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Anti-‘Too Big to Fail’ Jon Huntsman Nails Romney as Wall Street’s Man

Taking the position of former Senator Russ Feingold, former Utah governor positions himself as the anti-bankster candidate -- and a serious alternative to over-the-top corporatism of Romney, Gingrich and their kind.

John Nichols

November 30, 2011

Jon Huntsman is speaking truth about Mitt Romney, the Republican who believes "corporations are people."

Huntsman says Romney is "in the hip pocket of Wall Street."

And Romney can’t counter that complaint.

Romney has made no secret of the fact that he is Wall Street’s man in the 2012 presidential race.

Confronted by Iowans about his pro-corporate agenda, Romney replied with the now famous “Corporations are people, my friend" line.

People in the crowd at the Iowa State Fair responded on that August day by shouting, “No, they’re not!”

“Of course they are,” Romney said. “Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people."

Actually, a lot of it goes to the bankers and the speculators on Wall Street.

And that’s the point Huntsman, the former governor of Utah who has campaigned for the Republican nomination as a sane conservative (rather than an over-the-top corporatist), is making when he says: "Anyone who is in the hip pocket of Wall Street because of all the donations they are picking up, like Mr. Romney, is in these days not going to be the change agent who is going to fix the too-big-to-fail banking system."

Before an audience in New Hampshire, where he is surging in the polls, Huntsman said of Romney: "You should be wary of any candidate who carries the endorsements of every member of Congress, because it means they’re going to be a status-quo president."

That’s not a radical critique. And Huntsman is no lefty.

He’s just right, about Romney… and about the need to break up "too big to fail" banks.

"Capitalism without failure is not capitalism. In order to ensure no future bailouts, we must end ‘Too Big to Fail,’" says Huntsman. "While my opponents pay lip service to ending bailouts, none have offered a plan that would fix the structural problems facing our financial system. Returning to the status quo alone is only a recipe for more abuse and bailouts."

That’s the position that some principled Republicans took during the debate over financial services reform, as did former Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold. In announcing that he would break with fellow Democrats to oppose the legislation, the progressive senator said: “As I have indicated for some time now, my test for the financial regulatory reform bill is whether it will prevent another crisis. The conference committee’s proposal fails that test and for that reason I will not vote to advance it."

”While there are some positive provisions in the final measure," explained Feingold, "the lack of strong reforms is clear confirmation that Wall Street lobbyists and their allies in Washington continue to wield significant influence on the process.”

 

 

John NicholsTwitterJohn Nichols is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation. He has written, cowritten, or edited over a dozen books on topics ranging from histories of American socialism and the Democratic Party to analyses of US and global media systems. His latest, cowritten with Senator Bernie Sanders, is the New York Times bestseller It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism.


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