Reluctant Mormon

Politicians are trained from the time they mouth their first public lie to be reflexively certain about everything. So it was startling and certainly encouraging to hear Jon Huntsman sound less than convinced the other day about the God of his Mormon upbringing.

“That’s tough to define,” he said, when asked whether he still belonged to a church whose founding tenets are based on golden tablets discovered by a teenage boy in upstate New York.

In Utah, the state named one of the best-managed in the country while Huntsman was its governor, his equivocating was a major news story. He’s showing doubt! The shame. And in Iowa, a state Huntsman said he would skip in the Republican nominating process because he doesn’t believe in the farm and ethanol subsidies that are sacrosanct there, Secretary of State Matt Schultz was harshly critical of him for “distancing himself from his Mormon faith.”

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Huntsman played, seriously, in a rock band — the headbanging, heavy-metal type that found it's niche beyond David Bowie glam. He still rides a Harley, and not just for the cameras, as Sarah Palin did during her stunt last month.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/the-reluctant-mormon/?hp

A Harley? He's definitely unqualified for the Presidency. :-)

Not quite the same thing as "riding a Harley"

In motorcycle parlance the person in front is normally referred to as the "rider", the person on back is the "passenger."


And who knows if Huntsman really "rides a Harley". To many reporters, all motorcycles are "Harleys".

her whole life, riding on the back of McCain, the back of the Christain right, the back of corporate America, and the biggest back of all Roger Ailes

And the bike pictured is a Yamaha.

http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/04/07/6423859-revved-and-ready-jon-huntsman-rides-a-harley-on-farewell-visit-to-shanghai

Harley-Davidson seems to have leant him that, but that seems to be because he has indeed ridden them for a long time: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2011/06/jon-huntsman-harley-davidson-new-hampshire-motorcycle-rally/1