Jon Huntsman visits Richmond today
Republican presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman will visit Richmond to raise money. Attending his fundraiser will be Virginia Governor McDonnell. Why might McDonnell’s endorsement be sought after, and how might Virginia play in the 2012 elections?
Jon Huntsman, who currently aspires to the Republican presidential nomination, will visit Richmond this morning to attend a private fundraiser. It’s been confirmed that Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell will visit Huntsman’s breakfast fundraising event at the Country Club of Virginia.
McDonnell is a sought after political endorsement, as his public approval ratings are among the nation’s highest among governors, consistently near 60%. However, McDonnell has not stated when, or even if, he would endorse a candidate.
Many think that Virginia will be an important swing state in the 2012 presidential elections. In 2008, the states 13 electoral votes went to President Obama, the first time a Democrat had won the state since 1964.
McDonnell has already spoken with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former House Speak Newt Gingrich several times during the primary season. Both candidates visited Virginia in 2009 during McDonnell’s gubernatorial campaign.
stock photo by Gage Skidmore
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Keep in mind how much Governor McDonnell sucks up to the coal and fossil fuel industry and how much the state of Virginia subsidizes coal and the fossil fuel industry.
From Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/jon-hunstman-confuses-on-climate-change/2011/12/07/gIQAwX8scO_blog.html
In August, Huntsman famously tweeted: “To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.”
But on Tuesday at the Heritage Foundation, Huntsman said, “The scientific community owes us more in terms of a better description of explanation about what might lie beneath all of this. But there’s not information right now to formulate policies in terms of addressing it over all, primarily because it’s a global issue.” He also cited “questions about the validity of the science evidenced by one university in Scotland recently.”
And then, puzzlingly: “Do I defer to science and those who happen to do this for a living? Yeah, I do, as I do on issues like cancer, for example.”
Confused? A spokesman “clarifies”: “He trusts the body of science on global warming, but there’s not global consensus, and we can’t disarm or hurt our job creators since this is a global problem.”
No global consensus? There’s actually an explicit, written global consensus on enough of the science to motivate action, achieved during the Bush administration, no less — a huge report produced at the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that member governments endorsed in 2007. There’s less agreement on constructing policy to respond, but that’s what policymakers such as Huntsman owe us, not scientists.