Former Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman had some strong words for the viability of his party on the precipice of a hotly contested election.
Speaking at the Brookings Institution Wednesday alongside Conservative columnist Brill Kristol and former House Representative Bart Gordon (R-Tenn.), the panel debated the shortcomings of the Obama administration and the struggles of the Romney campaign.
Huntsman expressed his uncertainty about Romney’s argument that as a former businessman, the candidate would be better equipped than Obama to run the country. Huntsman explained that “running government like a business sometimes isn’t the right answer… I haven’t seen a good example yet of a business person come into government and make it run like a business.”
Kristol echoed Huntsman’s concerns stating Romney “has a thin resume for a presidential candidate in the sense that he’s a one-term governor in an atypical state.”
Huntsman described the his view that a necessary revamping of the Republican party that will he believes will need to take place should Mitt Romney lose the presidential race. It may be a little like Yugoslavia at the end of Communism, where you have several entities that kind of fall out of one, and they have no real direction, Huntsman said.
In the event of a Romney loss, Huntsman advised that the party has to “keep pace with changing demographics that’s just a reality. companies go broke if they lose their customer base.”
