overlooked pragmatism as for his conservative principles.

Someone responded and said:

IOW, be liberals. It's all the rage now. Let's jump on the bandwagon.

A second person wrote:

Acknowledging scientific and intellectual rigor and sensible policy on social mores is "being a liberal"? I don't follow.

The first person responded to that:

"Going back to the middle" has exactly what to do with science? "Gay rights" have exactly what to do with science? Immigration has exactly what to do with science?

This is limp-wristed pandering to liberals.

A third person wrote:

As for gay rights and immigration, I wouldn't say it has much to do with science. However, in these views, Huntsman is harking back to the libertarian "government should leave people alone and let them live their lives" view of conservatism, rather than "enforce traditionalism by law" view of conservatism. In that I hold the former, rather than latter view, I agree with Huntsman. In that a significant number of "liberals" are potential conservatives scared off by the latter view, I think it's a strategically sounder approach as well.

I responded with this:

It seems to me the libertarian view on gay rights would be: if you own property and assets you have total control over what happens to it after death, not that the government needs to recognize new types of relationships and it needs to be registered so that property can be inherited. Also, the libertarian view would probably say that the government has no ability to restrict a religious groups definitions of marriage, and not that we need to create new types of marriages.

Also with regard to immigration, it seems the libertarian view is isolationism and so we should shut off the border, not the view that well these poor innocent undocumented workers aren't being given all the privileges they deserve.

That same third person responded to the first part with this:

Something along that line -- government shouldn't be defining marriage. That said, government has benefits that are given out based on marriage. While libertarianally, one could say that those benefits shouldn't be given out at all, we're struck with the practical problem that they are given out.

And the second part with:

Well, no. The LP opposes most overseas military action and foreign aid, they libertarianism, they, as well as most libertarians, are for free trade and open borders. The problem with that -- and the reason that I'm not a libertarian on the military and defense matters, is that while that was all well and good, when it took six weeks to get across the ocean two centuries ago, it's a lot different now that people and goods can cross the ocean in six hours and messages can cross the ocean in six seconds.

One of the major causes of terrorism and armed hostility against the U.S. (and the west in general) is that our culture gets diffused around the world via trade. Even when the leaders of a society try to cut their countries off, it's difficult to so entirely. In the spring of 2001, there was a newspaper article I saw that said the Taliban and banned a certain haircut in Afghanistan -- a haircut that was based on Leonardo DiCaprio's in Titanic. Western movies had infiltrated Afghanistan enough to affect styles, despite that country then being the most closed off in the world, (except maybe North Korea).

Free trade and a weak defense are, therefore, IMO, an infeasible combination of policies.